63 years ago, for the first time in the history of mankind, US military dropped a nuclear bomb. Its target on August 6th at 8.15 am was the city of Hiroshima in South Japan. Only three days later, the second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. 140,000 people died in Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and 73,000 a short time later in Nagasaki.

Until today, the US Government has justified its brutal deployment of the atom bomb by putting forward the argument that only by doing so could the Second World War in the Far East could be brought so quickly to an end.
 
Up to this year, 2008, twice as many people have died as a result of radiation sickness – all in all more than 400,000. And the dying is still continuing today – 63 years after the nuclear bombings.
 
One year ago, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invited me to give lectures there. My topic was called “From nuclear age to solar age”. There can be no better venues on earth for such a topic!
 
For  those who talk to victims of radioactivity in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or visit the two impressive memorials - the gates of hell on earth are opened! A mass murder happened in 1945 which the world could have never imagined up  to that time. Within seconds, tens of thousands of people dissolved into nothing, were at best a small pile of ashes, or contaminated and stunted for the rest of their life.
 
What shocked me most, however, was a figure mentioned by the Mayor of Hiroshima: even today, more than 3,000 people more than 3,000 people die every year of  radiation sickness from the bombings of 1945. Shortly before my lecture in Nagasaki, the Deputy Lord Mayor pushed a handwritten note over to me on which he had written the latest number of people who had died of radiation sickness in his town so far: 140,144!
 
63 years later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not lie behind us but still ahead of us. The current discussion about the nuclear bomb for North Korea and Iran, makes us realise the close relationship between the so-called peaceful use of nuclear power and the construction of nuclear bombs. The substance for nuclear bombs is produced in nuclear power stations. Without nuclear power stations there are no nuclear bombs – neither for Iran, nor for North Korea. The three incidents in July alone in  the French nuclear power stations, should set the biggest supporter of nuclear power thinking.
 
But as long as there are 450 nuclear power stations worldwide, unscrupulous power-hungry heads of state and politicians will continue to try to build nuclear bombs. We have to be prepared for the fact that one day nuclear bombs could fall into the hands of terrorists unless we leave the nuclear age behind us. But this also means closing down all nuclear power stations as soon as possible and generating energy from renewable energy sources – from sun, wind, bio-energy, geothermal heat, water power and ocean energy. If the political will is there, a 100% switchover to solar energy is possible in 30 years.
 
The German President, Köhler has stated: “I do not know any respectable scientist who claims that our energy problems could be solved with nuclear energy. At the end of July Al Gore said: “Within 10 years the USA could produce 100 % of its electricity from renewable energy. And both Obama and his rival, John McCain, agree with him.
 
The catastrophe of Tschernobyl happened only 22 years ago. The International organisation “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War” estimates that so far 80,000 people have died because of Tschernobyl. However, in Tschernobyl, more than fifty times as much radioactivity was released than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki together. That means that Tschernobyl does not lie behind us but rather ahead of us!
 
25 years ago, the Lord Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki swore that mankind should never forget or suppress the facts of the nuclear mass murder in their cities, and so founded the worldwide organisation “Mayors for Peace”. Meanwhile, 2277 mayors in 129 countries have joined it – among them the mayors of 336 German towns and municipalities. The aim of this organisation, which meanwhile represents more than 120 million people, is a world without nuclear weapons by the year 2020. A sign of hope is that the democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama has just endorsed this aim in his speech in Berlin.
 
As Hiroshima’s Lord Mayor, Tatadoshi Akiba, optimistically puts it: “Since it has been possible to abolish biological and chemical weapons worldwide, it is also possible to abolish the most dangerous of weapons - nuclear weapons! No other town in the world should ever suffer the fate of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. To achieve this aim, many more cities and villages will have to join our alliance. Please help us to achieve this aim in Germany, too. For only by exerting great pressure on powerful national politicians of those countries possessing nuclear weapons, can we get rid of the 27,000 warheads existing worldwide today. With the existing warheads alone, the entire human race can be destroyed at least twenty times over!”
(To learn more about the mayors for peace see: www.mayorsforpeace.de).
 
“There is”, the Deputy Mayor of Nagasaki tells me when saying goodbye, “not the slightest justification for the atomic hostage-taking of towns and villages. Never again should a town become a target of nuclear weapons.” I ponder the question: do we not at least owe our children and grandchildren the commitment to a world without nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons are weapons of terror. There are 150 of these weapons of terror stored here in Germany – each one with the destructive power of 5 Hiroshima bombs!
 
Last year, the pilot of the Hiroshima bomber, US serviceman Paul Tibbets, died. Shortly before his death he said: “Yes, I would do it again. I had no sleepless night because of it.”
 
63 years after the first deployment of nuclear bombs in the history of mankind, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain a wake-up call  to our neglected conscience.

Source:
Franz Alt 2008