The Legacy of Hiroshima

On August 6 1945 a single aircraft “Enola Gay” dropped a “Little Boy” on the city of
Hiroshima. In no time around 70,000 almost all innocent civilians were killed by the
immediate effects of the bombing and there were several thousands more, approximately
90,000 - 140,000 who died as a result of burns, radiation and the related diseases. In
addition to the horrible human tragedy this atomic bomb ushered a new area (the use of a
technology that has no limit in its destructive power and one of the most if not the most
inhumane and indiscriminant means of warfare)

The destructive power of Hiroshima around 12–15 kiloton’s of TNT* pails in comparison
with the destructive power of modern day nuclear weapon which can go up to 500
kiloton’s of TNT. A thermonuclear weapon can have a destructive power of 50.000
kilotons of TNT, 5000 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

Through the Hiroshima bombing the international community crossed the Rubicon of the
actual use of this most horrifying technology. What is worse, rather than absorbing the
ethical and humanitarian lesson that should have been derived from Hiroshima, it led
more and more countries to acquire nuclear weapons. In the 80’s throughout the world
there were 40,000 nuclear warheads, equivalent of 1 Million Hiroshima bombs. Almost
95% of it in the USA and Russia and many of them on a high alert status.

In the aftermath of Hiroshima the international community continued to develop rules to

regulate the conduct of war; to make war more “humane” building on the Hague
conventions of 1899 and 1907 and their additional protocol who’s main effect was to ban
the use of certain types of modern technology in war.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their additional protocols contain the most
important rules limiting the barbarity of war. They protect people who do not take part in
the fighting (civilians, medics, aid workers) and those who can no longer fight (wounded,
sick, and shipwrecked troops, prisoners of war).

Other conventions and regulations also followed e.g. the Ottawa Treaty or the Mine Ban
Treaty which bans all anti-personnel landmines. The Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons, also known as the “Inhumane Weapons Convention” which ban
or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary
or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately.
Regrettably with all theses laws and regulations in place we still see millions of innocent
civilians loosing their lives in violent conflicts (Congo, Ruwanda, Iraq, Darfur, The
Balkan are some reason examples)

The basic question we have to confront is that we have 2 scenarios. The first is to
continue to use nuclear weapons and other new technological warfare to settle our
differences with the prospect of more and more countries acquiring nuclear weapons and
other weapons of mass destruction since the technology is already out of the tube with the
odds that nuclear weapon and other WMD’s will be used intentionally or by
miscalculation is much higher. Under that scenario in the words of Rajiv Gandhi,
addressing the U.N. General Assembly in 1988,"Nuclear war will not mean the death of a
hundred million people. Or even a thousand million. It will mean the extinction of four
thousand million (the world population at that time): the end of life as we know it on our
planet earth.”
The second scenario is to do all what is in our power to prohibit the development or use
of nuclear weapons other WMD’s and inhumane weapons and understand that the route
to peace does not go through the use of force except in extreme cases and in accordance
with international laws as codified in the United Nation Charter.
Beside the fantastic advances we made in many aspect of our life through advances in
natural science (medicine, communication, technology etc.) we owe it to ourselves to
make similar advances in our social interaction by inter alias developing a system of
security that is equitable and inclusive and does not depend on who has the biggest
“club” but is based on human security and human solidarity.