This year, we recall,
not celebrate, the most horrible atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. in 1945, during the World War ll. When the
atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, Fr Pedro Arrupe, a Jesuit superior general, was a
novice master in Nagatsuka, only seven kilometres from the epicentre of the
explosion. From the hilltop he saw the huge lake of fire that tore Hiroshima to
pieces. Arrupe and his companions immediately converted the whole novitiate
house into an emergency hospital. They took in 150 injured people and treated
them; most of them were saved. In Hiroshima, more than 70,000 people died on
the day and over 2,00,000 were injured. By the end of 1945, the number of
deaths rose to 1,66,000. The death count in Nagasaki was over 75,000.
Nagasaki is precious
to Christians. The hills of Nagasaki are holy to the Catholics because of the
holy blood of 26 Jesuits, St Paul Miki and companions, which was shed there
when they were crucified. When Christianity was banned in Japan from 1614 to
1873, more than 250 years, all the missionaries were expelled and the people
lived their religion in hiding without any priests. When the missionaries were
allowed to return, the hidden Catholics, about 30,000 of them, came out of
their secret places. It was a resurrection event.
There
has been
no use of nuclear bombs after Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but the manufacturing of
new nuclear weapons goes ahead. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons (ICAN) has numbered about 13,400 nuclear weapons today in the nine
nuclear-armed countries: Russia, U.S., China, France,
U.K., India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
ICAN points out that these nations spent a collective $72.9 billion in nuclear
weapons in 2019. The U.S. alone spent half of the whole.
Nuclear bombs are the
most merciless weapons – a single nuclear weapon can destroy a city and kill
most of its population; it produces ionizing radiation which kills or weakens
the exposed, contaminates the environment, and has long-term health
consequences, including cancer and genetic damages; physicians and other health
agents won’t be able to do any service; it causes widespread harm to living
beings, causes severe health damage and untold human disorders that have no
remedies, not even terminal relief. Needless to say that it basically violates
international law, causes severe environmental damage, undermines national and
global security, and destroys all human needs. It is imperative that we oppose
this malaise at least in our own nation.
The United Nations
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted in July 2017,
prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing,
transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening, or allowing
nuclear weapons to be stationed in their territory. The Treaty will enter into
legal force once 50 nations have signed and ratified it. None of the
nuclear-armed countries, including India, has joined the Treaty yet. India is
arranging nuclear bomb carriers “Rafale†to hit its neighbouring countries.
Pakistan is already equipped with better carriers! In war moral, the one who
bombs first is the criminal. The only point countries can boast of today is
that they have invented the techniques to destroy each other. They are yet to
come up with techniques to save and liberate each other. Once the former is
done, the latter is out of question.
(Partial
credit to: Vidya Jyoti Journal, August, 2020)
