The dropping of the atomic bomb turned Hiroshima into hell in 1945. Kunihito Linda will never forget that. The 80-year-old man remembers that morning on August 6, 1945, when the American Enola Gay bomber dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Among the charred corpses, people who were not killed immediately survived hell. “When you lower your hands, they stick to your stomach, become a mass,” Kunihido Linda describes the horrifying scene. “The next day, most of them were already dead,” he says.

At the summit of the seven most economically powerful powers in Hiroshima, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, US President Joe Biden and other heads of state and government paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands of dead. However, the war in Ukraine makes the discussion about the non-use of nuclear weapons more relevant today than ever.

War in Ukraine breeds fear

Miraculously, three-year-old Linda was rescued and pulled out of the rubble. “The trauma of being buried alive never went away. I am over 80 years old“, he told the German news agency. His parents died, and his grandmother fed him sweet potatoes and snails. Then she also died, and Linda was left alone. The Japanese do not get tired of telling future generations about the horrors of that time so that the war never happens again. But today, because of the war in Ukraine, he fears that it could repeat itself and repeat the horror of nuclear bombing.Linda has a request to the politicians attending the G7 summit in Hiroshima.

“First of all, I would like them to see the real tragedy of the drop of the atomic bomb, and then decide on a course aimed at building peace,” he says. “If they see the real tragedy of the drop of the atomic bomb, they will understand that without the elimination of nuclear weapons there is no peace, because today’s atomic bombs are ten times more destructive,” he emphasizes.

The aftermath of the bombing continues to exist

There are fewer and fewer survivors, and they believe they must leave the battle to eliminate nuclear weapons to the next generation. Japan’s Miho Tanaka represents a small group of young people fighting for a nuclear-free world. Unfortunately, young people in Japan don’t really think about the nuclear issue, he says. “They don’t think it has anything to do with their situation, their problems,” he adds.

Many Hiroshima residents are more concerned about the restrictions on their daily lives during the G7 summit, such as barricades, than about the summit itself, says journalist and anti-nuclear activist Sonoko Miyazaki, whose grandparents were atomic bombed in 1945.

For 80-year-old Linda, the horror is not over yet. He continues to suffer from the physical and psychological effects of the nuclear bombing. In 2017, he underwent his first operation for a brain tumor. “But I have three more brain tumors,” he says, and looks down.

Source: Deutsche Welle.