It is ironic that news of Keir Starmer’s plan to restate Labour’s commitment to “a ‘triple lock’ for the UK’s nuclear deterrent” (Keir Starmer to declare Labour as ‘party of national security’, 2 June) emerged on the same day that Toshiko Tanaka, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, addressed a spellbound meeting in London – organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Quakers – about her childhood experiences in 1945.
She spoke of seeing the initial explosion that killed every one of her classmates. She recounted regaining consciousness with a mouth full of dirt, running home to a mother who could not recognise her own badly burnt daughter, and smelling the lingering stench of burning flesh as bodies were cremated. To this day, she struggles to sleep as new sores break out on her skin, and cannot see a grilled tomato without remembering the ghastly sight of skin peeling off the dying who staggered through her neighbourhood like zombies.
