Today on Sojourner Truth:
This week, millions in Japan and around the world are marking the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities amid the height of World War 2. On August 6, U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress plane unleashed a uranium bomb, known as Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, another U.S. plane launched a plutonium implosion bomb, known as Fat Man, on Nagasaki. The two nuclear bombings killed up to 226,000 people, a majority of whom were innocent people. Most died upon impact, but a significant number of people also continued to pass away in the months following the attack from radiation exposure, severe burns and blood loss. Both cities were almost entirely razed to the ground. To this day, people in the area are still affected by radiation exposure. The twin bombings were and still remain the only time that a world power used nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
Today, 75 years later, the threat of a renewed nuclear war continues to loom over our heads. The arms control era that started after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union may soon be coming to an end. The New START Deal of 2011, the last major pact constraining the U.S. and Russia " which together hold 91 percent of the world's nuclear warheads " is set to end on February 5, 2021. The treaty's goal is to limit the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the two largest in the world. With the deadline for renegotiation just six months away, fears are beginning to surface of increased nuclear tensions. Currently, nine countries have nuclear weapons: the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. This comes as the Donald Trump administration continues to ramp up economic and diplomatic aggression against China, which is now a global superpower.
