‘A nuclear explosion [dubbed ‘Little Boy’] was detonated some 600 metres above Hiroshima at 8.15 on 6 August 1945 … a second, over Nagasaki three days later, was a plutonium bomb, dubbed ‘Fat Man’. It is 66 years since those terrible experiments, which instantly killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of them civilians. Tens of thousands more suffered lingering deaths due to their injuries, caused by intense heat, blast, and radiation sickness … As the nuclear disaster at Fukushima continues to unfold, Japanese perceptions have probed more deeply. Sumiteru Taniguchi survived extensive injuries suffered during the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and, at 82 years of age, maintains a lively presence on behalf of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers (or Hibakusha , in Japanese). He recently observed that ‘Nuclear power and mankind cannot co-exist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as “peaceful” and continued to ...