The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced the massive, profound, long-lasting horror and trauma of atomic bombing on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. On our behalf, they tasted the hellish end of the world that nuclear weapons hold in store, and for sixty years the survivors have done everything in their power to communicate a single message: it must never happen again. Will they succeed in awakening the world from its insane nuclear trance? Or will the past be forgotten, and repeated.

Incredibly, some in the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea still believe that nuclear weapons have a legitimate purpose and can be used to their benefit. They fail to understand that any use of even a single nuclear weapon for whatever purpose will benefit only warmongers seeking to increase violence and terrorists seeking to destroy civilization. Any use of nuclear weapons will overwhelm any meaningful medical response.

The day of deterrence is done. The great majority of people and nations on Earth want nuclear weapons permanently gone. It is technically feasible to be safely rid of these expensive, heinous, and absurdly dangerous weapons by the year 2020. All that is needed is the political will, and we are the majority. The time has come to liberate ourselves, our children, and their children from the intolerable, unconscionable threat of annihilation. Please let your leaders know that you will accept nothing less.

Morality is at the core of the nuclear issue: are we going to base our world on a culture of peace or on a culture of violence? Nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral: their action is indiscriminate, killing people alive now and generations as yet unborn. And the consequence of their use might be to bring the human race to an end. We do not believe that the people of the world would accept a policy that is inherently immoral and likely to end in catastrophe.

We all have a common interest: survival. We have to move forward from a now outdated security system based on nuclear deterrence and alliances, to one based on cooperation and allegiance to humankind. In the words of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, signed by Albert Einstein as one of the last acts of his life: "We appeal, as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

Above all: Remember your humanity.

Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima
Iccho Itoh, Mayor of Nagasaki
Sir Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Laureate

Dr Ronald McCoy and Dr Gunnar Westberg
Co-Presidents, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War