 On the first Monday of August at 8.15 in the morning in the year 1945, the world changed. A B-29 warplane flying above 9,000 metres opened its doors. Over the next 43 seconds, a weapon of meteoric force hurtled toward Earth. At around 600 metres above the Japanese city of Hiroshima, neutrons within the bomb began to split Uranium 235 atoms. A chain reaction of profound tragedy had begun, ending with the death of about 140,000 people. Shadows were seared into stone from the blinding light of the blast. The force of the explosion was equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT, pushing a mushroom cloud more than 18,000 metres into the atmosphere. Every building within a kilometre and a half of the epicentre effectively vaporised. Fires erased many of the structures that remained in more distant areas of the city, while a poison of radiation seeped into the very genetics of those who survived the impact. The following day, medical teams from the Japanese Red Cross arrived in Hiroshima from neighbouring cities. Miraculously, their hospital was spared. While doors and windows were missing and a portion of the roof had collapsed, more than 31,000 patients were treated then, the three weeks that followed. Two days later, minutes just after 11 o'clock in the morning on August 9th, tragedy struck once more. A 21-kiloton plutonium bomb detonated in the city of Nagasaki, killing around 74,000 people. On August 29th, the International Committee of the Red Cross was able to deploy Fritz Bilfinger, the first foreign observer to arrive at the scene in Hiroshima. He wrote, City wiped out. 80% or hospitals destroyed or seriously damaged. Inspected two emergency hospitals, conditions beyond description, full stop. A week later, Dr. Marcell Junot, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross's delegation in Japan, arrived in the city, with 15 tonnes of medical supplies as the first foreign doctor on the ground. Meanwhile, the same week, less than a month after the attacks, the ICRC was already questioning the lawfulness of atomic weapons and appealing to states to ban their use. The greater the destructive power of war, the greater the necessity to spread the light of humanity into the infinite darkness. Five years after the bombings, the death toll had reportedly reached 340,000 from sustained injuries, complications and radiation poisoning. The Japanese Red Cross hospitals in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still treating thousands of survivors and their descendants afflicted with birth defects to this day. This must never happen again. All states must join the Nuclear Ban Treaty.