65 years ago today.
On Nagasaki, the Japanese city, the second operational atomic bomb was dropped by the American air force.
Nicknamed 'Fat Man' (a reference to Churchill), the bomb, which used plutonium 239, was dropped by parachute at 1102 on 9 August by an American B29 bomber from the Pacific island of Tinian.
It measured just under 3.5 m. (11 ft. 4 in.) in length, had the power of 22 kilotons of TNT, and weighed 4,050 kg. (nearly 9,000 lb.).
Among the 270,000 people present in Nagasaki when the bomb was dropped, about 2,500 were labour conscripts from Korea and 350 were prisoners-of-war.
About 73,884 were killed and 74,909 injured, with the affected survivors suffering the same long-term catastrophic results of radiation and mental trauma as at Hiroshima.
The “Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament”, a group of worldwide legislators, say:
During the US Presidential election campaign Barack Obama pledged on at least two occasions to take strong nuclear disarmament steps if he became president including leading an effort to achieve a nuclear weapons free world.
In the month since his successful election, has President-elect Obama given indications that he intends to fulfill these pledges, or are the politics of building a cross-partisan team and dealing with vested pro-nuclear interests dragging him back towards a more limited agenda?
Some critics claim that Obama’s appointment of Robert Gates as Secretary for Defence indicates a backward slide.
In a keynote address just before the election, Gates supported the development of a new nuclear weapon (the ‘reliable replacement warhead’), argued that the US should maintain its nuclear stockpile as long as other States possessed or sought to possess nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and claimed that US nuclear weapons deter others from developing such weapons.
What have they learned from killing barbarically 65 years ago with one bomb almost 75.000 men, women and children?
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Story in three parts.
Part # 1
The story plays in Tunisia in 1943, just after Hitler's German Army had been defeated there by the American and English Allies.
Tunisia, in Northern Africa, at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
It was a time of confusion and anarchy.
The German occupation and military dominance had ended.
The American and English soldiers were now taking over the country.
An officer of the American Army, a woman psychologist called Judy Driscoll, was ordered by her superiors to travel to the deep South of Tunisia.
To the Matmata Hills, to do research and make a report about how local native Tunisian tribes had fared under German occupation.
Together with two American soldiers in a Jeep loaded with food, supplies, fuel and camping equipment Officer Driscoll took off from the Tunisian town of Gabes towards the mountains.
On the way they met local Tunisian people and Judy Driscoll did her research.
They traveled on for a few days and got more and more in a deserted landscape with fewer and fewer villages.
On the fourth day their Jeep hit a landmine.
Because Judy Driscoll was sitting in the back of the Jeep she survived.
The two soldiers were dead and she herself was badly wounded.
Soon she lost consciousness and drifted off into darkness.
When she regained consciousness she became aware she was in a clean but simple room.
Bright sunshine and blue sky she saw from a window.
She noticed she was in bed and her legs and arms were in bandages.
Eventually, a man came into the room.
A tall, good looking man: obviously not a local Tunisian person but a foreigner although dressed in local clothes.
He was the person who was taking care of her.
Treating her wounds, changing the bandages.
When she was able to speak, she asked his name.
He said he was Jurgen Klinsmann, a German doctor.
But he was not very willing to tell much about himself.
Slowly she recuperated from her wounds.
One day she was able to get up and with Jurgen’s help she walked outside the small and simple house.
She saw spectacular mountains all around her and a small village with fields and trees.
There was a well with plenty of water and birds singing and happy people and laughing children.
There was an incredible beauty and harmony.
Judy Driscoll felt happy to be there.
Also because of the German doctor Jurgen.
He was taking so good care of her.
Much of the time they were spending together.
He knew by now that she was an officer of the American Army and the details about what had happened to her.
She came to know that Jurgen had been a doctor in the German Army.
When it became clear that the Germans would loose the battle for North Africa, Jurgen realised that either he would be captured by the Americans and English and would have to go to a camp of prisoners of war.
Or that he would be returned by the German Army to Europe for more cruel fighting and eventually either dead or surrender.
He had made the decision to be a German Army deserter and escape to the Matmata Hills where far away and hidden he had found this peaceful village.
Locals had found Judy after the accident with the land mine and had brought her to the village believing that Jurgen as a Doctor would be able to save her life.
Judy recovering more and more her health and spending most of her time with Jurgen noticed she was developing warm and strong feelings for the German doctor.
Also Jurgen liked her more and more.
They fell in love.
In the village, that was like paradise, they lived like in heaven.
They started sleeping together and became more and more close.
After some time Judy became pregnant.
Jurgen was very happy to become a father.
But Judy had doubts.
She was thinking of the future.
Were they supposed to live in this beautiful and peaceful village for the rest of their lives ?
Away from the world ?
She asked herself if that was what she wanted her child to have as a life.
Was the child never going to see the grandparents, the familymembers ?
Never going to have a proper education ?
She talked with Jurgen about these questions she had.
But for Jurgen the situation was different.
Judy could go back to her country and would have no problems.
But that was very different for him.
He was an army deserter.
Even if the war had finished, Jurgen would never be respected by his own German people when he returned.
He would be considered a coward.
Jurgen could only be happy and live in peace by staying in the isolated Tunisian village and serve the local population with his medical skills.
The child was born.
It was a healthy boy.
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