Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Enola Gay

  • For a World Without Wars or Nuclear Weapons

    The Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the region on March 11 last year caused the catastrophic damage, which reminded us of the A-bomb disaster in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that fell upon us Hibakusha. The radiation damage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, which shook the entire world, has put us into anxiety, distrust and irritation without any perspective for convergence even after a year and half have passed. In the 67th year since the atomic bombing, once again we are facing the terrifying effects of nuclear damage.


    The Hibakusha, who have continued to carry on the message “No more Hibakusha,” are filled with pain and anger.


    Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.I am a Hibakusha, a victim of the first nuclear war in the history of the world, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. At the time, I was 7 years old, a second grader in primary school.


    At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, I was inside the wooden school building. Suddenly I felt a blinding flash. The next moment, the ceiling of the building collapsed and sharp splinters of windowpanes flew all around. They stuck into the walls, desks and floor of the classroom, and also into my skin. I don’t remember how much time passed before I crawled out of the room to the corridor, leaving behind my classmates trapped between the beams. In the school infirmary I had the glass splinters removed from my skin, but there were no medicines, gauze or bandages to treat my injuries.


    My father managed to come to the school to find me. On my way home, carried on my father’s back, I witnessed hell on earth. I saw a man with burned and peeled skin dangling from his body. A mother was carrying a baby, which was burned-black and looked like charcoal. She herself was heavily burned all over her body and was trying to flee from the place, almost crawling on the ground. Others lost their sight, their eyeballs popped out, or ran around trying to escape, while holding their protruding intestines in their hands. More and more people tried to cling on to us, saying, “Give me water, water, water…” Unable to give any kind of help to them, we just left them there and hurried home.


    Shortly before the atomic bombing, my house was located near ground zero, and I used to go to school about only 350 meters away. But our family was forced to move away from the city center by order of the government, and I changed school too. If we had stayed in our old place, I would not be alive to tell you the story. Later I learned that about 400 pupils in my old school were burned and killed instantly by the bomb, leaving no traces, not even their ashes.


    When I arrived home 3.5 kilometers from the blast center, I found the roof of the house blown away by the blast and fragments of glass scattered all around. “Black Rain” fell into the house, and traces of the “Black Rain” on the wall remained for a long time.


    Neighbors of our old house near ground zero and our relatives began to arrive, seeking help and shelter. Among them was my favorite cousin, who was like a big sister for me. She had been mobilized to work around the area 500 meters from the blast center when the bomb exploded. Half of her face, her entire back and her right leg were severely burned, sore and raw. In the intense summer heat, her burns quickly festered. Flies swarmed and laid their eggs in her flesh. Soon maggots bred and crawled around over her body. All I could do for my beloved cousin was to pick these maggots out and wipe her oozing body. She often cried, “Ouch…oh it hurts,” but her voice became lower and lower, and on the morning of the third day — probably it was August 9 — she breathed her last in my arms. She was 14 years old. Another cousin, who was in fifth grade of primary school, was suffering from diarrhea, although he had no injuries or burns. About a week later, he bled from his ears and nose, vomited blood clots from his mouth and died suddenly. One after the other, several of my uncles and aunts followed my cousins within a matter of month.


    Their deaths were not caused by any illness. They were killed by the atomic bomb used in the war.


    Autumn breezes began to blow and I found my hair starting to fall out. My parents did everything possible to save me, using folk medicines and other means. They later died of cancer. I am so grateful to my parents. I believe I have been able to survive to this day thanks to their love.
    　
    However, the atomic bomb continued to afflict me in my later life. Whenever I tried to get a job or get married, I suffered from prejudice and discrimination just because I was a Hibakusha. When I became pregnant, I was tremendously worried, wondering if I would give birth to a baby who would be seen as a Hibakusha’s child. Around that period, many Hibakusha could not get married, or gave up hope of getting married. Even after marriage, they often suffered repeated stillbirths and miscarriages, or lost their children prematurely due to illness.


