STORY: Minute of silence commemorates those killed in the atomic bombing of Nagaskai 77 years ago. High-ranking Japanese politicians, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, attended a ceremony in the southern Japanese city on Tuesday. “Though the path is steep and difficult, our country is on the path to a world without nuclear weapons. To this end, Japan adheres to its principles of denuclearization and will strive to combine the reality of our current difficult security environment with this ideal.” Kishida is likely alluding to the widespread concern that Russia might use nuclear weapons in its war of aggression in Ukraine. The attack on Nagasaki came three days after an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, carried out the world’s first nuclear attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. More than 75,000 people died in Nagasaki at the time. About 140,000 of an estimated 350,000 inhabitants died in Hiroshima. There, too, thousands more succumbed to their injuries and radiation-related illnesses.