"The 16th" & "Handle With Care"

by Tris McCall - published 2026-03-11

No nation has seen an uglier side of the Atomic Age than Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only cities devastated by nuclear bombs. After surrendering to the splitters of the nucleus, the Japanese promised never to rearm until the bombers (us) gave the okay. Fidelity to that pledge didn't save them from another atomic megadisaster: the core meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in 2011. Fifteen years later the contamination — and humiliation — remains. If a Japanese person should decline to hear a lecture about the miracle of the split atom, it's not hard to understand why.