The Japanese tenacity in the fight against nuclear proliferation was the result of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty years ago. In the early morning of 6 August 1945, Japanese radar mistakenly identified the American B-29 bomber carrying 'Little Boy' as coming on a routine high-altitude reconnaissance mission. Fifteen minutes later, Hiroshima was annihilated, and 80,000 lives had been vapourised.
The Hibakusha are the victims of the fireball and the raging wind of that day, living testimony to an act of terror when one country used the nuclear bomb against a people. Those who were very young are still with us today. Yoshitaka Sakai was 10 when the atom bomb fell on his city, slaughtering his family of 13. "I picked maggots using chopsticks from my mother's decaying back whilst trying to save her. I helplessly stood by my brother's side as he died begging for water," he said. "The Motoyasu River was clogged with floating corpses. People with popped out eyes, exploded bellies and peeled skin were everywhere. Those who died were the fortunate ones."
On 6 August 2005, as I stood alongside 60,000 silent participants at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial park to commemorate the horrific day, it was Southasia that was on my mind. India and Pakistan are proceeding with their nuclear armament programmes. In both countries, the tests of Chagai and Pokhran are seen as nationalist enterprises and proof of strategic virility and technological prowess. We have no Hibakusha to remind us that what the two governments are doing by developing nuclear weapons as well as the delivery weapons (Agni, Ghauri) is putting our future in the shredder.
India and Pakistan, together with Israel, are the three states that refuse to sign the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NFT). And it is New Delhi that is squarely responsible for instigating the nuclear race in the Subcontinent. While the Jadugoda tribals in Jharkhand endure radioactive poison from unprotected uranium mining, Indian strategic analysts preen when President George W. Bush declares of India, as he did on July 18, "a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology". Said Bush, he would "work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India" and "seek agreement from Congress to adjust US laws and policies".