I read in the 'Times,' the story of a woman who survived the bombing of Hiroshima, and with her surviving family moved straight away to her mothers home town of Nagasaki.
Ayano Hirashima was 8 years of age when a blinding flash left her under rubble. Her family survived and the made of to Nagasaki arriving just after the second Atom bomb had landed. At the station they were greeted with burned people, some alive some dead, and much confusion as to what to do. This was a similar situation many throughout the previous years had endured across the world as war raged.
Naturally, she and her family walked through the city to their destination, where she still lives, all the time unaware, as were most people, that radiation all around them would prove to be a killer.
Some 100,000 Japanese who endured one of these bombs remain alive, only 130 appear to have encountered both. Of these only Ayano and a 94 year old woman called Kinyuo Fukui in the north remain. Those remaining all are around 86 years of age. Long lives abound in Japan.
It is not a surprise that these Hibakusha, as survivors are known, lead they way in calling for an end to nuclear weapons. They have seen the blinding flash, the destruction and suffering that ensued. Ayano and probably all the rest, have suffered cancers of various forms since 1945.
Many decry nuclear weapons, calling the bombing of Hiroshima a 'war crime.' I note they forget the Japanese treatment of the peoples of Korea, and their invasion of Manchuria, and the war in China from 1937 on which included the 'rape of Nanking,' and platoons of soldiers raping a woman to death or bayoneting her afterwards to ensure death. I note they forget also the treatment of POWs during this time. Indian troops buried alive, men beaten to death by the hundred, and the machine guns readied to execute all prisoners which was halted by the dropping of atom bombs and the Emperors surrender. Even then not all Japanese accepted this surrender and wished to fight on.
Nuclear weapons are dreadful weapons. The USA exploded many in Arizona while testing, they failed to kill any enemy however, the radioactive cloud spread across the mid west into Canada and killed a great many. Famously, John Wayne, while making another historically inaccurate western and many of the crew involved suffered cancers from filming in Arizona. When the Soviet Union ended they walked away from the nuclear test areas in Kazakhstan, (or was it Uzbekistan?) and left the people to suffer similar radioactive fallout. No numbers of suffering were ever recorded.
All this reveals the horror of nuclear weapons.
However, while the chattering classes combine to oppose such things, and who can blame them, none object to soldiers carrying rifles. In days of old armies were armed with spears and swords, bows and arrows, which were greatest killers? Is a nuclear bomb, exploding high above a city, worse than an arrow falling at speed from a great height? Which is more deadly?
Actually, neither is more deadly than the other. One may kill one person, the other may kill thousands, but neither is responsible for the deaths.
It is an individual who is responsible, not a weapon.
You and I, man, remain the most deadly weapon in the world.
Human nature, greedy, selfish, arrogant, proud and unwilling to bend for another, remain the most dangerous creature on earth, and always have been. Corrupt human nature, sin if you like, is responsible for war, whether with a knife or a bomb.
Our human nature is the danger.
What are you going to do about it?
