My Experience of the A-bombing and Thoughts on Peace

		Until the A-bomb Was Dropped
		August 6th
	��	Exposed at 900m from the Hypocenter
	��	I Crawled out of the Collapsed School Building, but...
	��	I Suffered from Vomit
	��	Rested in a Police Box
	��	Spent the Night in the Open Air
		August 7th
	��	Went to the Hospital, but...
	��	From Takanobashi to My Home
	��	Smoldering Iron Bridge
	��	To My Mother's Hometown
		In the Grip of Illness
	��	Stunned by a Serious Hair Loss
	��	Developed Keloid Scars
		In the Following Year
	��	Back in School, But...
	��	Down Again
		The Physical After-Effects of the A-bomb
	��	The ABCC's Medical Examination
	��	Cataracts Caused by the A-bomb
	��	The First Victim from A-bomb Disease in 1955
	��	Leukemia, After Twenty Years
		Questionnaire Survey
	��	Damage to the Students
	��	Astounding Damage
		Aftereffects Last
	��	Behind the First Victory of the Carp
	��	How Long Would the Aftereffects Continue?
		Peace in the World without Nuclear Weapons

		Until the A-bomb Was Dropped
			In 1945, the tide of war turned more sharply against Japan. As Hiroshima was a military city, many people expected that Hiroshima would be heavily air-raided. In spite of this anxiety, the air-raid frequency in Hiroshima was far less compared to that of nearby Kure, where a naval station was located. My impressive memory of those days was the air-raids by Grumman airplanes in the middle of March. On that day, the results of the public middle school entrance examinations were supposed to be announced. We headed for the middle school with the hope of success, evading terrible Grumman machine-gun fire and taking shelter here and there. Fortunately I passed the exam of the school I had wanted to enter and started a new life with hope in April. Because it was during the war, we couldn't concentrate just on studying, but we spent as much time as possible studying despite air-raids day and night (though most were just air-raid warnings) and frequent labor services. Hiroshima had rarely been air-raided, but at the end of April a few bombings occurred. A part of our school building was broken with a big hole two to three meters in diameter, and the surrounding glass windows were blown off by the blast. The glass windows in my classroom were shattered and the window frames were taken off. As the bombing was before school time, fortunately no students were injured. Even in mid-summer, every student was engaged in labor service with no summer holidays. In those days, buildings were hurriedly being demolished in various parts of Hiroshima City in order to make fire lanes.
		August 6th
	��Exposed at 900m from the Hypocenter
			On August 6, we, the first-year students of First Prefectural Middle School, were supposed to engage in the demolition work near our school which was 900m from the hypocenter. I had arrived at school earlier than usual around 6:00 and finished cleaning the music room, since it was my turn to do the cleaning. After finishing my duty, I went to the east school grounds where all the first-year students gathered for the morning roll call. It was decided that half of the six classes, Classes 11, 13, and 15, were to go to the demolition work site first, and the rest were to wait in each classroom. I was in Class 11, but I happened to have an upset stomach, so I was allowed to stay in the classroom. One of my classmates, N., was also in the classroom, studying by himself. A little after 8 o'clock, the roaring of B 29s started to be heard. An air raid alert had been issued a little after I came to school, but it was lifted a while later. There was no warning at this moment. As the roar came louder, Class 12 became restless, with some classmates going out to the courtyard. I was about to head for the corridor, thinking of going outside. It was that instant that a tremendous flash passed right in front of me. At the same time nothing became comprehensible. I had no idea how much time had passed. I found myself lying under the collapsed school building, caught between desks. It was pitch dark. When I came to, I thought I had been directly hit, and how unlucky I was. I heard N.'s faint voice. I smelled something strong like dirt used as material for walls. My forehead and shoulders hurt, and I felt myself held down tightly. Soon it became dimly light in front of me, and I tried to go toward the light in spite of the pain, twisting my body and moving my limbs. Somehow by crawling I managed to go outside.
	��I Crawled out of the Collapsed School Building, but...