    One of my close Hibakusha friends went through 6 stillbirths and miscarriages. Her husband beat her, saying that it was because she was a Hibakusha that they could not have children. She used to say she had a racking pain in her hip, and eventually she died.


    The atomic bomb completely deprived us of ordinary daily lives for human beings.


    It is most painful for me now to speak about my daughter. She was suddenly taken with cancer. She made a tearful and difficult decision to take a major operation, believing that it would make her healthy again. After the 13-hour operation, in fear of the recurrence or metastasis of cancer, she was going through the treatment and rehabilitation, despite great physical and mental pains. But she died abruptly, only 4 months after she was first diagnosed.


    When I got pregnant with her, after much wavering over the possible radiation effect on the baby, I finally decided to give birth to her. So her death has given me deep sorrow and vexation. But now, a year after her death, I am determined to go forward, as I believe she is always with me, encouraging and supporting me.


    It is still not proven whether a second generation Hibakusha is more likely to suffer cancer or not. But it is clear that radiation would affect the human genes, which is a cause for big anxiety among second and third generation Hibakusha.


    The Hibakusha are, even without any physical problems, doomed to suffer, to be distressed, to moan and get angry at every important junction in their lives. The aftereffects of the atomic bomb continue to bring hardships to the survivors across the board throughout their lives, physically, mentally and in their living conditions.


    Such experiences as ours should never be inflicted on any of you, nor on anyone in the world. It is inevitable that nuclear bombs would cause untold damage to human beings if they would ever be used again whether on purpose or by accident.


    We now demand of the leaders of the nuclear weapons states that they should see with their own eyes the reality of the damage caused on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They claim that they are for deterrence. However, deterrence means a threat based on the possible actual use of these weapons. We the Hibakusha refuse to accept any threat or use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons. Nuclear weapons are weapons of the devil, which cannot coexist with humanity.


    The world is still loaded with more than 20,000 nuclear warheads. Each one of them is said to be dozens of times of more destructive than the Hiroshima-type bomb.


    That nuclear weapons exist on earth should not be allowed from the humanitarian point of view.


    Dear friends, the Hibakusha do not have much time left. Thank you for listening today. Let us work hard together to realize a world without nuclear weapons, with “No more Hibakusha” as the goal. In particular, we have a high expectation for young people.


    We hope that the 2015 NPT Review Conference will achieve significant results. On my part, I will also continue to tell about the damage caused by nuclear weapons as long as I live.


    No More Hiroshimas. No More Nagasakis. No More War.


    Thank you.

  • Were the Atomic Bombings Necessary?

    David KriegerOn August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered and World War II was over.  American policy makers have argued that the atomic bombs were the precipitating cause of the surrender.  Historical studies of the Japanese decision, however, reveal that what the Japanese were most concerned with was the Soviet Union’s entry into the war.  Japan surrendered with the understanding that the emperor system would be retained.  The US agreed to do what Truman had been advised to do before the bombings:  it signaled to the Japanese that they would be allowed to retain the emperor.  This has left historians to speculate that the war could have ended without either the use of the two atomic weapons on Japanese cities or an Allied invasion of Japan.


    The US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, even without the use of the atomic bombs, without the Soviet Union entering the war and without an Allied invasion of Japan, the war would have ended before December 31, 1945 and, in all likelihood, before November 1, 1945.  Prior to the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US was destroying Japanese cities at will with conventional bombs.  The Japanese were offering virtually no resistance.  The US dropped atomic bombs on a nation that had been largely defeated and some of whose leaders were seeking terms of surrender.


    Despite strong evidence that the atomic bombings were not responsible for ending the war with Japan, most Americans, particularly those who lived through World War II, believe that they were.  Many World War II era servicemen who were in the Pacific or anticipated being shipped there believed that the bombs saved them from fighting hard battles on the shores of Japan, as had been fought on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  What they did not take into account was that the Japanese were trying to surrender, that the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew they were trying to surrender, and that, had the US accepted their offer, the war could have ended without the use of the atomic bombs.


