Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui (right) takes part in the ceremony of the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Japan on Thursday marked 75 years since the world's first atomic bomb attack, with the coronavirus pandemic forcing a scaling back of ceremonies to remember the victims.

Survivors, relatives and a handful of foreign dignitaries attended this year's main event in Hiroshima to pray for those killed or wounded in the bombing and call for world peace. 

But the general public was kept away, with the ceremony instead broadcast online.

Participants, many of them dressed in black and wearing face masks, offered a silent prayer at exactly 8:15 am (2315 GMT Wednesday), the time the first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped over the city.

Speaking afterwards, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui warned against the nationalism that led to World War II and urged the world to come together to face global threats, like the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been criticized by his attempts to revise a key pacifist clause of the constitution, pledged in his address to "do my best for the realization of a world without nuclear weapons and peace for all time."

AFP