			It was still dark outside, and I couldn't tell what had happened. Looking up at the sky, I found the sun to be something like a big full moon. I even thought that a cosmic catastrophe might have taken place, remembering a scene of a SF movie I had seen before. In it the earth crashed against a big star and perished. After a while, through the darkness I dimly saw a big tree planted just by the side of our classroom. Its branches which were hanging and swaying like the hands of a huge praying mantis scared me. I looked around, but I could see nothing but the tree in front of me. The quietness was eerie. Meanwhile, small fires became visible here and there. Groans and feeble cries were heard from under the collapsed building. Little by little, circumstances became clear. When I came out from between the collapsed buildings, I found several other students, who had managed to come out of the collapsed buildings, surrounding an officer who was using a military sword for a stick, who appeared to have been exposed to the bombing while leading a platoon near the school. All of them seemed to be wounded. The officer, in particular, had one of his legs injured, some flesh torn away and the tip of the leg bone was showing. Under his direction, the students headed for the east grounds. There I found many boy and girl students who had exposed to the A-bombing outdoors while engaging in the work, walking aimlessly, crying and shouting. All of them alike had their clothes torn, their faces swollen dark, their eyes damaged, and skin hanging down from the tip of their fingers. And the boy students' heads looked as if their hair had been shaved off, except the parts covered by their caps. The girl students' hair was dirty, grey and unkempt, and some hair was hanging in front. These scenes were just like a hell on earth. There was no telling who was who just by looking at his face or figure. I could barely tell it was my best friend when I heard his voice. The officer was so seriously injured that he could not move by himself, but he was tough enough to give directions to those around him. Mr. M. O., in charge of our class, was crouching terribly disfigured on the stone steps at the swimming pool entrance at the side of the school grounds. He was continually groaning for water in agony. I was sorry that I could not respond to my teacher's plea because I was told not to give water. Fires which had started here and there were coming closer. At the direction of the officer, in order to escape from the danger, I headed for the south school grounds. It was still dim all around. A great many people were lying ahead in my way. Their faces were swollen dark, some of them were dying, some made no response to me even when I touched them. Some were groaning for water desperately. I had to go stepping over those people. I was in an abnormal state of mind from which I would normally be in at peacetime. When I came back to the officer, he had no strength to respond. Those who had been around him were gone. Fires were coming much closer. I thought of going into the swimming pool to avoid the heat, but it had already been filled with those who wanted water, who were badly burned, and who were dying.
	��I Suffered from Vomit
								A ; Hypocenter B ; First Hiroshima Prefectural Middle School (now, Kokutaiji High School) I exposed to A-bomb on this place C ; Miyuki Bridge D ; Army Mutual Aid Hospital (now,Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital) E ; Takanobashi F ; Home G ; Hiroshima Station H : Yokogawa Station I ; Koi Station �@�Q�Qroute on August 6 �@�Q�Q route on August 7
			I decided that the only way left for me was to escape from there. Then I stepped over collapsed temples and houses all by myself, and I came out to a ditch on the east side. From there I went along the back of the Hiroshima University of Literature and Sciences (the site of the main building of Hiroshima University) and headed for the south. Blazes were pouring out of the windows. It was around that time when terrible nausea struck me. I vomited over and over again, crouching, and staggered for the south. Then I finally arrived at the foot of the Miyuki Bridge. Relief operations were taking place at the front of the police box at the west end of the Miyuki Bridge. The injured evacuees were getting treatment in turn. Almost all of them were suffering from burns and were dressed with oil ointment. After getting treatment, they were sent toward Ujina on trucks one after another. Since I was burned on the forehead and shoulders, I stood in line in order to get treatment. But I felt nauseous even stronger because of the smell of oil ointment. I could not help but leave the place. I vomited repeatedly in the shade of a tree in the nearby open place. I thought then that I was vomiting because of my stomach problem, but later on I learned that it was caused by radiation. Vomiting seemed to help reduce the radiation which had come inside my body. This was one of the keys that helped save my life, which even now fills me with indescribable emotion.
	��Rested in a Police Box
			While resting in the shade of a tree, I came to feel a little better. So I went back to the west end of Miyuki Bridge, only to find that the work there- relief operations, loading casualties on trucks and so on- was already finished. I had no way to get treated, so I decided to take a rest inside the police box there. I found a tilted table with broken legs in the back and lay on it, a makeshift bed. The soft breeze from the river was so good I fell asleep. When I was woken by some voices, it was already late afternoon. I heard people talking, "There are no craters by the bombardment anywhere. It's likely that a new type of bomb was dropped It rang a bell. I saw evidence of bombardment neither at the school where I first thought the school was directly targeted, nor on the way of escaping. "Could it be a new weapon?"I wondered. I began to feel better and the heat eased slightly, so I thought I'd better go to my home in Tenma-cho before dark I walked along the streetcar tracks toward Takanobashi. The houses along the streets were collapsed and burning fiercely.Smoldering electric poles and lines fallen on the roads hampered my way ahead					The police box at the west end of Miyuki Bridge. Relief operation was done in front of this police box. I rested in this police box for a while on August 6. (photograph by Yoshito Matsushige)
			.I had hardly gotten 500 meters when I realized it was impossible to go further.While wondering what to do, I met a young woman. She said that she gave up going to her home near Shirakami Shrine and that she was going to spend the night somewhere safe.
