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Having recently visited the Nagasaki and Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Memorials, I felt compelled to share my experiences with others. The images displayed in the museums of both cities are a heart wrenching testament to the awesome destructive power of the atom bomb, and serve as a stark warning to the rest of the world that we should never again use atomic weapons as an act of war. I admit that I supported the Government's plans to expand the Trident nuclear missile program, but having seen the effects of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I am now committed to nuclear disarmament. It is very easy to sit at home and say that you support the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but after you have seen the appalling human cost of using these weapons, you cannot find yourself unmoved. In this way, I believe that the organisations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima have been successful in furthering the message of peace and nuclear disarmament.

Currently nuclear weapons are in the hands of nine countries: the original five nuclear powers, the US, Russia, the UK, China and France, and India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have joined them. Of the 27,000 nuclear weapons on the planet - 26,000 are in the hands of the US and Russia, with the remaining 1,000 in the hands of the other seven states. The most commonly used argument in defence of nuclear weapons is that they serve as a deterrent to attack from other nations. Indeed in the Cold War, the US and the USSR entered into a state of Mutually Assured Destruction - if one power attacked the other, they knew they would both be utterly destroyed. However, I believe that the concept of deterrence has been undercut by the fact that since the development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s, more and more countries have been seeking to develop their own nuclear arsenal.

Instead of making the US, or the UK, or the world a safer place, the existence of nuclear weapons has encouraged other countries such as North Korea and more recently Iran, to push for their own nuclear weapons, in part as a defence against the US in a post 9/11, post Iraq war world. Nuclear weaponry has merely begotten more nuclear weaponry, and in the hands of states such as North Korea, which no-one would describe as being a stable state. I do not necessarily believe that states such as Iran would never have pushed for creating nuclear weapons, but they have been provided with a regrettable but legitimate excuse - if other countries have stockpiles of nuclear weapons, it is hardly fair to limit them to those countries. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 is rightly viewed with distrust by those non-nuclear nations, given the recent actions of the US and the UK to renew their nuclear weapon, rather than attempt to bring about the final disarmament of all nuclear weapons that the Treaty calls for.

Another argument put forward for nuclear weaponry is that they are merely deterrents, and as such are never intended to be used. However, the statement that ‘nuclear weapons are deterrents' implicitly includes the willingness to use them as a final resort. A deterrent is only effective if everyone knows that there is a real threat from the deterrent. Prison is only an effective deterrent because people know that if they are arrested and found guilty of stealing, they will go to prison. If people know that nuclear weapons are never going to be used, they are therefore useless deterrents, and as such should not exist. The extensive nuclear arsenal that the United States possess did not deter Al-Qaeda from its terrorist attacks; the United Kingdom's Trident weapons did nothing to stop the 7/7 bombers from their suicide mission. In the current world of rogue terrorist groups, nuclear weapons have lost their effectiveness as deterrents.

If logical argument against the spread of nuclear weapons does nothing to move you, perhaps the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will. The following is what I can remember from the museum displays - I would encourage everyone to go and see the museums for themselves; they do a much better job of conveying the horror of the bombings than I can. The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 214,000 people in the initial days. When the bombs were dropped, people remembered seeing a bright flash of light as the bomb detonated several hundred metres above the ground. Seconds later, the incredible force cause by the explosion caused a strong wind to radiate from the hypocentre of the bomb, and then due to the change in pressure, air rushed back to the hypocentre, causing innumerable damage. People outside and close to the hypocentre were killed instantly by intense heat; strong enough to melt roof tiles and imprint a human shadow onto the steps of a Hiroshima building, at Nagasaki the ‘flash of heat' killed those with 1.2 kilometres of the hypocentre.. After the initial explosion countless fires broke out in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki - in both cases the emergency services had been devastated by the explosion, and fire caused untold devastation to both cities. In Hiroshima, many people inside were trapped under collapsed buildings and unable to escape the flames. Those who were free were forced to listen to the screams for help of injured people that they were powerless to help.

Perhaps worse effects came from the radiation produced by both bombs. In Nagasaki, radiation killed those within a kilometre of the hypocentre, some who had no visible wounds. Soon after the explosion in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima, black rain began to fall. It is now believed that this rain was contaminated by radiation, and as a result people who drank from rivers contaminated by it experienced severe diarrhoea for weeks afterwards. The most insidious damage was to the people who seemed to have escaped the blast unharmed, but developed symptoms of radiation poising soon after. Symptoms of the radiation included keloids and leukaemia; reading a plaque in the Hiroshima museum it stated that the younger the person exposed to radiation, the sooner symptoms of leukaemia manifested themselves. Unborn children were also affected by the radiation, many were stillborn, and the ones who survived childbirth often developed radiation-related problems as they grew up, many of them are mentally handicapped and unable to live without close care from relatives.

Perhaps the effects of the bombings can be best seen by looking at individual people. At Hiroshima, there is the Children's Peace Monument in the Peace Park, the inspiration for which was a young girl who folded over one thousand paper cranes before she died at the age of 12 from leukaemia. Sadako Sasaki escaped the bombing apparently unharmed at the age of two, and went on to school, where she became a valuable member of the school's athletic team. However, ten years later she was diagnosed with leukaemia, and given only a year to live. She was moved to the Red Cross hospital in Hiroshima, where she carried out the traditional Japanese practice of folding paper cranes - it is said that if you fold a thousand paper cranes then your wishes will come true. She managed to fold a thousand before her death, but kept going - instilling each paper crane with her wish to live. Tragically, she died on October 25th, 1955, at the age of 12, and the Children's Peace Monument was created with the symbol of a child supporting a crane; inspired by her, but in memory of all the children who died as a result of the atom bomb.

In Nagasaki, I found myself moved by the story of a doctor named Nagai Takashi. He lived in Nagasaki, and was working at a teaching hospital at the time of the bombing. The hospital was not far from the hypocentre, but Nagai survived the initial explosion. He, and the surviving members of his hospital, worked tirelessly to help the wounded of Nagasaki, despite their own injuries. When he finally returned to his house, he found his wife dead, killed by the blast. Nagai had been suffering from leukaemia before the bomb was dropped, and he devoted the rest of his life to helping those who were affected by the atomic bomb; conducting a study of the effects of the radiation and as his condition worsened, writing his memory of the atomic bombing in a book titled ‘The Bells of Nagasaki'. He died in 1951, and his memoirs make harrowing reading.

Countless thousands died as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; as the majority of Japanese soldiers were fighting overseas, the victims mainly included women, children and the elderly. The human cost of using the atomic bombs was on a scale never before seen, and thankfully never seen since. If we are to avoid another tragedy on a scale like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then the development of new nuclear weapons must be stopped, and the proliferation of existing weapons must come to an end. The nuclear weapons being developed currently are countless times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the suffering they could cause is, quite literally, unimaginable. Before the first atomic bombs were used, a group of scientists including Albert Einstein wrote to the US President urging him not to use the atomic bomb as a weapon of war; recently a group of four of the architects of the Cold War, including Henry Kissinger, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that nuclear weapons must be destroyed. The 2006 Peace Declaration from the City of Hiroshima reads: "‘The only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished.' And yet, the world's political leaders continue to ignore these voices... nuclear weapons are illegal, immoral weapons designed to obliterate cities.' I wonder how many people will listen when the 2007 Peace Declaration is published on August 6th. Sadly, I fear that that number will be too few to change the minds of those world leaders set on nuclear proliferation.

Hiroshima Museum: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html

Nagasaki Museum: http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/m1-1e.html