Eighty years ago this week, the skies over Hiroshima turned to fire.
More than 200,000 lives were lost between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Entire cities were reduced to ash.
The world would never be the same again.
Today, Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater is calling for that moment in history to be more than a warning.
She is urging this generation of leaders to finally abolish nuclear weapons once and for all.
“The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the worst atrocities ever committed,” she said.
“Thousands of lives were ended in an instant, leaving a scale of destruction that had never been seen before.
“There can never be any kind of justification for such brutality and indiscriminate mass killing.”
Slater warns that the danger has not faded with time.
In fact, she says, it has grown.
“Eighty years later we have far more deadly and destructive nuclear warheads than there were then,” she explained.
“Many of the weapons here in Scotland are even more powerful and would do even more damage.”
The UK’s continued investment in Trident, she argues, is indefensible.
“It is a moral obscenity that successive UK governments have continued to pour tens of billions of pounds into these deadly and destructive weapons, especially at a time when so many people are struggling,” she said.
That money, she adds, could change lives for the better.
“It would be far better spent lifting children out of poverty, tackling inequality and protecting us from the climate crisis,” she continued.
“These weapons do not make us safer.
“They only make our world more insecure and ensure that the threat of annihilation is always there.”
For Slater, the anniversary must be a moment of reckoning, a point where reflection turns to action.
“The best way that we can respect and honour the memory of those that were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is to protect the lives of future generations by finally abolishing nuclear weapons,” she said.
She believes Scottish independence offers the clearest path to disarmament.
“One of the many reasons I support independence is because it is our best opportunity to scrap these weapons of mass killing and join the many other nations around the world who have already signed the nuclear weapon ban,” she added.
As the world marks eight decades since one of history’s darkest days, her message is simple.
Never again.
