Holding small symbolic lanterns, those who participated in the seventh annual interfaith peace walk this week were encouraged with each step to meditate on “perfect peace.”

It was a challenge Tuesday to think, feel and stay focused during the 1-mile trek — with barking dogs, commuter traffic and odorous trash bins crowding the sidewalks serving as distractions.

Bystanders threw curious looks, and a few waved at the single file of more than 40 silent walkers as they crossed crowded intersections from the Honpa Hongwanji Hawaii Betsuin temple on Pali Highway to the Honolulu Civic Center downtown.

The Honolulu interfaith peace walk is always held on Aug. 9 as a reminder that nuclear destruction should never be allowed to happen again. It was on that date 71 years ago that the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, three days after the historic first one shattered Hiroshima. The vast devastation brought an end to World War II in 1945, but the horror of the cataclysm lived on.

Three-Petals Peace Partnership, which organized the event, consists of Quakers, Catholics of the Newman Center, and Buddhists from the Hongwanji temple. The walk concluded at the Nagasaki Peace Bell downtown, where a 6:30 p.m. prayer ceremony offered gratitude that nations have refrained from using the atomic bomb since 1945.

Preceding the walk, the 2008 documentary “GATE: The Atomic Flame” was shown at the temple. The film honors the courage and determination of three Buddhist monks, who brought the eternal atomic flame — an ember from the Hiroshima bombing — back to its birthplace in the U.S. with hopes of closing the circle of destruction in 2005. The flame was returned in a symbolic 1,600-mile pilgrimage on foot from San Francisco to the New Mexico missile range where the atomic bombs originated.

The documentary inspired a longtime member of the Buddhist temple, who declined to give her name, to make the walk for the first time at the age of 87 because she was bothered by “people doing all these naughty things — killing people,” adding, “We have to tolerate each other and not think of killing each other.”

“I wanted to take that walk that the monks took to see how it felt. It was such a long way for them,” she said, her voice breaking, “and we just walked from the church down to here. I just wanted to feel it.”

Wally Inglis, a peace activist, said on Aug. 9 a year ago he was in Los Alamos, N.M., where the bomb was created, in a procession organized by Campaign Nonviolence. Some wore sackcloth and ashes, the biblical symbols of repentance, he added. Inglis said he liked the idea of taking action — “it’s moving; it’s not just sitting around in a room discussing theory.”

Jo Schlesinger and her husband, Allan Willinger, are Quaker meeting house managers. She said: “We had been involved in a nuclear disarmament group where we lived in Pennsylvania. I had never seen this film before, which was very moving, well done, and impacting. … I felt like this little walk was another way of doing prayers for peace in the world, and also to spur me to keep this issue in my consciousness more often.”

Christopher Malano, a Newman Center administrator and member of the United Nations Association of the USA-Hawaii, appreciated that people of different faiths came together to pray for peace. Although he is a Catholic, Malano found the Buddhist ceremonies led by Bishop Eric Matsumoto deeply meaningful.

“As we all lined up in the center aisle (of the temple earlier), we walked toward the altar, offered up some incense and quietly offered a prayer, and we were given a lantern, and together we walked. There was a sense of solidarity; it was so simple, yet so powerful.”

At the Nagasaki Peace Bell, everyone took turns bowing in prayer and striking a bronze bell brought for the occasion, then formed a large circle as the setting sun cast long shadows on the lawn.

Malano said, “It was a powerful moment where we were able to have something tactile, something that involved our senses — touch, sight and hearing — then releasing all the things we were praying for into the universe, or sending them to God, depending on our own traditions.”

(For the first time the Nagasaki bell, dedicated by the city’s survivors on Dec. 7, 1990, could not be rung in the ceremony because it was held after city offices closed, said coordinator Marsha Rose Joyner, founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition-Hawaii.)

Also participating was Hilo graduate student Crystal Uchino, who is researching “hibakusha,” or atomic bomb survivors. Her grandmother had shared “horror stories” of the Nagasaki bombing, which killed half her high school classmates, Uchino said.