LIVERMORE, Calif.—Among advocates for abolition of nuclear weapons mobilizing worldwide on Aug. 6 to commemorate the 80th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were over 100 peace protesters who gathered outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Westgate entrance to honor victims of the attack and to call for the weapons’ total abolition.

The theme of their gathering: 80 Years of Nuclear Devastation – Remember Our History, Reshape Our Future.

Livermore Lab, one of two locations designing every nuclear bomb and warhead in the U.S. arsenal, has played a central role in escalating the power and reach of these weapons since its founding in 1951.

Marylia Kelley, co-founder, executive director emerita and now senior advisor at Tri-Valley CAREs (Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), which monitors the Livermore nuclear weapons complex and works for the weapons’ worldwide abolition, began her remarks with a tribute to the now-dwindling role of hibakusha, survivors of the bombings who have devoted their lives to sharing their memories of the horrific attacks with the world.

Kelley highlighted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last year to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, and recalled bombing survivors who have shared their stories at past commemorations at Livermore Lab, including Nagasaki survivor and retired Methodist Minister Rev. Nobuaki Hanaoka and Hiroshima survivor Takashi Tanemori.

“In this period, we who are here, we who strive for peace and justice, must pick up the torch being passed to us by the last witnesses who experienced the atomic explosions,” Kelley said. “Today at Livermore and moving forward, we heed their plea of ‘Never again,’ and pledge to do everything in our power to make sure the world does not forget the human devastation caused by nuclear weapons and the absolute imperative of their elimination.”

With the Trump administration calling for an overall 58% boost in spending for “nuclear weapons activities,” Livermore Lab’s overall 2026 budget request is up by 16% over last year to nearly $3 billion, with nearly 90% earmarked for nuclear weapons development.

While the Lab has sought over the years to “mask its horrific weapons activities in the neutral language of science,” Kelley said, “we are here today to pull down that mask—follow the money!”

She held up a pie chart of the Lab’s 2026 budget request, citing weapons and components the Lab is developing:

• The W80-4 new warhead that will let pilots launch a sneak attack from thousands of miles away to strike a target anywhere in the world with an earth-hugging, radar-evading nuclear weapon;
• The new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCMN, to be placed on small U.S. Navy submarines that have not carried nuclear weapons for over three decades;
• The W87-1 warhead to top the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile which will be deployed in land-based silos throughout the Midwest.
• The W-93, a totally newly designed warhead to be deployed on the large nuclear-armed submarines that patrol the ocean.
• New plutonium bomb cores, or pits, to be installed on the W87-1 warhead.

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OAK RIDGE, Tennessee – Events commemorating the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima were held in some U.S. cities on Wednesday, its 80th anniversary, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where uranium was enriched to make a deadly weapon that ushered in the nuclear age.

The southern U.S. city was a secret site built to produce highly enriched uranium as part of the Manhattan Project, under which the United States sought to develop atomic bombs.

While a number of Americans believe that the atomic bombing hastened the end of World War II and therefore reduced overall casualties, some people have come to be more ambivalent toward nuclear weapons.

Outside the so-called Y-12 complex, which still stores nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear-powered vessels, over 20 people offered paper cranes in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, and remembered their sufferings and the range of destruction rendered by the ultimate weapon.

Gyoshu Utsumi, a 73-year-old monk at a Buddhist temple in the state who hailed from northeastern Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, recited a sutra after the participants observed a moment of silence to mark the blast 80 years ago on Aug. 6.

Utsumi was joined by Emily Strasser, a Tufts University professor whose grandfather worked on uranium enrichment as a chemist at Oak Ridge, among others. She admitted feeling bewildered at her grandfather’s involvement and said targeting an atomic bomb at a civilian population is unacceptable.

In San Francisco and nearby Livermore in California, home to one of the United States’ nuclear weapons laboratories, people also gathered to rally for nuclear abolition.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located around 30 miles east of San Francisco, is one of only two sites in the United States currently designing nuclear weapons.

A coalition of community groups who have gathered outside the laboratory nearly every year since 1981 to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki returned this anniversary with renewed urgency.

Group members staged a die-in, a form of protest popularized by environmental and antiwar advocates in the 1970s, commemorating the people who perished in the atomic bombings or soon after due to radiation.

After the outlines of their bodies were chalked into the pavement, participants rose to perform a Japanese Bon dance.

Lifelong advocates for nuclear disarmament said they felt the current nuclear threat level is higher than it has ever been in their lives.

That sentiment was shared by the crew of the Golden Rule, the peace boat that first sailed in 1958 with the mission to end the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and celebrated its arrival in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Gerry Condon, 78, the president of the Golden Rule committee, said they are sailing today against the looming threat of nuclear war.

“All the guardrails are off,” Condon said.