That awful thing

I walked across this bridge and even five days after the bomb, it was covered in charred bodies. I had to step over them, but there were so many I walked on someone. The river underneath was full of people too, floating like dead fish.

—Yasuhiko Shigemoto, Hiroshima survivor

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

—Dwight Eisenhower, 1963

Sixty years ago today, the U.S. government committed the most inhuman act in the history of mankind, and followed it up three days later with another atrocity of only slightly lesser barbarity.

The government's efforts to conceal the devastation were considerable, and included what should have been a cautionary early case of "embedded" journalism. William L. Laurence, the "science" reporter for the New York Times, was also on the Pentagon's payroll. He aggressively denied the very concept of radiation sickness. For his service in the cause of disinformation, he was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki came as the climax of an appalling campaign of "conventional" bombing of civilian targets in Japan. Earlier in 1945, 100,000 human beings were "scorched, boiled and baked to death" in a single night when U.S. bombers dropped half a million incendiary bombs on the sleeping city of Tokyo, constructed in large part out of wood. Curtis Lemay later said, "If we had lost the war, we would have been tried as war criminals."

From 1950 to 1956, Lemay alone was trusted with the codes to America's nuclear arsenal.

Where we stand today:

By refusing even to discuss the commitments it made at past meetings, the United States has turned the world of nuclear proliferation into the Wild West, with a complete disrespect for the rule of law.

—Alice Slater, founder of Abolition 2000 at NPT Review Conference in May

The extremist attitude seems to indicate that no lessons have been learned from the nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in Japan). If history is any guide nuclear arms, ladies and gentlemen, are in the most dangerous hands.

—Iranian ambassador Javad Zarif

From Never again? How the war in Iraq spurred a new nuclear arms race:

60 years since the first use of a nuclear weapon in war. 160,000 people died when the bomb was dropped at 8.15am on Hiroshima, with another 77,062 dying later.

$27bn is spent each year by the US on nuclear weapons and related programmes

11, 000 active, deliverable nuclear weapons in the world. The US has 6,390, Russia 3,242 and Britain 200

15,654 sq miles, total land area used by US nuclear weapons bases and facilities

4 other states known or thought to have nuclear weapons: India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea

5 acknowledged nuclear states: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States

1 number of islands vaporised by nuclear testing: Elugelab, Micronesia, 1952

16 in length [inches?] of 'Davy Crockett', the smallest nuclear weapon ever produced

40 states with technical ability to make nuclear weapons, including Egypt and South Korea

30,000 Kazakh conscripts served at Semipalatinsk, the Soviet test site. There were 456 tests conducted between 1945 and 1991 at the site

100 maximum number of those Kazakh conscripts still alive today

200 estimated number of nuclear weapons possessed by Israel

0 estimated number of nuclear weapons possessed by all the Arab states

100,000 people were members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1984

150 estimated number of nuclear weapons possessed by India

75 estimated number of nuclear weapons possessed by Pakistan

40, 000 people are currently members of CND

900 years is the time it will take for radioactive elements in Pripyat, near Chernobyl, to decay to safe levels following the disaster 19 years ago