Nuclear Proliferation
The nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan made the fears of nuclear proliferation very real, endangering the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The two countries had objected to the existing global order established by the nuclear powers. Non-government organizations put in an appearance at the quinquennial NPT Review Conference in New York in 2000, where there was controversy between the nuclear and non-nuclear powers. The atomic-bomb survivors in Japan, who had once directed their appeals only toward the United States and Soviet Union, now expanded their sights to include India and Pakistan as well.
    September 11th, 2001 witnessed a series of terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and a number of other targets. A cycle of violence and intimidation was unleashed around the world. Weapons, once they become commonplace and end up in the hands of the people, enable wars to be triggered not only by states but also by small groups. The world found itself in a new era in which the threat that terrorist groups might wield nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was real.
    The United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan. It also publicly confirmed its willingness to resort to nuclear weapons by accelerating the development of small-scale nuclear warheads that can pierce through and detonate beneath the earth's surface to cause devastation in limited areas. Some atomic-bomb survivors went to New York to ask others to share their concern and work together with them for peace.
    Japan also responded to the U.S. calls for international collaboration in the new war against terrorism. The twenty-first century faces new nuclear dangers in the forms of further proliferation and the development of smaller, "conventional" nuclear weapons. *NHK Special: Nuclear Chain Reaction: The World in the Wake of the Indo-Pakistani Tests (1998); NHK Special: Four-Week Challenge by the Non-Nuclear Countries to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons (2000).

Return to Ground Zero (2001)

Transcending National Boundaries and Building Peace
    Television programs have delved into emotional issues to see whether reconciliation can be achieved between the people and families of those who dropped the atomic bomb and the people and families of those beneath the mushroom clouds. One program features the visit by a U.S. Air Force investigation team to Nagasaki one month after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Return to Ground Zero (2001). There is also a program about the visit to Ground Zero fifty-five years on by the captain of the B-29 Bockscar, which dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Visit 55 Years Later to Ground Zero (1999)
    Another program dealt with the legacy of Sadako Sasaki, a girl who made paper cranes until she succumbed to leukemia, the result of exposure to radiation from the atomic bomb. Sadako's story has been dramatically recounted in various countries; the paper cranes have inspired hope for children living in regions mired in conflict. *NHK Special: Sadako: Girl from Hiroshima and Her Place in the Twentieth Century (1999)