On 11 March 2011, Japan was hit with the largest earthquake in its recorded history. The earthquake and its following tsunami crippled Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on the east coast, about 150 miles north of Tokyo. Shocked by these events, and his long-standing campaign against the nuclear industry Mordechai Vanunu sent the following message, on the anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Only after Fukushima, are Japan and the rest of the world wide awake and acting decisively against the danger of atomic weapons, and now also ending nuclear energy. It was not enough for Japan and Germany to see the disaster of Hiroshima; they also needed to see the catastrophe of Fukushima accident.
The Hiroshima tragedy was a catastrophe, which brought to the world the birth of atomic weapons.
This nuclear test on human beings and a city of civilians did not teach the world to stop all nuclear production. Rather the opposite: the super-powers and other small states like Israel moved to produce and engaged in nuclear weapons production, and proliferation.
At the same time, the Hiroshima catastrophe was a massive obstacle to any use of any atomic bombs, during all the cold war. Hiroshima photos of all the victims were in the mind and that kept the world wide awake during all the cold war, to prevent any use of nuclear weapons again. And they have never been used again.
The end of the cold war set the world free from the fear of nuclear war. But the world is still in danger from some small states, like here in the Middle East, who can use the bomb. Also, the world has still many nuclear bombs; we want the world free from nuclear weapons.
States like Japan, Germany, Canada, France and others did not realize the danger of nuclear activities, and moved at full speed to build nuclear reactors for energy production. The Chernobyl accident was not enough to wake up the world to end the production of nuclear energy.
So the world needed a new catastrophe, in Japan, to remind the Japanese people and the rest of the world of the dangers of nuclear accidents and from the materials produced from the use of nuclear energy. The catastrophe of Fukushima sends the world the message to demand freedom from any use of nuclear energy.
So my 2012 Hiroshima, Fukushima Message is: End all nuclear weapons in the world including the Middle East, also in Israel. What Israel wants for itself all the Middle East now wants. End nuclear weapons everywhere, including in Israel, otherwise all the Middle East will have nuclear weapons exactly like Israel has produced in Dimona.
The second message of Fukushima from Japan is that every industrial state like Japan can work and produce non-nuclear energy. The world can be free from nuclear weapons, and nuclear energy.
In the last century the world was hungry for new energy, and was running very fast to adopt all kinds of nuclear energy. Now in this century, the world has had enough from nuclear energy, and has learnt to work and survive without its use.
So 2012 from Japan to the entire world — End Nuclear Energy, and all Atomic Bombs. Freedom to everyone —Freedom Now.
Vanunu Mordechai J C. East Jerusalem. Waiting for freedom now.