Almost 63 years ago, on August 6, 1945 at 8:16 am, an atomic bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan. In that instant, tens of thousands of people were burned, blasted, and crushed to death. Other tens of thousands suffered injuries of every kind or were to die of radiation sickness. The center of the city was flattened, and every part of the city was damaged. Half an hour after the blast, fires set by the thermal pulse and by the collapse of the buildings began to gather into a firestorm that lasted for six hours. Starting about 9 am and lasting until late in the afternoon a "black rain" generated by the bomb fell on the western portions of the city, carrying radioactive fallout from the blast to the ground. For four hours during the middle of the day, a violent wind, created from the strange meteorological conditions produced by the explosion, caused further devastation to the city.

The number of people who were killed immediately or who died of their injuries over the next three months is estimated to be 130,000. Over the next five years it is estimated that another 140,000 died who had suffered burns, nausea, vomiting, bloody discharges, overall weakness, hair loss and disfiguring scar tissue. And decades after the Hiroshima attack, survivors suffer higher rates of cancer than those not exposed to the bombing and many of the approximately 4,000 who were fetuses and are still alive were born mentally retarded and with smaller heads.

A medium-sized nuclear bomb today has an explosive yield of one megaton (a million tons of TNT), or 80 times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

As of January 2008, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons contained an estimated 5,400 nuclear warheads, down from a Cold War high of 24,000 in 1987.

You could ask your students:

Consider each of the following statements about U.S. nuclear weapons policy and its current stockpile, what do you think?

1. The U.S. should rely on its current stock of nuclear bombs and not build any additional ones.

2. The U.S. should develop new nuclear bombs as its leaders see a need for them.

3. The U.S. should eliminate nuclear bombs and use only conventional weapons for its defense.

4. The U.S. should cut its nuclear weapons stockpile to a minimum if other nuclear weapons countries are willing to do the same.

5. The U.S. should cut its nuclear weapons stockpile to a minimum no matter what other countries do.

6. The U.S. should maintain its current nuclear weapons stockpile and add to it as necessary.

Each of these statements could provide many different avenues to pursue in considering discussion of the answers and the ramifications that could follow.

Where do the 2008 presidential candidates stand on nuclear weapons?

Republican candidate John McCain seems to recognize the logic of reducing the size of our nuclear stockpile, although he hasn't pushed for severe reductions

Democratic candidate Barack Obama supports reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles, both in the U.S. and worldwide, and opposes producing a new generation of nuclear warheads.

But the Democrats, like the Republicans, see a continuing role for nuclear weapons as a reliable deterrent. Both of the candidates have stated that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) needs to be enforced for such countries as Iran and North Korea. But only Obama has commented on the U.S. commitment under the NPT to move toward the abolition of our nuclear weapons.

Obama, but not McCain, has endorsed a set of proposals advanced in the opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal by former defense secretaries George Shultz and William Perry, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, that I wrote about in my first blog entry on July 16, 2008. Their proposal calls for strengthened monitoring of countries to make sure they are complying with the NPT, bringing into effect the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, developing and providing the highest possible standards of security for nuclear weapons and nuclear materials everywhere, and increasing dialogue on a gradual movement toward nuclear weapons abolition.

In August 2007, Obama said that America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons, and that we will keep our commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and continue working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.

In working with high school students, an assignment could include following the presidential candidates’ comments regarding U.S. policy on nuclear weapons and the candidates’ positions on this issue. You could ask them why they think there has been so little attention paid to this subject. They could share and discuss the few statements that the presidential candidates have made about nuclear weapons, and ask them which of these opinions they agree with or disagree with, and why.

What does writing about nuclear weapons have to do with educational issues?

Almost every major leader in the world, including President George W. Bush, has at one time or another, suggested that one of the most urgent issues facing us in our world, is how to handle these extremely dangerou and threatening weapons. And yet almost nobody is seriously talking about it in mainstream media, in neigborhood backyards, or most importantly, in school. Sure, we read a lot about the “rogue” regimes daily, such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria. But how many American citizens know much at all about the nuclear policies of the United States, and how these policies have contributed to the growing menace of these weapons in our world today?

I would say that probably most high school students know that nuclear weapons have great destructive power, that they produce radioactivity and the lethal ramifications of this, to a certain extent. But most probably know nothing about the history of how these weapons came to be, the controversial build-up of these weapons during the last six decades and the push for the continued development of these weapons through today, and the recent about-face of U.S nuclear weapons policies that has taken place during the present Bush administration.

With a growing interest in “peaceful” nuclear energy programs in countries throughout the world, most noticeably in the Middle East, that would introduce a significant increase in the amount of enriched uranium being transported around the world, vulnerable to terrorist activity, and other issues of concern, I feel that we are entering into a second nuclear weapons arms race. I feel that it is urgent to develop in students at least minimal literacy on nuclear weapons issues and policies, and give them the opportunity to become informed, to discuss, make judgments, and respond to one of the issues of the greatest importance as citizens of the United States, and of the world.

In my blog, I hope to give facts about nuclear weapons and highlight events from history and those that are currently taking place, to inform and educate readers about this issue, and to suggest how we as teachers, can appropriately introduce this issue into our classrooms in an effective and discrete way.

On January 4, 2007, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn, proposed in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, that the U.S. should provide leadership to reverse global reliance on nuclear weapons as a necessary contribution to preventing their proliferation into dangerous hands and irresponsible use, either by terrorists or nations, and ultimately putting an end to the threat of these destructive weapons in our world.

They put forth a number of steps that could be embarked upon, to lay the groundwork for a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons, which included:

-- Increase the warning time of deployed nuclear weapons to reduce the danger of accidental or unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon.

-- Substantially reduce the size of the nuclear forces in all nations that possess them.

-- Eliminate forward-deployed short-range nuclear weapons

-- Initiate bipartisan dialogue and action in the U.S. Senate to achieve ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and work to secure ratification by other leading nations.

-- Provide the highest possible security for all supplies of nuclear weapons, weapons-usable plutonium, and highly enriched uranium wherever it is located throughout the world.

-- Gain control of the uranium enrichment process, including the supply for nuclear power reactors; deal with the proliferation issues presented by spent fuel from those reactors; phase out the use of highly enriched uranium in civil commerce and research facilities.

-- Halt the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons around the world.

-- Make renewed efforts to find ways to resolve regional conflict and reduce confrontations that result in new nuclear powers and an emerging global nuclear arms race.

An international campaign, ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), is calling for a "Nuclear Weapons Convention" to ban the development, possession, use and threat of use of any kind of nuke. Last year, 127 countries voted yes to a United Nation resolution calling for the immediate commencement of negotiations for this kind of agreement. For more information and to support the campaign, visit www.icanw.org.

Other websites that may be of interest to you:

Abolition 2000 www.abolition2000.org

Nuclear Weapon Free Zones www.opanal.org/NWFZ's.htm

Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament www.gsinstitute.org/pddn/