When: 4:00 PM EST / 8:00 AM JST (August 10)
Just as the Hiroshima Peace Day Concert opened hearts around the world through music, we now open this gathering through prayer. Before we hear the voices of artists and peacebuilders, let us first join our voices together in the Nuclear Prayer—spoken in many languages, yet offered with one hope: that humanity will choose life.
As we conclude our Nuclear Prayer Days observance, we begin and end with the Nuclear Prayer—a prayer that invites us to remember, to reflect, and ultimately to act so that humanity will never again experience the horror of nuclear war.
It is therefore especially fitting that we rebroadcast the Hiroshima Peace Day Concert, originally presented on September 21, 2024, the United Nations International Day of Peace. Broadcast worldwide from Hiroshima through UETV (UNITY EARTH Television), this remarkable event was far more than a concert. It was a global peace ceremony that united music, remembrance, spirituality, and hope in one shared experience.
Conceived as the culminating event of a week-long peace pilgrimage and gathering in Japan, the concert brought together musicians, peace advocates, interfaith leaders, artists, and participants from many nations. Throughout the evening, music was interwoven with reflections on humanity's shared responsibility to choose peace over violence, dialogue over division, and reconciliation over conflict. Hiroshima served not merely as the venue, but as the moral and spiritual center of the broadcast—a city that forever reminds the world of both the unimaginable devastation of nuclear war and the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit.
The organizers described the concert as a symbolic "bell for peace heard ringing around the world." From the city that became synonymous with the destructive power of nuclear weapons arose instead a global call for healing, compassion, and a future free from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Through music, prayer, storytelling, and shared silence, viewers across continents became participants in a single worldwide act of remembrance and hope.
The themes of the concert resonate profoundly with the purpose of Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. Like our own Nuclear Prayer Days, the Hiroshima Peace Day Concert reminds us that remembering is not enough. Memory must become moral responsibility. Reflection must become action. Commemoration must become commitment.
Today, the dangers posed by nuclear weapons have not disappeared. Thousands of nuclear warheads remain deployed throughout the world, while geopolitical tensions continue to remind us that peace can never be taken for granted. As the number of Hibakusha—the survivors who have borne personal witness to the bombings—continues to diminish, the responsibility for carrying their message increasingly rests with us.
For this reason, rebroadcasting this extraordinary event is more than an opportunity to enjoy beautiful music or inspiring words. It is an act of remembrance. It is an affirmation that Hiroshima's story belongs not only to Japan, but to all humanity. It is a renewal of our collective promise that the suffering endured in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be forgotten and, more importantly, never repeated.
As this year's Nuclear Prayer Days draw to a close, we invite you to receive this concert in the spirit in which it was first offered—as a global gathering of conscience. May its music deepen our compassion. May its voices strengthen our resolve. May its prayers inspire our actions. And may each of us leave this gathering recommitted to building a world in which nuclear weapons have no place and peace becomes not merely our hope, but our shared human responsibility.
May the bell that rang from Hiroshima continue to echo in every nation until the day when all nuclear weapons have been abolished and every generation can live without the shadow of nuclear war.
