is a thriving bustling city of over a million people in japan south west coast the heart of the city and its soul is its peace memorial park located between two of the city's rivers commemorating the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city in one nine hundred forty five taf contains the names of all of those who perished on that day and the names of those who died afterwards and continue to die even today from the effects of the bomb as life moves on it seems inconceivable to even imagine the horror of moment eight fifteen am august sixth one thousand nine hundred forty five when the light of ten thousand suns broke above the rivers perhaps as now father and son sat on the water's edge looking up the morning sky in the first billionth of a second the temperature at the core of the blast reached millions of degrees centigrade a searing flash of light and heat expanded across the sky instantly vaporizing burning and charring beyond recognition thousands of human beings within a one kilometer radius of the epicenter of the blast the heat was intense enough to boil off internal organs in a fraction of a second one man resting on some steps disappeared immediately leaving only a faint shadow scorched to the stone all this took place in the first two or three seconds followed almost simultaneously an enormous shock wave traveling at the speed of sound smashing everything in sight raging wind whipped fire storms broke out all over the city black deadly radioactive rain fell from the sky and a seeming moment hiroshima had ceased to exist the center of the city was leveled and more than sixty thousand buildings were destroyed the human suffering was unimaginable perhaps eighty thousand men women and children died that first day one hundred forty thousand by the end of the year many from the horrible burns and radiation i never expected it looking up at the sky the beautiful splash of light and at the same time my face was swelling and i thought i'm going to die but if i away i found myself buried under rocks from my stomach to my head and i heard people crying crying for help but no help came i heard my mother calling my life it was like being in hell while still alive now hiroshima is beautiful children all cannot believe the bomb was dropped  now i teach people the truth so that we may never have war again i want to continue this until i die i want people to know the word peace and how valuable life is it's always the children who get hurt in war i don't want children to be the victims of war anymore i mean so until i die i will do my best forget about the dangers of nuclear weapons well those i have done a lot of video work before i produced travel films and documentaries and in two thousand and seven i had come across david krieger who was the president of the nuclear age peace foundation down in santa barbara california who has been doing work to great japanese educators during the one nine hundred thirty s and then during the second world war there was enormous pressure put upon all religious organizations in japan to conform to the military government and shinto religion which was tied in with the government and market gucci and toda who were the first two presidents refused to go along with it and they were arrested  organization trying to build an organization for peace and happiness for people in nineteen fifty seven just a few months before he died he met with movements to try to help you clara alicia and toxin stock but he wanted to go really deeper into this thing to try to really get people to recognize that there's some kind of fundamental tartness and all or lives that is creating this kind of thing and the fact that we could even have the nice thought that we could push a button and annihilate hundreds or thousands or maybe millions of people was just the most ultimate absolute evil but it's something that has to be individually we have to root out within our lives  safe zones and we had a conversation i recorded it and then through the museum i was stuck with two survivors of the atomic bomb and i recorded them and i came back and i talked to him interviewed quite a few other people about nuclear weapons in oregon in california and elsewhere and i could together about a forty minute video and e mails to thousands of individuals and organizations around the united states and canada and what prompted as i was trying to create a week in april of two thousand and seven when we could house and discussions about nuclear weapons i was prompted by this by an article that was came across and the saturday review in one nine hundred forty six by norman cousins who  the a great editor for thirty years of the saturday review and the first thing he said you know what i think i think we ought to take a whole week in this country and have what we might call a national trance and trisha a week and everybody could get together and we could talk about all the big problems that we're facing and somehow raise people's awareness of what's going o found this very interesting so i sent out these e mails and offering to supply a free video there's thing that i had made on hiroshima and that we in april of two thousand and seven fascinating is that i think there are generations of people who hear the words atomic energy or nuclear power or nuclear weapons but unless they've really paid attention may not know hiroshima i found you by looking at your videos on you tube and so i would like you just for the sake of history talk about what it was what did the survivors tell you what was it really like the one lady who as i interviewed was a lovely woman older woman  a matter of seconds where hiroshima stood after about ten seconds there was nothing sixty thousand buildings were totally leveled the other one their internal organs boiled off in a second that's what kind of thing that she is she was involved and somehow she survived she wasn't buried under rubble and her mother somehow found her and pulled her out and this woman had twenty four operations on her face up to that