Nagasaki survivor has a message for US, N Korea
NEWDELHI: “Does he have all five fingers?” This was a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor’s first question to the doctor when his son was born.
Nobu Hanaoka, 73, says he was relieved when the doctor replied that his son was in perfect health. “I had hoped that the radiation did not affect the child,” Hanaoka told Al Jazeera.
Hanaoka was only eight months old when the US dropped “Fat Man” — a Plutonium bomb — on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing about 74,000 people.
Hanaoka has a message for the US and North Korea as tensions escalate between the two countries, raising fears of a nuclear war.
“This is the kind of weapon that doesn’t just kill. It kills indiscriminately. It kills slowly and painfully.”
“And it shouldn’t be allowed on the surface of the Earth.”
“We were not even in the city of Nagasaki. We were outside. And yet the radiation that came from the bombing went far beyond the city limits,” Hanaoka said.
Hanaoka’s mother and sister died due to radiation when he was six, he says, adding that he overheard the doctor telling his father the boy wouldn’t live to see his 10th birthday. “So I knew that I was not going to live long,” Hanaoka said.
The atomic bomb survivor says he was always concerned for his health and feared he was dying when he got a simple cold.
“I want all nations to come together and start finding a way of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether,” Hanaoka said, warning that there will be millions of casualties if either the US or North Korea is attacked with nukes.