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Understanding nuclear warfare
The importance of Chad Sokol’s reporting on the Gonzaga lecture about nuclear warfare (“Nuclear experts on mission to educate young people,” May 4, 2018) cannot be over-emphasized. If ever a future generation believes that the first step toward nuclear war can be profitable and desirable, the end result will be the end of civilization as we have known it.
We visited Japan during the 1960s, through a mutual exchange program. The young couple who were our hosts said, “You must meet our father.” Whereupon, the elder father, who had survived the Hiroshima explosion, came crawling into the room, his outstretched arms welcoming us. He was completely blind, having lost his eyesight in the Hiroshima explosion. Nuclear war, even though brief, had produced lasting terror to this family.
The end result of possible experimenting with nuclear devices could be this situation endlessly repeated.
As Kate Hewitt and Erin Connolly emphasized, we have had but the slightest taste of world nuclear disaster. Future generations must never see a repetition of such experimentation, yet it is possible. We have no record of any such weaponry not being used in future warfare. Somehow humanity must find the wisdom and the will not to let nuclear conflict happen again.
A. Karl Boehmke
Pullman