MUMBAI, NOVEMBER 27: THREE survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear blast in 1945 have exhorted India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) banning testing of nuclear weapons.``We hope India signs the CTBT and leads the world to a new era of peace,'' said 72-year-old Sunao Tsuboi one of the survivors told presspersons at Mani Bhavan.The three survivors of the August 6, 1945 atomic strike against Hiroshima, Sunao Tsuboi, Yasuo Miyazaki and Ms Haruko Moritaki, were visiting the city today under the aegis of the Hiroshima World Peace Culture Foundation.``I'm sad that India performed this experiment,'' said Tsuboi, when asked about India's testing of a nuclear device in Pokharan in 1974. ``But I was sure that people were conscious (of the danger of nuclear weapons) and discontinued such experiments,'' he said referring to the stoppage of further tests.The three are amongst nearly 4 lakh victims called `Hibakusha' or nuclear victims, still suffering from the aftermath of the two nuclear bombs dropped over Japan.They were welcomed at the Mani Bhavan by industrialist SP Godrej and Gandhian Dr Usha Mehta. Ms Haruko Moritaki broke down even and wept even as she garlanded a bust of the Mahatma.Later in the room flanked by portraits of the Father of the Nation, the three spoke in Japanese translated into English for the benefit of the small gathering.Tsuboi had perfected the art of shocking people about the consequences of a nuclear war. Going by the startled reactions of the audience, he was quite successful.``I was suddenly hit by a hot blast of air, my clothes vaporised and my hair burnt off. I met this 16-year-old girl whose hair was burned and her eyeball was hanging loose, but she was still running,'' Sunao Tsuboi said, amidst gasps from the audience.He then went on to tell of the other blood-soaked survivors he met running away from the blast, some with their intestines spilling out. ``Hiroshima was flattened,'' he nodded.``It's regrettable that there are still lots of atomic weapons in the world, some with 2000 times the power of the Hiroshima weapon,'' Yasuo Miyazaki said.There are approximately 40,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled in the world today, the destructive equivalent of about 1 million Hiroshima-type devices.The destructive power of the warheads range from about 100 tons to more than 20 million tons of TNT.