point by the way norman cousins was really an amazing person he took a lot of these  she talked about her experience of that and then the main thing that she was talking about was children and she never ever wanted to see this happen again ever again because it was the children that were destroyed without without any thought any kind of whatever going on they were just obliterated the second prison that i interviewed was an day was he was other pain to him he had burns all over his body cavity burns is as one hand was fused together you the all kinds of internal problems the captain going to the hospital constantly and he using pain every day and he wonder why why should i continue living but then you realize that you have a mission to really stand up to relate relate as to future generations especially the young people to make them aware of what went on and not only that but encourage them that the way to to change some of this was for every single person to do something to take some kind of step if we don't do anything nothing happens zero happens but he was encouraging you to find something find some way to to to make a dent in this and to really maybe just the way you relate to people you know in your daily life for something you can dance or an organization or whatever but to do something and this is how he looked his life through this pain every day was trying to i deeply encouraged courage people i was very encouraged i was really humbled by his whole thing and you realize now we have these weapons on many a moron hair trigger alert between russia and the united states especially these weapons now have multiple warheads on the rockets the each one of these warheads you know there's hundreds or thousands  times even more deadly than the bomb that was dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki so we're talking about something that deeply deeply  stowe during the civil war just prior to the civil war she said i didn't think i had any need to be involved in this question or slavery as senator and she not she said then i woke up i said i have to do something so she wrote this book occult hollands cabin became an international bestseller abraham lincoln once met her and he said oh yeah you're the lady the start of the civil war but she had an enormous impact but you know why why she wrote this book the whole the whole tenor of this was that christianity and slavery have  think i'm going to interrupt you there because you're making key point but i just don't want to leave the original premise of our conversation i will have you back to go further into that topic as well i'm in other things i want to ask you about is that the built in conflict between protesting democracy building deterrence keeping people safe and at the same time ending nuclear weapons how do you balance this in your head that's a difficult question we have the side nuclear weapons and this idea has grown up since the second world war to have these total is just and comprehensible when you think about it because just some little fame some little mistake we've had we've had mistakes when we almost let loose of these weapons and  d millions of people so there's there's the side here that we have that now korea has the side the other other countries want to have nuclear weapons because they feel that i have nuclear weapons and nobody's going to attack me with nuclear weapons i'm part of this club but as long as these weapons are exist they may well eventually be use and that's just because of human nature and because of the fact that we were going to stumble on to some situation where we can use the fact that the united states has these nuclear weapons and refuses any other country to have them is kind of strange because it puts a center special position we're the only ones who can help nuclear weapons so why can't another country have nuclear weapons also and this is this is their thinking you know they want to be part of the nuclear club but these weapons are we have to get rid of them we have to get rid of them and the only way that we're going to get rid of th organizations and different people but it's got a filter up until it makes it makes an impact and somehow we through through people's you are going as asians that we get to the point where we as a down and we try to figure out how to doors just for a moment i have a nosy question to ask you what's it like to be a man of peace has it been hard to hold this you know being being a buddhist requires some discipline so how do you handle your instincts in terms of anger or resentment door any of any of the emotions that trigger us how do you handle that in yourself i handle it that's a really good question and i would stay out of play handle i have i feel like it's a war every day i feel it's a battle every day against maybe you're more darker impulses and your higher impulses and is takes work it takes individual buddhism which which basically comes down to the fact that everybody every single person is has this incredible life within them a great life of compassion far caring for other people of wisdom and life force and so this practice enables us to daily bring this up but again it's that it's not it's a never ending battle i have crazy thoughts and go through my head i get the process that i go into this very sometimes i have problems with other people but i try to work on myself there with i think that's the only way we can do it is i have to work on myself again i have to go back to myself well i tell you i feel just so grateful that whatever forces had me discover you on you tube i am very grateful you're also a i'm just reading from a book flowers bloomed during the night a lovely boy ok this morning though the night before looms were closed seemingly  finished growing transformation took place during the dark hours sometimes we wind our way up from the doubts there is no like the hidden sun in our heart leading the way pushing up through all overwhelming darkness that doubt and despair the dream never dying hope invincible to blo