HIROSHIMA, Japan – More than 55,000 people standing in Peace Memorial Park bowed their heads at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, marking with silence the precise moment that the U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb on this city 80 years ago.

For one minute, the only sounds were the drone of cicadas and the rhythmic tolling of the park’s Bell of Peace.

This year’s annual Peace Memorial Ceremony drew visitors from across the globe to honor those who died in the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing that claimed the lives of more than 140,000 people.

At least 120 countries and regions were represented this year, a record, Mainichi Shimbun reported Tuesday.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui and representatives of the bereaved families opened the ceremony with a dedication to the registry of names stored in the park’s cenotaph.

As of 2015, the registry included more than 297,000 names, as well as many unidentified victims, according to the city’s website.

Matsui made a peace declaration. Doves were released as family members and hibakusha – the term used for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings – watched.

Matsui, during the ceremony, described one victim who begged for water in the aftermath of the bombing.

“Decades later, a woman who heard that plea still regretted not giving the young woman water,” he said. “She told herself that fighting for the elimination of nuclear weapons was the best she could do for those who died.”

Matsui, calling on the global community to learn from history, referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

“Nations now strengthening their military forces, some including nuclear arsenals, must engage constructively in talks aimed at abandoning reliance on nuclear weapons,” he said.

The ceremony is one of the many ways that Hiroshima has remembered the bombing.

Bombardier Thomas Ferebee at 8:15 a.m. called, “Bomb away,” as the 4 ½-ton device called Little Boy fell from the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945.

The bomb detonated 1,968 feet above Hiroshima with an explosive power equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.

The explosion instantly killed as many as 80,000 people, with tens of thousands more succumbing in the following months from radiation sickness and other injuries. The exact number of bombing fatalities that day is unknown.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, during the ceremony, described the bombing as “waves of indescribable suffering.”

Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, about 260 miles southwest of Hiroshima. That bomb, known as Fat Man, was more powerful than Little Boy, but Nagasaki’s hilly terrain lessened the damage. An estimated 70,000 people were killed.

Japan officially surrendered less than a week later on Aug. 15, 1945, marking the end of World War II.

“We must never repeat the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Ishiba said during the ceremony.