	��Spent the Night in the Open Air
			I decided to go back toward Miyuki Bridge with her advice and help. At the relief station where I finally got to, people were kind to see my condition and took me right away to the temporary shelter nearby. There, I was laid on a straw mat spread on the grass. I was given some hardtack but was unable to eat it. The mat was hard and coarse as it was a charcoal bale opened to a sheet, so my injuries throbbed with pain when I lay on it. Looking up at the night sky, black clouds reflecting red fires passed one after another and the roaring sound of a blast or something resonated many times. I spent a sleepless night.
		August 7th
	��Went to the Hospital, but...
			Hardly waiting for daybreak and with the woman's help, I headed for the Army Mutual Aid Hospital in Ujina, which is now the Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital. Although it meant a little detour, I wanted to have treatment of my injuries there. While walking, I noticed that I was barefoot. Either when I got out of the trap at school or when running, I must have lost the canvas shoes I was wearing without noticing. On the way to the hospital, I found a pair of geta, wooden clogs, at the front door of a half-broken house by the street to which I helped myself with a guilty feeling. Very early in the morning, on the grounds leading to the hospital entrance, there were already a heap of dead bodies. Without exception their faces, bodies and limbs swelled and their eyes were terribly damaged. Around the hospital entrance the situation was the same. The place was filled with people who had already stopped breathing, barely alive or groaning in agony. I realized that my injuries were not serious enough to be treated there, so I turned around right away.
	��From Takanobashi to My Home
			I walked along the streetcar tracks back to Takanobashi again. There, I parted from the woman who would try to go home near Shirakami Shrine. I thanked her for her kindness, but honestly, I felt slightly uneasy and helpless. While I was resting myself on the roadside of Takanobashi, I met Mr. Nakagawa who had recently become the dormitory superintendent from Class 11 and also met a member of Mr. Fujita's family. Mr. Fujita had been my friend since elementary school. They all were surprised to see me alive. Mr. Fujita was a Class 12 student, but reportedly remains missing to this date. I feel so sorry. From Takanobashi, I walked through the burned ruins westward, heading for my home in Tenma-cho. On the way, an air-raid warning sounded and a B-29 flew over. The previous day's fear recurred, but I could not find any place to hide in the ruins. I just waited trembling for the B-29 to pass over. I finally made it to Tenma-cho. Everything was burned, leaving no trace of my house or anything. A familiar-looking wash basin in the burned ruins was the only clue to guess the site of my house, but there was no hint of my family's whereabouts
	��Smoldering Iron Bridge
			The only thing I could think of was to go to my mother's hometown, Hera, in Saeki-gun. I gathered strength and set out toward Koi, dragging my heavy legs. Near Koi, there was an iron bridge for streetcars I had to cross. The cross ties were smoldering with lingering small fires. With tremendous difficulties I proceeded step by step, covering my legs with my hands. In the Koi area, most of the houses were half-broken. After I successfully crossed that scary, smoldering bridge, I felt relieved and also very tired with fatigue accumulated since early morning. I fell asleep unknowingly, while taking a rest along the roadside. I wondered how long I slept. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I woke up. The person asked me where I was heading. I answered, "Hera." He said that there was a truck going for Otake, and I was given a ride. That made me so happy since I was planning to walk as far as I could. I was put on the loading platform and given a rice ball. I was grateful for his kindness, but I still didn't feel like eating due to the lingering nausea, despite the fact that I had eaten nothing since the previous day.
	��To My Mother's Hometown
			The truck ran along the Miyajima Road. I got off in Hatsukaichi, from where I walked to the Hatsukaichi Station of the Miyajima Line. Hatsukaichi Station, I found, was turned into a makeshift relief center, where I met an acquaintance by chance. The person took me to Shindo Dental Clinic which my father used to work for. There, for the first time, I was able to relax myself on the tatami mat. I rested and stayed there till late afternoon. "The heat has eased. Have this, and you'll gain strength to continue your way." The family treated me to a raw egg, which agreed with my stomach for the first time. The egg was surprisingly delicious, as if I had never tasted one before. I regained strength and took the rural path in dusk, heading for my mother's hometown. Finally in the evening, I arrived at my mother's home in Hera.
