Hiroshima survivors plead for nuclear-free world as global tensions rise

A photograph taken on 8 September 1945 of the sea of rubble in Hiroshima, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped on the Japanese city. Photograph: Stanley Troutman/AP

Toshiyuki Mimaki was playing in front of his family home in Hiroshima on the morning of 6 August 1945 when he saw a flash in the sky – the moment the then three-year-old became witness to the world’s first atomic bombing.

Almost eight decades on, the spectre of nuclear war has returned with greater menace than at any time since the cold war, amid Vladimir Putin’s threats against Ukraine and North Korea’s seemingly unstoppable rise to the status of nuclear-armed state.