    Most high ranking Allied military leaders were appalled by the use of the atomic bombs.  General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, recognized that Japan was ready to surrender and said, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” General Hap Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Corps pointed out, “Atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”


    Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, put it this way: “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.  The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.  In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages.  Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”


    What Truman had described as “the greatest thing in history” was actually, according to his own military leaders, an act of unparalleled cowardice, the mass annihilation of men, women and children.  The use of the atomic bombs was the culmination of an air war fought against civilians in Germany and Japan, an air war that showed increasing contempt for the lives of civilians and for the laws of war. 


    The end of the war was a great relief to those who had fought for so long.  There were nuclear scientists, though, who now regretted what they had created and how their creations had been used.  One of these was Leo Szilard, the Hungarian émigré physicist who had warned Einstein of the possibility of the Germans creating an atomic weapon first and of the need for the US to begin a bomb project.  Szilard had convinced Einstein to send a letter of warning to Roosevelt, which led at first to a small project to explore the potential of uranium to sustain a chain reaction and then to the Manhattan Project that resulted in the creation of the first atomic weapons.


    Szilard did his utmost to prevent the bomb from being used against Japanese civilians.  He wanted to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt, but Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.  He next tried to meet with the new president, Harry Truman, but Truman sent him to Spartanburg, South Carolina to talk with his mentor in the Senate, Jimmy Byrnes, who was dismissive of Szilard.  Szilard then tried to organize the scientists in the Manhattan Project to appeal for a demonstration of the bomb rather than immediately using it on a Japanese city.  The appeal was stalled by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach President Truman until after the atomic bombs were used.


    The use of the bomb caused many other scientists to despair as well.  Albert Einstein deeply regretted that he had written to President Roosevelt.  He did not work on the Manhattan Project, but he had used his influence to encourage the start of the American bomb project.  Einstein, like Szilard, believed that the purpose of the U.S. bomb project was to deter the use of a German bomb.  He was shocked that, once created, the bomb was used offensively against the Japanese.  Einstein would spend the remaining ten years of his life speaking out against the bomb and seeking its elimination.  He famously said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

  • The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima

    This article was originally published by CounterPunch.


    Gar AlperovitzToday is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.


    By the summer of 1945 Japan was essentially defeated, its navy at the bottom of the ocean; its air force limited by fuel, equipment, and other shortages; its army facing defeat on all fronts; and its cities subjected to bombing that was all but impossible to challenge. With Germany out of the war, the United States and Britain were about to bring their full power to bear on what was left of the Japanese military. Moreover, the Soviet Union—at this point in time still neutral—was getting ready to attack on the Asian mainland: the Red Army, fresh from victory over Hitler, was poised to strike across the Manchurian border.


    Long before the bombings occurred in August 1945—indeed, as early as late April 1945, more than three months before Hiroshima—U.S. intelligence advised that the Japanese were likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war if they were assured that it did not imply national annihilation. An April 29 Joint Intelligence Staff document put it this way: “If at any time the U.S.S.R. should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”


    For this reason—because it would drastically shorten the war—before the atomic bomb was successfully tested (on July 16, 1945) the U.S. had strongly and repeatedly urged the Soviet Union to join the battle as soon after the defeat of Hitler as possible. A target date of three months after Germany’s surrender was agreed upon—which put the planned Red Army attack date at roughly August 8, the war in Europe having ended on May 8. (In late July the date was temporarily extended by a week.)


    Nor was there any doubt that the Soviet Union would join the war for its own reasons. At the Potsdam Conference in July (before the successful atomic test) President Truman entered the following in his diary after meeting with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin on July 17: “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.”


    The next day, July 18, in a private letter to his wife, the President wrote: “I’ve gotten what I came for—Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it…I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now…”


    The President had also been urged to offer assurances that the Japanese Emperor would be allowed to remain in some form of powerless figurehead bomb garrole by many top advisers—including, importantly, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the man who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb. Before the bomb was used he explicitly urged the President that in his judgment the war would end if such assurances were given—without the use of the atomic bomb.


