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Abstract
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As this issue of Medicine Conflict & Survival was completed commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shared airtime with COVID-19 and the devastating explosions in Beirut. Despite initial efforts to downplay them, attempts to document the terrible consequences of the bombings have been ongoing for the same length of time. Already in 1945, John Hersey wrote in his book on Hiroshima: 'In a city of 245,000, nearly 100,000 had been killed or doomed at one blow; a 100,000 more were hurt.' (Hersey 1945). What has never happened is a recognition of accountability in the form of an apology from those who dropped the bomb, even during President Obama's visit to Hiroshima in 2016, and despite it being known at the time of the bombing that those killed and injured in multiple ways would be largely civilians (McKinney, Sagan, and Weiner 2020).
On the other hand, it has been questioned whether the Japanese people even want an apology, particularly if it distracts from other priorities. At the time of the Obama visit Yoji Ochiai, who lost his great-grandfather and both his grandfathers to radiation-related illnesses, said that although he would like an apology, the focus should be on the elimination of nuclear weapons (BBC 2016). Also on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, the UN Secretary-General said the 'Citizens of Nagasaki are not defined by the atomic bombing, but they are dedicated to ensuring such a catastrophe never befalls another city or people', (UN News 2020) and recognized the extraordinary humanity and courage of the hibakusha - those who survived the atomic bombings. On the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing Dr Tomonaga, a survivor himself, described the imaginations of politicians as being infested with the idea of nuclear weapon-dependent international security, a concept he likened to a pandemic of an illness for which they would not seek treatment (Tomonaga 2020).
Having got away without even apologizing for such a level of death and destruction for 75 years, getting rid of these weapons now, under the framework provided by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), seems the least the United States government could do. The United Kingdom - whose government consented to the atomic bombings through the Quebec Agreement - would then also get rid of their US-dependent nuclear weapons; a crucial sustaining brick in the delusional wall of nuclear weapon-dependent international security...
Language: en |