Horrors, healing and hard lessons mark 70 years since world's last nuclear attack in Nagasaki

NAGASAKI, Japan, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- At 11:02 a.m., it looked like the sun had exploded.

But for as many as 80,000 people, it was instant death. Thousands more would die from it in the days, years and decades that followed the world's second -- and, to date, the last -- nuclear strike, which occurred in Nagasaki exactly 70 years ago Sunday.

In the years since Aug. 9, 1945, Nagasaki saw itself burn to the ground and rise from the ashes -- a parallel that can also be used to describe hundreds of thousands who survived the atomic blast and lived to die of natural causes decades later.

Sunday, Nagasaki marked the anniversary with memorials and speeches from dignitaries, including at least two from the United States -- the very nation that believed it had no other option but to level a city of 250,000 to end the calamities of World War II, by sheer force.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue was front and center this weekend at what was once ground zero -- singing the praises of the city's revival and echoing warnings against repeating mistakes of the past.

"There is widespread unease and concern that the oath which was engraved on our hearts 70 years ago, and the peaceful ideology of the constitution of Japan is now wavering," he said. "I urge the government and the parliament to listen to these voices of unease and concern, concentrate their wisdom and conduct careful and sincere deliberations."

Taue is referring to present day the worries of some who believe Japan's rulers may be ignoring the lessons of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which was decimated by the world's first nuclear attack three days earlier.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used the anniversary to stump for greater military defense for itself, and less influence from others. He has proposed legislation that would effectively rewrite Japan's American-drafted postwar constitution that barred it from waging war or even having its own military.

"There is now an attempt to return to the wartime era by forcing through approval of the right to collective self-defense and an amendment to the constitution," Sumiteru Taniguichi, one of the survivors and a representative of the others, told a crowd this weekend. "This security bill the government is pursuing will lead to war.

"We cannot accept this."

Since Nagasaki's destruction that Thursday morning exactly 70 years ago, the world has come precariously close to additional nuclear strikes that could have brought Armageddon.

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood toe-to-toe with Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and refused to allow Russia to plant nuclear missiles in communist Cuba -- a position that would have put almost the entire continental United States within the Kremlin's firing range.

The crisis resulted in the highest defense readiness condition (DEFCON 2) ever declared by the United States. DEFCON 1, the highest condition, means nuclear war is imminent. DEFCON 2 is classified by the Pentagon as "the next step to nuclear war."

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed before reaching DEFCON 1.

Two decades after the world breathed that sigh of relief -- another near meltdown. In November 1983, the Soviet Union readied its nuclear forces for a first-strike on the United States during a NATO training exercise called Able Archer.

Although it wouldn't become known until after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Moscow believed Able Archer was a ruse of war -- that Washington was planning a real world nuclear strike under the guise of a training exercise. After the downing of a civilian Korean jetliner -- and multiple false alarms at a Soviet installation that detected nuclear missile launches in the United States -- which happened only weeks before the military drill, tensions at that time were at perhaps their worst of the Cold War.

When Able Archer ended, Moscow pulled its finger off the button. But again, it was a close call.

"Nagasaki must be the last," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday. "We cannot allow any future use of nuclear weapons. The humanitarian consequences are too great. No more Nagasakis. No more Hiroshimas."

President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, now the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, attended Sunday's memorial -- a human link to the nuclear past, and an advocate of peace hoping for a nuclear-free future.

"Today as we mourn those who perished in Nagasaki and remember all of the victims of World War II, we recommit ourselves to working toward a world where all people can live in peace," Kennedy said Sunday. "The relationship between our two countries stands as a model of the power of reconciliation. The United States looks forward to continuing to work with Japan to advance President Obama's goal of realizing a world without nuclear weapons."