    Nor were there insuperable political obstacles to this approach: Leadings newspapers like the Washington Post, along with leaders of the opposition Republican Party were publically demanding such a course. (Moreover, the U.S. Army wanted to maintain the Emperor in some role so as to use his authority both to order surrender and to help manage Japan during the occupation period after war’s end—which, of course, is what, in fact, was done: Japan still has an Emperor.)


    As the President’s diary entry and letter to his wife indicate, there is little doubt that he understood the advice given by the intelligence experts as to the likely impact of the upcoming Russian attack. Further evidence is also available on this central point: The American and British Joint Chiefs of Staff—the very top military leaders of the two nations—also met at Potsdam to consolidate planning for the final stages of the war in the Pacific. General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, summarized the latest (early July) combined US-UK intelligence evidence for Prime Minister Churchill this way: “[W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”


    The July joint intelligence finding, of course, for the most part simply restated what had been the essential view of American intelligence and many of the President’s top advisers throughout the spring and summer months leading up to the July meeting at Potsdam.


    Among the many reasons the shock of Soviet entry was expected to be so powerful were: first, that it would directly challenge the Japanese army in what had been one of its most important strongholds, Manchuria; second, it would signal that there was literally no hope once the third of the three Great Powers was no longer neutral; and third, and perhaps even more important, with the Japanese economy in disarray Japanese leaders were extremely fearful that leftist groups might be powerfully encouraged, politically, if the Soviet Union were to play a major role in Japan’s defeat.


    Furthermore, U.S. intelligence had broken Japanese codes and knew Japanese leaders were frantically hoping against hope as they attempted to arrange some form of settlement with Moscow as a mediator. Since their strategy was so heavily focused on what the Russians might or might not do, this further underscored the judgment that when the Red Army attacked, the end would not be far off: the illusory hope of a negotiation through Moscow would be thoroughly dashed as Soviet tanks rolled into Manchuria.


    Instead, the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.


    Some modern analysts have urged that Japanese military planning to thwart an invasion was much more advanced than had previously been understood, and hence more threatening to U.S. plans. Others have argued that Japanese military leaders were much more ardently committed to one or more of four proposed ‘conditions’ to attach to a surrender than a number of experts hold, and hence, again, would likely have fought hard to continue the war.


    It is, of course, impossible to know whether the advice given by top U.S. and British intelligence that a Russian attack would likely to produce surrender was correct. We do know that the President ignored such judgments and the advice of people like Secretary of War Stimson that the war could be ended in other ways when he made his decision. This, of course, is an important fact in its own right in considering whether the decision was justified, since so many civilian lives were sacrificed in the two bombings.


    Moreover, many leading historians who have studied both the U.S. and Japanese records carefully (including, among others, Barton Bernstein and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa) have concluded that Japan was indeed in such dire straits that–as U.S. and British intelligence had urged long before the bombings–the war would, in fact, have likely ended before the November invasion target date once the Russians entered.


    It is also important to note that there was very little to lose by using the Russian attack to end the war. The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9. There were still three months to go before the first landing could take place in November. If the early August Russian attack did not work as expected, the bombs could obviously have been used anyway long before any lives were lost in the landing.


    (Since use of the atomic bombs and Russia’s entry into the war came at almost exactly the same time, scholars have debated at great length which factor influenced the surrender decision more. This, of course, is a very different question from whether using the atomic bomb was justified as the only way to end the war. Still, it is instructive to note that speaking privately to top Army officials on August 14 the Japanese Emperor stated bluntly: “The military situation has changed suddenly. The Soviet Union entered the war against us. Suicide attacks can’t compete with the power of science. Therefore, there is no alternative…” And the Imperial Rescript the Emperor issued to officers and soldiers to make sure they would lay down their arms stated: “Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war, to continue under the present conditions at home and abroad would only result in further useless damage… Therefore…I am going to make peace.”)


    The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that (quite apart from the inaccuracy of this figure, as noted by Samuel Walker) most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.


