‘Gut-wrenching display’

US Secretary of State John Kerry, along with fellow G-7 foreign ministers, on Monday toured the memorial to the victims of Hiroshima, paying tribute to the 140,000 people killed on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped a nuclear bomb on the city.

Kerry is the first most senior executive branch official to visit the museum and park, a “gut-wrenching display”, as he put it, and also “a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in public life carries ... to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons”.

The memorial, displaying photographs of badly burned victims and statues showing people with flesh melting from their limbs, reminds, Kerry said, of the extraordinary complex choices of war and “of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world. This is a display that I will personally never forget”.

Kerry and the other foreign ministers laid wreaths at a cenotaph to the victims and issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons.

The US has yet to apologise for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb attacks, an apology that could be contentious, considering the fact that a majority of Americans believe the bombings were justified as they ended the war and saved lives.

Since those dark days of World War II, Washington significantly cut down its nuclear weapons arsenal.

The Japanese foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, considered “this first-ever visit” by the G-7 foreign ministers “a historic first step towards reviving momentum towards a world without nuclear weapons” and said it is “inconceivable” that Japan would ever consider having nuclear weapons.

Humanity is no doubt aware of the tremendous power it released when conceiving the atomic bomb.

It sure is aware of the deadly devastation it can provoke and as such, it must work to create a world free of such weapons, as well as of wars.

Or, as Kerry said, “everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself”.

If only mankind had the wisdom to heed his words!