05/08/2025
In October 1962 as The Cuban Missile Crisis reached its peak, I remember standing outside the gates of my primary school with some friends. Our mothers and teachers were discussing nuclear weapons, genuinely worried that the world was about to be ended by them. One boy asked fearfully, if it would be painful to die in a nuclear attack, and the adults suddenly remembered there were kids present, as they viewed our anxious faces, and one girl started to cry. Moves were quickly and kindly made to assure my young friends and myself, that we would not feel any pain, or even know what had happened in such a case. It would all end in a flash .
I am sure that along with myself, every child that stood at the school gates that late afternoon, still holds the memory of it, or took it to their graves with them.
Most of us later understood that the world had, by some better judgment, and a great deal of luck, escaped nuclear Armageddon by a very narrow margin.
We also learned the extent to which our teachers and mothers had gently lied to us about what happens in a nuclear holocaust.
Today the numbers that survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki have fallen below 100,000 and are rapidly dwindling. Their families and loved ones, died and experienced unbearable suffering, not only when the bombs were dropped, but, in so many cases, for the rest of their lives .
The present world powers, and other states, talk nonchalantly of nuclear warfare, and warfare in general . As if it is a computer, or TV game. Wealthy investors, and the armaments industries make fortunes from it all, without any guilt. And the Doomsday Clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to a catalyst that would end life on this planet, for rich, and for poor.
Listen to the survivors of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki . Time is running out !
Eighty years on from the destruction of the city, registered survivors of the blast - known as hibakusha – have fallen below 100,000