		In the Grip of Illness
	��Stunned by a Serious Hair Loss
			My mother had been in our house in Temma-cho at the time of the A-bombing and survived. She managed to flee to my aunt's house the previous night. My aunt, finding me standing at the front door, was stunned. "Thank God. Welcome back alive!" Then she called out to my mother, who was in the house. I was quickly laid on a futon. I became dazed and went limp with relief. Then I couldn't move anymore. I developed a high fever that night and my hair started to fall out. When my mother saw a lot of hair covering my pillow, she was surprised and touched my head. Then a mass of hair fell into her hand. It wasn't long before I went completely bald. It was the beginning of my bitter fight against illness. There was a big air raid on Iwakuni on August 14. When a large formation of B-29 bombers flew passing over us, the all family members, except me, fled to the evacuation shelter behind the house. As I was bedridden, I had to be left alone in the house. I felt very lonely and insecure. I had to listen to the broadcast of the Imperial surrender from my futon. I couldn't understand what the Emperor said because there was a lot of static noise in the radio, and I was still listless and dazed. It may sound strange, but I wasn't moved when I was told that Japan had surrendered.
	��Developed Keloid Scars
			At the time of the A-bombing, I was burned on my forehead and right shoulder and at the same time was buried under the toppled school building. That is probably because I was by the windows. But I luckily escaped glass injuries, because the glass panes had been removed after an air raid in late April that year. My father, who was a dentist, had saved some medicine as a precaution against air-raids. Thanks to that medicine, I was able to have a little better medical treatment for my burns for that time. However, my burns took painfully long to heal. The loss of my physical strength seemed responsible for this slow-healing. The burns over my right shoulder were the most persistent and prevented me from using my right arm. So it was inconvenient for a long time. In October, I had a sudden acute pain in my right chest, breaking out in a rash with blisters, spreading to my back in a stripe. It was shingles(herpes zoster). Since my physical strength was reduced greatly, the symptoms were extremely severe. The blisters badly festered and breath-stopping pain pierced my chest at the single slightest noise or shake. Shingles took more than a month to heal; however, the blisters from the shingles as well as the burns from the A-bombing developed into keloid scare.
		In the Following Year
	��Back in School, But...
			Early in the following year, 1946, I recovered my health enough to help with housework. Then, in March my bald head regained enough hair to have a haircut. I felt refreshed to visit a barber after a long time. Soon after this, I went to Hiroshima with my father to return to school. It was the first visit to Hiroshima after the A-bombing. First, we met two teachers, Mr. Kawada and Mr. Tomura, in the temporary First Middle School building, for which the surviving building of the Third Higher Elementary School was used. They said that there were some students, including me, who wanted to come back to school after a long absence. These students were supposed to repeat the first year under ordinary circumstances. However, the teachers said that they were considering allowing the students to advance to the second year, taking account of such an extraordinary situation. I was told to wait for further instructions. My father and I stopped by the black market in front of Hiroshima Station while we were in the city. Even though we had heard that most of the city still remained burnt ruins and that nothing would grow there for the next 75 years, there was a chaotic but strong touch of recovery around the station. A few days later, I received permission to return to school as a second-year student. I went to school in high spirits early in April, 1946.
	��Down Again
			We did restoration work in the temporary school building on the second day of the new term. I might have been a little too intent on working. I came down again with a slight fever soon after this work, breaking out in boils over my entire body. I asked to get ointment from a pharmacy to force the pus out and successfully managed to treat those boils with it by myself. However, I missed nearly half of the first term. The new second-year consisted of two classes. When I looked at the students, most of them were the ones who had happened to be absent from school and luckily escaped death that day. The rest were a few, including me, who had narrowly survived the bombing, some who had returned from overseas, and others who were transferred from neighboring towns. The students who had survived the A-bombing were forced to stay away from physical education classes, but, as a matter of fact, we never had energy enough to do exercise with other students. During summer holidays that year, I stayed home sitting around all day. People bustling about outside looked as if they were in another world. But I gradually recovered my strength and spirits in early fall, and I could move around like other people the following year. However, I had had too long an absence from school and it turned out to be serious. Due to the A-bombing, I had to skip a year. That affected my learning, resulting in poor grades in every subject, even on the ones that I had been good at before the A-bombing. I had some failures, too.
