Hiroshima Day stands as a reminder to act

On this 71st commemoration of the bombs that destroyed the city of Hiroshima and three days later Nagasaki, let us not look back and argue about whether this horrific carnage was justified. Let us deal with our present, where we are now, and how we can avoid the destruction of our planet and the obliteration of the species we call homo sapiens.

While visiting both of these Japanese cities as a young man touring Japan by bicycle on a year off from college, I made the decision to prepare for medical school. I was so taken by the destruction of two cities, the great suffering of the survivors of these bombs, and the legacy they have left to warn us to never let it happen again.

Today that legacy is in our lap. We dare not avoid the reality of the additional horror that can come our way if we deny the 15,000 nuclear weapons in our world today — most held between our own country and Russia, with many on hair trigger alert. We must not deny the reality of needing to keep all nuclear armaments under great security to prevent the possibility of a terrorist group capturing them and taking whole nations hostage. We must not deny the reality that we have it in our hands to make changes to secure a safer world for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren without nuclear weapons.

Several groups in the U.S. and around the world need our support to bring about the abolition of nuclear weapons that President Barack Obama proclaimed as his goal in Prague in 2009 when he said. “Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not.” He added “One nuclear weapon exploded in one city — be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague — could kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

In the same speech he later stated, “Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked — that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons in inevitable.”

And while Obama called for reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, he now plans for a trillion dollar binge spending program over the next 30 years to "modernize" the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities.

Hope lies in groups like Global Zero, Physicians for Social Responsibility, The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Council for a Livable World, to mention just a few.

A recent Global Zero mailing reports, “In 1982, the world was bristling with over 57,000 nuclear weapons. But through successful diplomacy (backed by tremendous public pressure), the United States and Russia were able to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and greatly decreased the likelihood of a nuclear attack ... for a while. Despite the progress we saw in the 80’s, nuclear weapons experts agree that the risk of a nuclear attack today is higher than it was during the Cold War.”

So fewer nuclear weapons, but a heightened risk of a nuclear exchange. I don’t sleep well at night with this news and neither should you. We dare not leave this mess to our elected officials. We must remain vigilant and active.

If you go

What: Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  A Call from Civil Society to End the Menace of Nuclear Terror

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9

Where: Japanese Bell, State Capitol Grounds

DAVID E. DRAKE, D.O., is a Des Moines psychiatrist and national board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Contact: drakeoffice@gmail.com