As the world marks the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prominent American scholars and analysts are worried that memories of the attacks are fading, but they still offer guarded optimism about a future free of nuclear arms.
As a whole, these experts, in recent interviews in the United States, painted a realistic view about the future direction of the world, a direction characterized by the U.S.-led antiterrorism campaign following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and limited success in ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
"The memory of the bomb droppings is getting further and further, more and more distant. Even the threat of nuclear weapons has become more and more distant," said Susan Lindee, a professor of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.