Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivers a speech during the annual ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture on 6 August 2023, on the 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing. Photo: AFP/Takuya Yoshino/The Yomiuri Shimbun
J Robert Oppenheimer, the “Father of the Atomic Bomb”, claimed to have been moved by a passage in the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the detonation of the first nuclear device in New Mexico in July 1945.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Whether he was correctly interpreting that scripture is debatable, but what isn’t is his realisation of the awesome power of the weapon.
READ: The atomic agony of Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’
In Japan yesterday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reminded the world of the lives atomic bombs took – 145 000 at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and 74 000 at Nagasaki three days later.
“Japan, as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in war, will continue efforts towards a nuclear-free world,” Kishida said in Hiroshima.
Not long after those bombs were detonated, the nuclear arms race began as the Soviet Union acquired the technology.
Yet, it was the balance of forces – and the spectre of “Mutually Assured Destruction” – which kept the peace in the Cold War.
Kishida hit out at Russian President Vladimir Putin for his threats to use nuclear weapons if he feels threatened.
The nuclear weapon genie has been put back in the bottle and must never be allowed back out.
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