I'm reading Oe Kenzaburo's Hiroshima Notes. In 1963 Oe, by then considered a young and rising star in the post-war Japanese literary scene, went to Hiroshima to report on a large international anti-nuclear arms peace rally. While repulsed by the politics that wrecked the event from within, Oe was deeply touched by the resilience and unpublicised efforts of the A-bomb survivors to preserve the human dignity in their lives after the bomb took everything else away from them. In fact, he says this visit to Hiroshima permanently shaped his attitudes toward life and writing from then on -- notably with respect to his newborn son who had been born with a severe head abnormality. The prologue can be read here

Although he writes in the mid 1960s, much of the content is still relevant today. Particularly his criticism that the debate over nuclear weapons (and perhaps extendable to all forms of warfare?) is dominated by how powerful a weapon is, and not the human misery it causes. The result is that people push the human tragedy of Hiroshima out of their minds.

"There may be some room for various observations and rationales regarding the possible usefulness of nuclear weapons in preserving true peace [...] But it is obvious that all advocates of usefulness base their opinion on the power of nuclear arms. [...] Who, then, would want to remember Hiroshima as the extremity of human misery?" (Oe, 1995: 109)

Let us not forget the human cost.