    Here is how General Dwight D. Eisenhower reports he reacted when he was told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb would be used:



    “During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”


    In another public statement the man who later became President of the United States was blunt: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”


    General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” was also dismayed. Shortly after the bombings he stated publically: “The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”


    Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, went public with this statement: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. . . . The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”


    I noted above the report General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, made to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.” On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”


    Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one. Even more important, well before the atomic bombs were used, contemporary documents record show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”


    As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns not only on whether other options were available, and whether top leaders were advised of this. It also turns on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes. Here we can gain further insight from two additional, equally conservative military leaders.


    Many years later President Richard Nixon recalled that



    “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off.”


    Although many others could be cited, here, finally, is the statement of another conservative, a man who was a close friend of President Truman’s, his Chief of Staff (as well as President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff), and the five star Admiral who presided over meetings of the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff during the war—William D. Leahy:



    “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

  • Message for Hiroshima Day 2010

    The Nuclear Age is 65 years old.  The first test of a nuclear device took place on July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert.  The Spanish name of this desert means “Journey of Death,” a fitting name for the beginning point of the Nuclear Age.  Just three weeks after the test, the United States destroyed the city of Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, followed by the destruction of Nagasaki three days later.  By the end of 1945, the Journey of Death had claimed more than 200,000 human lives and left many other victims injured and suffering.  

    Over the past 65 years, the Journey of Death has continued to claim victims.  Not from the use of nuclear weapons in war, but from the radiation released in testing nuclear weapons (posturing).  We can be thankful that we have not had a nuclear war in the past 65 years, but we must not be complacent.  Our relative good fortune in the past is not a guarantee that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future.  Over the years, the power of nuclear weapons has increased dramatically.  They have become capable of ending civilization and complex life on the planet.  What could possibly justify this risk?

    We remember the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as cautionary tales.  The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have been strong proponents of “Never Again!”  They have spoken out about what they experienced so that their past does not become our future.  They have warned us repeatedly, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose: nuclear weapons or a human future.  The choice should not be difficult.  Humanity should shout out with a single voice that we choose a world free of the overarching nuclear threat, a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people must lead their leaders, choosing hope for a far more decent human future.  The United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons over the span of the Nuclear Age.  The world currently spends more than $1.5 trillion annually on weapons, war and the preparation for war, while spending only a small portion of this on efforts to meet human needs and achieve social justice.  Clearly, change is needed.  Bringing about this change could begin by joining together to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to the human future.  

    The future is now.  Sixty-five years of nuclear threat to humanity is enough.  We continue to rely upon the theory of deterrence at our peril.  The theory requires rationality from leaders who are not always rational.  The higher rationality and greater good for humanity would be to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.  The time to raise our voices and demand a world free of nuclear weapons is now, before it is too late.  On this demand we must be both insistent and persistent.

  • Ease Their Pain

    This article was originally published in the Ottawa Citizen

    On Aug. 6, 2002, I had the privilege and responsibility of representing UN secretary general Kofi Annan at the ceremony commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The event is at once haunting, sombre and soul-cleansing. Some 40,000 people assemble in the sultry heat to recall the searing, dazzling blast that announced the birth of the atomic age with the death of a hundred thousand people at one stroke and the horror-filled stories of the larger number of survivors.

    There is a word in Japanese, hibakusha (“explosion-affected people”), that describes the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Truly the living envied the dead. As of last year, there were just over a quarter million hibakusha recognized by the Japanese government. On March 24 this year, the government officially recognized Tsutomu Yamaguchi as a double survivor. In Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, he decided to return home to Nagasaki the day before it too was bombed on Aug. 9. There are times when belief in karma (loosely translated as destiny) becomes a comforting solace.

    The A-bomb was developed during the Second World War at the top secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico by a group of scientists brought together in the Manhattan Project under the directorship of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Canada’s National Film Board has made an excellent documentary, called The Strangest Dream, about the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project, the Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat.

