Prayer after 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) were bombed using atomic weapons in 1945. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Let us pray.

God of justice and mercy, on this solemn anniversary, we bow our heads in remembrance and repentance.

Eighty years ago, in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sky was split with fire, and in an instant, whole neighborhoods vanished.

Mothers, fathers, children—bearing no weapons, waging no war—were consumed by a power never before unleashed by human hands.

We remember them now the tens of thousands who died in an instant, and the many more who suffered lingering deaths, who bore scars in body and soul for generations.

God, forgive us.

Forgive the arrogance that believes peace can be born from destruction.

Forgive the justifications wrapped in the language of war that silence the cries of the innocent.

As followers of the Prince of Peace, we grieve not only what happened, but what we are still capable of doing.

We repent of our world’s addiction to violence, our idolatry of military might, our refusal to see Your image in those we name “enemy.”

God of resurrection hope, may the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never fade into abstraction or forgetfulness.

Let it unsettle us.

Let it call us to the hard work of peace to disarm our hearts, our policies, our nations.

Make us bold enough to say:

Never again.

Make us faithful enough to live as peacemakers.

Let Your church speak not with timidity, but with prophetic clarity against the weapons of death and the systems that build them.

We pray for Japan, for its survivors, its memorykeepers, its children.

We pray for the United States, that it might repent not only in words, but in deeds.

We pray for every nation that stockpiles death while claiming the name of peace.

We pray for Your kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven.

And now, O God, we pray for the end of all war.

Let there come a day when no child is orphaned by a bomb, no elder weeps over a grave dug too soon, no nation sends its youth to kill or be killed.

Break the bow. Shatter the spear.

Burn every chariot with holy fire.

Turn the war-makers into peacebuilders, the generals into gardeners, the enemies into neighbors.

Give us courage to choose diplomacy over domination, compassion over conquest, justice over vengeance.

Teach us, O Lord, to study war no more.

Until swords are turned to plowshares and peace flows like a river, make us Your witnesses—not of despair, but of a world remade by love.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who bore the wounds of violence to bring forth peace, we pray.

Amen.