		The Physical After-Effects of the A-bomb
	��The ABCC's Medical Examination
			Some time after I returned to school, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) started an investigation on how the A-bomb affected the human body. The surviving students were required by the ABCC to take regular medical examinations as subjects for their research. I was quite happy to go to the ABCC when they called me, because I had official permission to leave school, and they met me in a fancy, foreign-made Chevrolet station wagon, which was really rare at that time. One day, however, I was made to have a bone marrow puncture after ordinary examinations. The doctors seemed to suspect I had a decrease in the number of white blood cells, or anemia, which was caused by the decrease of the blood-producing function in the bone marrow, caused by the effects of the A-bomb. They held me on the bed and pierced the middle of my chest with a thick needle, then took my blood out from the bone marrow. I remembered a scene of insects being fixed with a needle by insect-collectors. I was disgusted. The pain from the examination remained for a while. When I did any physical exercise, it was painful. After that, I didn't want to have any examinations; sometimes I ran away from them when they came.
	��Cataracts Caused by the A-bomb
			By the time I was in high school, the after-effects of the A-bomb were widely reported in the mass media. One day during summer holidays, my brother and I went to see a tennis match featuring some famous players, which took place at the new tennis court in Motomachi. It was a nice day and during the game, suddenly everything became so bright that I couldn't open my eyes. After the examination by ABCC, I was told that I was in the early stages of A-bomb cataracts. It was said that those symptoms were caused by a pathological change and appeared only in the victims who had been near the hypocenter. One of the surviving students like me was worried that the symptoms were becoming worse. He said, "I can see in the dark but can't see anything in bright light. I will not be able to use a microscope." He gave up being a doctor and became a high school teacher. He would say, even after becoming a teacher, that the cataracts were troublesome, as he couldn't see the window side of the classroom when it was sunny. Luckily, my symptoms were stable, so I managed to become a doctor. I found that most of my classmates who died from the A-bombing wanted to be doctors. This was the major factor in my studying to be a doctor. Finally, I became a physician. Some time later, my boss proposed that I should work for the A-bomb Survivors Hospital because I was an A-bomb victim and might be able to understand more fully the feelings of the patients. Subsequently I was involved in the medical care of A-bomb victims for a couple of years until I opened my own practice.
	��The First Victim from A-bomb Disease in 1955
			Several years after the A-bombing, people started noticing the high incidence of leukemia, liver disorders and cancer amongst A-bomb survivors. Mr. Mita, one of survivors, had had serious physical symptoms for a while. However, he became much better when he was in high school. I kept in touch with him even though we were in different departments in the university. It seemed that he had worked too strenuously on his graduation thesis in his last year. Thus, in spite of finishing his thesis, he became ill and was in bed at the end of the year. He was pale and the lymph node in his neck was swollen. I was a medical student at that time, so I suspected that it was a blood disease such as leukemia. Not long after, despite intensive medical treatment, he passed away just before his graduation. It was the beginning of 1955. The press reported "The first victim from A-bomb disease this year." The sight of his diploma at his funeral moved people to tears
	��Leukemia, After Twenty Years
			Mr. Nakao was a survivor from Class 11, the same as me. He was physically better than the others in high school and university. He took over his family business, worked hard and became a father of two children. It was in the spring of 1966 that he came to see me after his long silence. He was on his way back from a business trip to Tokyo when he asked me to examine him because he felt sluggish and feverish. I carried out a blood test at once and unfortunately discovered that he was suffering from acute leukemia. He was immediately admitted to the hospital and started treatment. At first, he got better, but the following spring he became worse again, and finally he became yet another victim of the A-bomb.
		Questionnaire Survey
	��Damage to the Students
			We, the surviving students, had time to talk at Mr. Nakao's wake. The main topics were how to deal with the records of the A-bombing kept by the school and how to keep in touch with the association of the bereaved families. Although we were able to survive, through fate's decision, it was difficult for us to meet the bereaved. We felt somehow guilty. We had tried to distance ourselves from them. However, we decided to have contact with the association frequently as well as to dig out hidden records of the A-bombing. With Mr. Harada as our leader, we had discussions on what we could do. He had played a key role among the surviving students and had also been a contact person to the school and the bereaved families' association. We started by taking detailed questionnaires from the bereaved about their lost ones--what their school lives were like, what they were doing at the time of the A-bombing, what their physical conditions were like, when they passed away, and so on. With the cooperation of many people, precious information was collected as a result of the questionnaires. We compiled those records into a book named "Eucalyptus," with the great efforts of Mr. Harada. Vividly described facts were gathered from the bereaved, although the questionnaires were taken over 20 years after that day, which showed us their strong feelings toward their lost family members. Reading those records, we couldn't help shedding tears,.
