In 1945 the catastrophe was inflicted by the enemy. In what remains to date the most horrendous attack on human beings, more than 300,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many more went on to suffer because of radioactivity-related ailments. But today Japan's catastrophe is self-inflicted.
What makes this tragedy more ironic is that the Japanese had resolved not to develop a nuclear-weapon program because they did not want to see any other population suffer the way they did in 1945. In spite of this noble resolve, the Japanese chose to go ahead with a large nuclear energy program. They never imagined that their nuclear power plants would one day bring back the nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to haunt them.
There seems to be no end to the horror at Fukushima. The emergency crew is working to contain the damage round the clock but new reports of radiation releases pour in every day. In a ridiculous attempt to allay public fears, first the Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported a radiation level in water at the Fukushima No. 1 plant's reactor No. 2 to be 10 million times higher than the permissible limit, causing panic among workers, but it later retracted it claiming it to be erroneous and stated that the radiation levels were in fact only 100,000 times higher. Should that be considered a cause for relief? Even that level can be fatal for humans.