My thoughts when I watched Fumiko Amano’s testimony about the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
私は米国の核兵器開発のためのマンハッタン計画から途中離脱した科学者、ジョセフ・ロートブラットを思い出した。
Fumiko Amano’s story made me think about Joseph Rotblat, a brave pioneer in the opposition to nuclear weapons that began to grow in the years after the 1945 bombings.
He was a Polish physicist working on the Manhattan Project to develop the bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1944 one of the scientists on the team refused to continue working on the bomb. It was Joseph Rotblat. He was the only one.
If the project had been stopped, Fumiko Amano’s brother would not have died. She would not witnessed the Hiroshima horror. But her brother would have lived only if all other scientists in the world refused to work on the bombs and for war. Rotblat believed that scientists should have a code of moral conduct.
In 1955, 60 years ago, along with Hideki Yukawa of Japan, he was one of the 11 people who signed the Albert Einstein-Bertrand Russell Manifesto which called on the scientists of the world to recognize the threat of nuclear weapons. The declaration says “Remember your Humanity and forget the rest.”
Fumiko Amano reminds us that in the 70th year since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although nuclear weapons have not been used again, war is still used as away to solve problems and gain power. Her experience is the real story of war. （京都外国語大学国際教養学科長 NET-GTAS幹事）
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