    The bomb’s first successful test, Trinity, was carried out on July 16 at the White Sands Missile Range. Witnessing that, Oppenheimer famously recalled the sacred Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one.” Of course, birth and death are symbiotically linked in the cycle of life. So Oppenheimer recalled too the matching verse from the Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

    The same duality is omnipresent in every aspect of Hiroshima. The Aug. 6 ceremony is incredibly moving and indelibly poignant. The cenotaph memorializing the bombing is set in a beautiful peace park that was designed shortly after the war by Kenzo Tange, one of Japan’s most famous postwar architects. (Coincidentally, he was also the architect for the United Nations University building in Tokyo, where I worked for almost a decade.) The names of the atomic bomb victims are inscribed on the arc-shaped cenotaph which stands atop a reflecting pool. Every year on Aug. 6, the living gather there to atone for the dead.

    The park is framed at one end by the Atomic Bomb Dome, a structure that survived the blast in skeleton form and today functions as one of the most iconic and recognizable images of the horrors of atomic weapons, and a potent rallying point for the anti-nuclear peace movement. It has been inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. At the other end of the park is the Peace Museum that houses various memorabilia and displays. Again, it is difficult not be shocked into contemplation of human folly and our capacity to inflict pain on one another by many of the images and items, for example spectacles that fused onto facial bones in the intense heat of the radiation.

    For world leaders going to certain countries in Europe, it is obligatory to visit sites like Auschwitz and Buchenwald, pay respects to the victims lest we forget, and offer silent prayers for their souls. I am yet to understand what it is about western culture that holds leaders back from the same gesture to a common human history when they visit Japan. I was told that no serving U.S. leader has ever visited Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Would such a visit raise unnecessary controversy by suggesting penance? Is it not possible to recognize and honour a defining event in human history without implying guilt? Will the “yes we can” president dare to break the taboo and act on his dream of a world free of nuclear weapons and nuclear dread?

    We tend to remember the consequences of what others do to us, and so grievance festers. We know why we did what we did to others, and so that becomes justified, and we are puzzled that the others should still bear a grudge. It is rare to find former enemies join in common atonement of a shared human tragedy.

    Yet that surely is what Hiroshima symbolizes, and it is in the recognition of our common humanity that we shall find redemption. The citizens of Hiroshima, in rebuilding their city, have consecrated it as a testimonial to social resilience, human solidarity and nuclear abolition.

    Then there is the beautiful story of the cranes. Sadako Sasaki, two when she was exposed to the Hiroshima bombing, fell ill in 1954 and was diagnosed to be suffering from leukemia. Serene in the belief that folding 1,000 paper cranes would fulfil her wish for a normal life, she was still short of the magic number (she had the time but not the paper) when she died on Oct. 25, 1955. Friends completed her task and 1,000 cranes were buried with her. As her story spread, a children’s peace monument was built in the Peace Park from funds donated from across the country. By now around 10 million cranes are offered annually before her monument, where she stands with her arms fully stretched overhead holding up a giant, stylized folded paper crane.

    Hiroshima, once again a beautiful, scenic and thriving city, lives by three codes: To forgive and atone, but never to forget; never again; and transformation from a military city to a city of peace.

    The sacred Buddhist text The Dhammapada tells us:

    We are what we think

    All that we are arises with our thoughts

    With our thoughts we make the world.

    Thursday, as we mark the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, let us join together in turning our thoughts to the three inspiring principles that symbolize death, destruction and resurrection. What we need is a multi-phased roadmap to abolition that prioritizes concrete immediate steps in the first couple of years such as introducing more robust firewalls to separate possession from use of nuclear weapons; further significant cuts in existing nuclear arsenals and a freeze on production of fissile materials in the medium term of up to three years; a verifiable and enforceable new international nuclear weapons convention within a target timeframe of about five years; and their total and verified destruction in 10 to 20 years.

    By these actions shall we release the souls of the atomic dead, ease the pain of the hibakusha, and liberate ourselves from bondage to a weapon that does not increase our net security but does diminish our common humanity.

    Ramesh Thakur is director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario.