Hiroshima, 6 August 2026: Lanterns are floated in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome in memory of the victims of the world’s first atomic bomb attack | Image by: Associated Press / Alamy

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The city of Hiroshima has a strange feeling to it. Like many places imbued with a tragic history or designated a place of pilgrimage, it is hard to ascertain whether it is because of what it represents and its prominence in the public imagination or because it is a place of ghosts and souls, of spirit and spirituality. I have had the same feeling in other places – in Lourdes; in Mycenae, Agamemnon’s city of violence – and I felt it again in Hiroshima.

I first visited as part of a Japanese school visit, when I was 21 and teaching in Kyushu, Japan’s southern island on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme). I remember the orizuru, paper cranes. I remember the dome that withstood the ferocity of the A-bomb, and I remember the shadows of people burnt onto the stone. I remember reading the pledge to peace. I remember the consensus amongst my group of teachers that Japan would never touch the bomb. 

Today, in 2026 with the world on fire, on the 81th anniversary of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that consensus is breaking. The new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has avoided clarifying that Japan’s three nuclear principles – not to possess, produce or allow nuclear weapons to enter Japan – will remain. As the old architecture of non-proliferation crumbles, Japan’s neighbours sabre rattle – Russia threatens nuclear attack, North Korea expands its nuclear arsenal, China continues its military expansion, Iran squares up to America and European allies enter talks on advanced deterrence. The world has never been this close to nuclear war since the Cold War.

As if timed for an intervention, Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s diary, Hiroshima, 08:15: The Lost Memoir, records the moment and the immediate aftermath of the A-bomb and its human consequences. It is a personal recollection of the moment his community was hit by this brand-new weapon, marking an inflexion point – not only for warfare but for humanity. Tanimoto’s daughter, Koko, now in her 80s and one of the hibakusha or ‘survivors’ of that day, writes in the foreword: “We are the only people left who experienced an event that remains unique in human history. We have memory of it, and this memory is a very valuable one…. Memory is our hope for survival as human beings, and for the survival of the beautiful world we inhabit.”

When ‘Little Boy’ exploded above Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, Tanimoto, a 36-year-old methodist minister was outside of the city moving furniture from his church to a home as protection from air raids. He described it as “a sharp flash of light” and “a strong blast of wind”. The bomb became known in Japan as pikadon (the literal translation of ‘flash-boom’); 80,000 people died in the first few minutes – victims instantly vaporised or crushed to death.

As Tanimoto begins to run towards the city and his home, and black rain begins to fall, the vast numbers killed or injured becomes clear to him. “Skin from faces, hands, arms and breasts were stripped off or hanging lose… all faces were without expression… It seemed like a procession of ghosts.” Tanimoto rushes past victims, apologising for not staying to help. He runs through fire, with guilt that he has survived, and then reveals – with supreme unselfconsciousness – that he felt not the slightest pleasure in seeing his wife and child safe and was instead filled with indignation that a parishioner, who had visited the parsonage at the moment the bomb had hit, had died in their care.

His diary recounts starkly the devastation of that first day, of the search for remains when “not one piece of bone could be found”, buildings leaving no trace, relatives cremating the dead who would be dead themselves within a couple of days, of victims he pulled from the river only to find when he pulled on their hand “the skin of his hand slipped off as if it were a glove. When I laid my hands on the back of another man, the skin of his back came off”.

Tanimoto’s diary chronicles it all: the days and the months afterwards, how radiation sickness claimed the survivors, his feelings at the end of the war, and of the community as it tries to rebuild. It is a story of personal and community resilience, exploring duty and obligation, and how a war-ravaged country comes to terms with a peace – and a new relationship with its enemy.

Tanimoto dedicated the rest of his life to the pursuit of peace. His heroic efforts to rescue his community, rose to prominence in the Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey’s 1946 piece for The New Yorker, which brought the reality of the bomb home to the US public for the first time. But this is the first time we have been in receipt of Tanimoto’s own words – this diary had remained hidden, sitting quietly in one of Hersey’s folders stored at Yale University, until it was discovered by Hersey’s grandson in 2023.

His diary starkly recounts the devastation of that first day

 

The decision to drop the bomb still divides opinion – the cumulative total of lives lost because of the Hiroshima bomb is estimated at 140,000. The intense wartime study of the effects of radiation played little part in the political decision to drop the bomb.

The single-minded drive of the Manhattan Project which built it meant that its use had almost unstoppable momentum by the time the new US president Harry Truman took the decision to deploy it. The scientists were uneasy: “Well, I have my doubts, General Groves,” the ‘father’ of the atomic bomb J Robert Oppenheimer famously told the army officer in charge of the Manhattan Project, while Groves told a 1945 Senate hearing that radiation sickness was “a very pleasant way to die”.

Philip Morrison, a physicist with the Manhattan Project, told the BBC in 1975 that those working on the project knew intellectually very well both the short- and long-range effects of radiation. But he said, it was “seeing the living reality, the dying reality, is a very big difference to everyone, to the whole world. So I think we knew it, but we didn’t feel it”.

Tanimoto’s diary feels it – written with an absence of pathos, so straightforward in its telling, of the effects on man.

At the Pacific island American military base where Enola Gay had taken off, there was a big party on the night of the bomb. The military knew the end of the war was coming. But we are told by Morrison, “the scientists sat around looking morose and thinking about the end of the world”.

The publication of Tanimoto’s diaries, as the world races to arm itself, is another moment of reflection, a chance to pull back from the seemingly unstoppable momentum of war, and remember what can be lost, in a moment.

Monica Harding is Liberal Democrat MP for Esher and Walton

Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir

By: Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Publisher: Ebury Press

 

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But if ministers want to ease pressure at the checkout, they must avoid policies that restrict consumer choice, reduce affordability and penalise businesses that have already acted responsibly.

That’s the exact risk being presented by the government’s plans to extend High in Fat Salt and Sugar (HFSS) advertising and promotions rules to more food and drinks, including those that have recently been reformulated.

Moving the goalposts undermines progress and value

At Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I (SBF GB&I), the makers of Lucozade and Ribena, we were an early mover on sugar reduction, investing in 2016 to remove more than 50 per cent of the sugar from our drinks, ensuring they were non-HFSS in the process, long before the current rules took effect.

Ten years on, the full set of HFSS rules have only just landed using the existing 2004/5 Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM).¹ There hasn’t been time to assess the impact the changes are having on the nation’s health or the economy, yet the government is considering expanding the rules by adopting a much more restrictive 2018 NPM.

The proposed model would effectively mean only drinks containing less than 0.9g of sugar per 100g would not face heavy restrictions on advertising and promotions, potentially reclassifying products that have already been substantially reformulated.

Businesses like ours have invested significantly to support people to live healthier lives. Moving to a new model not only moves the goalposts on that progress, requiring further reformulation, but it also restricts how products can be promoted, reducing value for consumers.

Price promotions help families manage the cost of the weekly shop, while also giving businesses a route to launch – and encourage consumers towards – new and reformulated products. Restricting those levers at a time when household budgets remain squeezed risks putting further pressure on consumers while weakening the incentive for industry to invest in further progress.

That is the opposite of the “breathing room” the Prime Minister has promised.

Investment needs stability

As part of the Japanese Suntory Group, we are able to bring together Japanese manufacturing expertise and investment to support and grow iconic British brands.

This year, our factory in Coleford, Gloucestershire celebrated its 80th birthday. In this milestone year, we are investing over £57m in our UK supply chain to improve our manufacturing capability – including a new high-speed production line and a custom-built blackcurrant processing site in nearby Herefordshire. This will boost productivity, efficiency and help keep costs down.

We want to continue investing in our manufacturing capability in the South West, but long-term investment depends on businesses having confidence that the regulatory environment will remain stable and consumers will continue to spend on their favourite brands. Policies that restrict the way businesses can offer value to consumers risks putting pressure on both, against a backdrop of continued pressure on household finances and fragile consumer confidence.

The Deposit Return Scheme can’t be collateral damage

These changes are particularly badly timed as the UK prepares to launch the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in October 2027.

The DRS is the government’s landmark packaging reform. It will drive recycling, reduce litter and support green growth. SBF GB&I has played its part in delivering the scheme, committing more than £6.5m towards internal readiness and setting up the UK Deposit Management Organisation, ‘Exchange for Change‘.

While shoppers will get back the 20p refundable deposit they pay up front on every in-scope drinks container when they return it, there will still be a visible difference at the shelf and till.

That 20p will be particularly noticeable on lower-priced drinks enjoyed on-the-go. For households already watching every penny, DRS may feel like an upfront price increase.

Price promotions would naturally play an important role during the DRS transition, helping to soften the initial price shock and support families to adjust to this sizeable change. But if promotions on already-reformulated drinks are restricted at the same time as DRS goes live, shoppers will be hit hard.

Equally, the Government risks making delivering this vital Deposit Return Scheme even harder.

This, too is the very opposite of breathing room.

The solution: Back reformulation and protect consumer value

Consumers do not experience health policy and environmental policy separately. They experience the combined impact at the checkout.

The current HFSS advertising and promotion restrictions are just taking full effect. Government should not adopt an NPM that will bring in substantially reformulated products in scope and restrict the value available to consumers.

At the very least, ministers should allow the existing HFSS rules to be properly assessed and DRS to bed in before further restrictions are considered.

The Prime Minister has promised families breathing room. Ministers can achieve that by providing regulatory stability and avoiding a policy collision at the checkout.

1. The NPM is a nutritional model that helps identify which foods and drinks are “less healthy” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nutrient-profiling-model

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The Tory leader demanded to know if the government will spend 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) on the military by 2030, on its way to achieving the Nato target of spending 3.5% by 2035.

Badenoch has said a Conservative government would find the extra cash by cutting housing benefit.

But Burnham told her: “We do everything to support national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.

“Having strong national security also depends upon having resilience in our communities.

“This side of the house will not be forced to choose between the two, and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% by 2035 at the spending review.”

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

We might have had a concerningly pleasant summer, but that could be all about to change.

Instead of the regular El Niño, it’s expected that we’ll see a Super El Niño this autumn and winter, with the Met Office predicting more rain and wind across the UK.

And while nothing could’ve prepared us for the extreme heat of the past few months, there’s still time to make sure your home and wardrobe are weather-proofed for the months to come.

You’ll want to hold on to your hoods, because it’s about to be a wet and wild ride of a winter. Sure, the UK has seen some extreme rain before, but don’t think you can wing it through the rain with a rickety old brollie like any other year.

To make sure you’re as ready as you can be, we’ve rounded up the best waterproof and showerproof rain coats for men and women.

We’ve included options up to 10,000mm (serious water protection, FYI) as well as parkas, trenches, and jackets that you could happily walk into the office with.

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