I didn’t know what to expect when visiting Hiroshima. The other war memorials I have visited (Ground Zero in New York and the military graveyards in Northern France) moved me to tears and I always cry during the Last Post on Remembrance Sunday (actually whenever I hear that piece of music) but I was totally unprepared for the mass destruction of a place in a single act. 140,000 people wiped out, completely without warning, while going about their daily business. Here one minute and gone the next. An outline of a human figure against a wall, where an individual was there and then was gone.

We say we want to avoid a nuclear apocalypse, but I think we conveniently forget in the West that there has already been one. In the 80’s, like many students, I protested for nuclear disarmament (we protested about a lot then anti-apartheid, poll tax etc) but having been to Hiroshima and seen happened, I believe more than ever that a world without nuclear weapons should be the aim.