Portside

75 years ago today the United States unleashed nuclear destruction on Japan and the world. “Nuclear war is a raging, insatiable beast whose instincts and appetites we pretend to understand but cannot possibly control.” Nothing justifies these weapons

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The use of the atomic weapon must be seen as a continuation and a start: the nuclear continuation of the conventional terror bombing of Japanese civilians, and the start of a new “cold war.”

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I mourn mostly for those we have killed — and I mourn for those we haven't killed yet, but will in the days ahead.

When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973. The nuclear bombs dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in 250,000 deaths. And now, Donald Trump is threatening to use nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

Listening to the testimonies of the aging A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) and nuclear testing victims from the Marshall Islands and Australia, witnessing the emergence of new groups of in-vitro and 2 nd and 3 rd generation Hibakusha who are experiencing high levels of radiation-related health issues, one realizes with horror, that the 1945 atomic bombings are not a thing of the past, but an ongoing, still unfolding event.

We live in a state of widespread public ignorance and public passivity because of government secrecy and denial about the “raging, insatiable beast” of nuclear weapons and because of the immense insider power of the defense industry.

Predictably, President Barack Obama did not use his historic visit to Hiroshima May 27 to apologize for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths that resulted. But, he still can heed the “cry of the soul" of the remaining Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and take meaningful steps to eliminate nuclear weapons, including canceling the $1 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade U.S. nuclear weapons.