Let's not forget Nagasaki

Iccho Ito, who was born just two weeks after a US B-52 bomber dropped a 4.5-tonne atomic device on the southern port city, told a ceremony in Nagasaki's Memorial Peace Park: "To the citizens of America: we understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?

"We are confident that the vast majority of you desire in your hearts the elimination of nuclear arms. May you join hands with the people of the world who share that same desire, and work together for a peaceful planet free from nuclear weapons."

The Fat Man bomb - named after Winston Churchill - was dropped on Nagasaki at 11.02am on August 9, 1945, killing 74,000 people. It came three days after the first ever nuclear attack, on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people....

I've been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, having lived in Japan on three different occasions in my life. It's merely anecdotal and impressionistic to say it, but Nagasaki, of the two, has truly turned the bomb into a symbol of peace and dignity. It's a beautiful city of friendly and kind people who are historically welcoming of non-Japanese, and who have turned one of humanity's worst horrors into a global campaign against the bomb and for peace. While the experience of Hiroshima for an American visitor today (or perhaps anyone else) is one of guilt, revulsion at the events of 1945, and a sense of the human capability for plumbing the depths of violence, Nagasaki decided to remember 1945 as a message of hope and peace for the future. The difference in numbers is irrelevant. The experience of visiting the two cities is one of experiencing two interpretations of essentially the same event. Two different monuments. Two sides of the same coin. This is why it's important to remember both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.