And today marks the sixty-third anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima. An estimated 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the bombing. Three days later, another US airplane dropped a plutonium bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people. Earlier today, some 45,000 people gathered and stood in silent prayer at 8:45 a.m., the exact moment the bomb dropped in 1945.