SURVIVORS of the Nagasaki atomic bomb attack were among those arrested at Faslane naval base yesterday during a protest at plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapon system.
The five men, two of whom are A-bomb survivors, linked themselves together with bamboo sticks and sat in the road in front of the base, near Helensburgh in Argyll.
A local woman who joined the protest was also arrested, police said. Five Japanese
women were detained during the protest but freed later.
The protesters are part of a 12-strong group from Nagasaki, where 74,000 people died and 75,000 were injured after an atomic bomb was dropped on the city at the end of the Second World War.
They held a ceremony at the gates of the base, where they sprinkled water brought from the Peace Park in Nagasaki, the site where the bomb was dropped, and left origami cranes and other symbols of life and peace.
The group hopes their visit will remind politicians in Scotland and the rest of the UK about the dangers they see in renewing Trident.
Shinya Moriguchi, 30, said: "My relatives survived the bomb and against this background I cannot be indifferent to nuclear weapons.
"The UK stands at the crossroads of which way to go and I felt we should not miss this good opportunity to persuade the UK to go down the route of nuclear disarmament."
Noboru Tasaki, 63, who has worked all his life for world peace and nuclear disarmament, said: "Our people know and experienced nuclear weapons and we know they are terrible for all humanity.
"We hope that the UK government will change its decision and will go for disarmament of nuclear weapons. I hope that today's demonstration will contribute to nuclear disarmament."
He added that if Britain was to opt to scrap its nuclear arsenal, it would have a profound effect on the campaign for global disarmament.
There were also several professors, scientists and teachers among the delegation. Their protest is part of Faslane 365, a year-long peaceful blockade of the base which started last October.
A Faslane 365 spokesman said: "Today has been very powerful and special because of the number of bomb survivors here.
"It is part of a bigger effort to disrupt this horrible place and press for change and it is a necessary part of a very necessary change."
Strathclyde Police said that reports would be sent to the procurator-fiscal on the five arrests made.
Nagasaki was the target of the world's second atomic bomb attack at 11:02am on 9 August, 1945, when the north of the city was destroyed.
According to statistics kept at the Nagasaki Peace Park, the dead totalled 73,884, injured 74,909. Several hundred more also suffered diseases related to radiation from the bomb.
'A TERRIBLE SMELL OF BURNING'
MITSUGU Moriguchi, 70, a retired elementary school teacher, was only nine years old when Nagasaki was bombed: "Luckily, I had been evacuated to the countryside at the time, but I remember the bomb going off. I was playing outside with two of my brothers at the time when there was a massive sound, followed by a gale created by the blast wave and the mushroom cloud rising into the sky.
"We waited a week before returning to my original home in the city, which had been three kilometres from the blast centre.
"There are so many terrible images of the devastation that I remember, but one that sticks out was the sight of all the burned bodies scattered at the roadside. Some of them were still smouldering, but the sight was accompanied by a terrible smell of burning, not just from the human bodies, but all the buildings around. It's something I will never forget.
"A decade later, one of my four sisters died of cancer caused by the radiation, and the three other died shortly after, all from the effects of the bomb."
'WE WERE SO FORTUNATE'
NOBORU Tasaki, 63, a lecturer at Nagasaki University and a former director of the city's Office of Peace Promotion, was 14 months old at the time of the blast.
"Fortunately, the farm where my parents worked was five kilometres from the blast, so even though I had been outside when it happened, I was not hurt.
"My parents told me that I had been bathing in a river at the time, and that I had started crying because of the noise.
"Even though we were quite far from the centre of the city and sheltered from its effects by a hill, my home still suffered damage. My father thought the blast had hit us because tiles from the farm had been blown off.
"We were so fortunate, as my whole family escaped without fatalities, but it's impossible to calculate the impact the bomb had on Nagaski, not just physically but spiritually and psychologically.
"Once I learned about the devastating effects atomic bombs have, I worked with the city's Office of Peace Promotion and its Atomic Bomb Museum, until my retirement three years ago."
The full article contains 853 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
