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Our illustrious pathfinder, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was 36 years young when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were torched with the world's �hottest fire�, the atomic bomb, which melted away some 750,000 Japanese lives, and in the process, forced imperial Japan to capitulate unconditionally, ending World War II in August, 1945. Nkrumah knew also that young and able-bodied male Africans, especially West Africans, (for reasons of colonialism, imperial rule by Great Britain and France), were enlisted in the armies of these two countries fighting against Fascism. Young men landed in such far places as Burma and Vietnam. The late self-styled African King Bokasa had a series of ladies claiming to be his offsprings during his military as well as virile duties, whilst in Vietnam in times intercalated between 1939 and 1945. Many of the young African recruits were not as lucky as Bokasa. They died in action, and it is only hoped that the Almighty, for having rendered Royal Services, allotted them eternal places in Heaven. Ghanaians remember, those forty years earlier on, after our land had been taken by the colonial powers, they also took away a noble young King of the Ashantis , Nana Prempeh I. The courageous and legendary Ohemaa of Ejusu, Nana Yaa Asantewaa, who stood up to fight for the release of the captured King, was herself captured. Both were exiled to the Seychelles Islands. Nana Yaa Asantewaa, who was aged 65 at the time of her capture, died in exile on the Island 31 years later, at the age of 96. Nana Prempeh I was repatriated after 35 years. He subsequently ruled part of the Ashanti Kingdom for five years. The learned Mr. Michael Dei-Anang, (son of Mampong Akwapim), who worked very closely with the first President, and penned a number of books in poetry and prose, recollected, (through verbal communication), how Nkrumah was touched, reading and watching post-World War II movies, the carnage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much as America's President Truman was convinced about the correctness of his decision to authorise unleashing the nuclear bomb on Japan, the decision found condemnation from students like Nkrumah and thousands of American citizens. Having achieved her goal, America wallowed in the pride of possessing a weapon �sine competitio�. It however would not last long before the Soviet Union, France, and Britain would have the capability to develop the most deadly weapon too. Testing of the weapon with the gigantean fireball, looking like a mushroom, became for the nuclear powers a routine that angered the rest of the world. America tested most of her weapons in sophisticatedly constructed sub-terrene bunkers in desert areas at home. But France chose to test hers in Africa, and on the surface of the Sahara Desert, leaving no place in West Africa too far from danger. It is exactly fifty years ago, and Dr. Nkrumah's response was to ask Ghanaian young men, all regions, all tribes, all religions, who would march and form human shields to stop the adamant Charles de Gaul, (the senile French President), from unleashing the deadly nuclear material on African soil. Gallant men responded immediately. With supplies to last weeks or months if need be. Off they set out in special desert-proof vehicles. They were arrested en route by French troops, but later released. The test intended by France was foiled. Among the young men who volunteered was the Convention People's Party (CPP) activist from Pepease, Kwahu, the late Mr. Frimpong Mansong. �The Sahara Protest Team� was on the lips of most Ghanaians, it died off only with the closure of Nkrumah's era in the military coup of February 1966, stopping the man, who was otherwise known as �Kwame Nkrumah Show-boy�, and �Kwame Nkrumah of Africa.� It did however achieve its aim of belittling the French post-World War II Plutocracy. An elderly cocoa farmer from the Eastern Region at the time had this to say on the French irritation, �Ghana would respect the French President much better, if come Christmas every Ghanaian would receive a bottle of Christian Dior perfume.� The French chose for subsequent tests, the (Mura Hua Atolls in the Pacific Ocean, not any longer in Africa). That did not satisfy the world either. The action taken by Kwame Nkrumah was lauded by many member-states of the Organisation of Non-Allied States. They included Yugoslavia, UAR, (Egypt), Indonesia, and of course, Ghana. Nkrumah was one of the brain children. I once met a man at the American Consulate in Frankfurt, West Germany. This man surprised me a little bit, as he walked to the table I sat at and he said, �You must be from Ghana,� I, of course, agreed, because he was right. He was born and bred in Liberia, but had lived in Germany for almost as long as World War II had been over. �Man�, you must be blessed, you had a leader like Nkrumah. I knew him when he was a student in the US.� I yelled back, �really?!� �Sure!� he went on. �Even though it has been a number of years since his overthrow, he is the African leader that the Germans know about, and still talk about.� �It's sad though,� I threw in. I was flying to America for the very first time as a student, and he knew someone in Chicago whose address he gave me, and whom I contacted when six weeks later in Summer of 1969, I started my Clerkship, as it was then called, at Cook County Hospital , in Chicago Ill. The contact he gave me was another African who had naturalized and �was teaching at school,� South side of Chicago. (The expression, �teaching at school�, is American). He was driving a city bus in the summer vacation when I met him, a practice which was not unusual. Teachers in America were not paid during vacation, and most of them took �odd jobs.� He took me along a couple of times, when my otherwise busy schedule allowed. To my surprise, he had read all books that Nkrumah had penned, e.g. �I speak of Freedom,� �Challenge of the Congo,� and �Consciencism.� Let us stop here before you and I might have to sink our heads together in �in-glory�. I had not read as many books as he had. I was Ghanaian, he was not. �Which African head of state do you know, who speaks as much, and writes as much, and is known throughout the world, (like him or hate him), like Nkrumah?� He used a vulgar word to describe Ghanaians for having deprived Africa at the time of such a man. He, on several occasions, took me along to a part of Chicago that they called �South Side.� Almost everybody who lived down South Side was African American, or freshly arrived Africans, some of them illegally. Next to these were Puerto Ricans, or Latin Americans. At one time, I had the chance of meeting Rev. Jessie Jackson, who advised me to go back and work in Africa when I finished my medical studies. He was not as Nkrumahist as Stockley Carmichael, whom I met also in Chicago, South Side, just a week before I left Chicago to return to Mainz. That Nkrumah had studied in America seemed to matter a great deal to African Americans. Even to this day, I entertain lots of doubts, if indeed Africans living in America, or those living in Africa, have read as much of Nkrumah's books as African Americans have. Hitler's regime ordered books by German philosophers to be burned, especially those of Jewish descent. It was after the collapse of Hitler's dictatorship and the reconstruction of Germany, that their books resurfaced. I read among them only Heinrich Heine, and Karl Zuckmeir. Nkrumah's books were burned also, immediately following the events of 1966. Then again, books are relatively expensive, (more expensive than four decades ago when I was in secondary school). No African idealists write books these days, except perhaps, Leopold Senghor, the Doyen of Senegalese politics.