	��Astounding Damage
			By the questionnaire, we were able to confirm the whereabouts after the A-bombing of 202 of 309 first-year students. An astounding fact we found in the survey was that about one-third of the students from the responding families are still missing. Neither their ashes nor belongings have been found since they left home that morning. Those missing students are assumed to have died instantly. The death rate of the students who died instantly at the bombing or within a few days, reached nearly 80%, including those missing. Most of them were killed by the powerful blast, crushed to death, burned to death or died from burns all over their bodies. The rest of the students managed to escape death. However, around the middle of August, they started developing acute radiation diseases such as loss of hair, fever and bleeding. Many of them died in agony one after another from the end of August through early September. The number of students who survived and were able to return to school the next year was merely 19, including me.
		Aftereffects Last
	��Behind the First Victory of the Carp
			Shortly after we finished compiling these records, Mr. Harada, who had centered doing this task, fell sick. He was a nephew of Tamiki Hara, a so-called A-bomb poet, and had strong ties with the school and the bereaved families' association. Taking advantage of its location on Hondori Street in the center of the town, his house played an important role as the base to exchange information. He was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in obscurity in the fall in 1975, despite battling the disease, while the town celebrated the first championship of the Hiroshima Carp baseball team. We were hard hit by his death. He was followed by Mr. Uehara the next year. Mr. Uehara died of liver cancer, vomiting blood. I was quite shocked by his death because we had been good friends for longer than anybody else, especially after he resigned from his position as a public officer in Tokyo and came back to Hiroshima to take over his father's business.
	��How Long Would the Aftereffects Continue?
			I thought Mr. Uehara would be the last victim of the A-bombing among us, but Mr. Kamioka followed him at the end of 1997. Mr. Kamioka wrote his memoirs in "Children of Hiroshima," compiled by Arata Osada. He worked as a professor at an art university, even after having had an operation for maxillary cancer. Then he was finally struck down by lung cancer. It was really regrettable. I remember that he looked in good shape at the A-bomb memorial ceremony of our old school, First Hiroshima Prefectural Middle School, held in 1993. I have written five names of the dead including Mr. Mita so far. In addition to them, Mr. Kusuda in 1950, Mr. Yamada in 1973, Mr. Fujino, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Maruta recently passed away. That makes ten students, more than half of the 19 who narrowly escaped death, who can be said to be victims of the aftereffects of the bomb. The threat of the nuclear weapons is beyond imagination. Their power of destruction is far greater than that of their counterpart, conventional weapons. Furthermore, the real threat of nuclear weapons is the genie named radiation. Radiation has been and will be harming the survivors for ages. Even surviving the harsh bombing, we live feeling threatened by the radiation effects, not knowing what will happen next. We don't want to live in agony anymore, nor have anyone else to have this sort of experience.
		Peace in the World without Nuclear Weapons
			The A-bomb actually brought tremendous damage on us. In an instant, Hiroshima was reduced to ashes. In schools, countless lives of students and teachers were taken away. In our town, Tenma-cho, all the family members of the houses next to us and opposite to us were killed. The A-bomb literally was an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction causing massacre. For whatever reason, no one should be allowed to use this kind of weapon. These weapons must be eliminated from the earth. Keeping this deeply in our minds, we should not repeat the evil. While our memories have been fading during more than half a century, the nuclear threat has not been decreasing; in fact, it has been increasing. The U.S. and other nuclear powers insist on nuclear deterrence, exploiting these weapons' tremendous power, and continue to possess them, not even trying to stop their experiments. Also, late-comers are now in fierce competition to develop nuclear weapons in order to flex their muscles. In scale and power, nuclear weapons nowadays are far beyond the one that annihilated Hiroshima in an instant more than half a century ago. Of course, it is out of the question to use a nuclear weapon in actual war. But it would cause chaos if even a single mistake happened to the stored hazardous materials or an accident happened during experiments. That would cause a global-scale catastrophe. Just the thought of it makes me shiver. No safety can be guaranteed if a country possesses nuclear weapons. It would be possible to destroy not only a limited area but also the entire world with just one release of a nuclear weapon with this destructive power and chimerical radiation. We should keep in mind this risk of annihilation of human beings and the earth. I wish for a peaceful world without nuclear weapons.

(English)