Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Bush Nuclear Policy A Recipe for National Insecurity: Time to Change Course

    This August, during the very same week that the world commemorated the 58th anniversary of the only use of nuclear weapons—an act which obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki– more than 150 military contractors, scientists from the weapons labs, and other government officials gathered at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska to plot and plan for the possibility of “full-scale nuclear war” calling for the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons—more “usable” so-called “mini-nukes and earth penetrating “bunker busters” armed with atomic warheads. Plans are afoot to start a new bomb factory to replace the one closed at Rocky Flats, now one of the most polluted spots on earth thanks to earlier production of plutonium triggers for the US hydrogen bomb arsenal, halted after the end of the Cold War. And there is a move to shorten the time to restart nuclear testing at the Nevada test site as well as to lift the restrictions that were placed on the production of “mini-nukes” by Congress.

    How did we get to this awful state, with North Korea and Iran threatening nuclear break-out and even Japan now talking about developing nuclear weapons of its own? What action can ordinary citizens take to end the nuclear madness and provide for real national security?

    President Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation, is often remembered for warning us to guard against dangers to our “liberties and democratic processes” from the “military-industrial” complex. But equally telling, and not as well-known, he also warned us against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite”, noting that the “prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. “

    The fact is, our Doctor Strangeloves have been driving this nuclear arms race in partnership with military contractors engaged in pork barrel politics with a corrupt Congress, spreading nuclear production contracts around the country to the great detriment of our national health, and security. From the first time we thought we were able to put some limits on nuclear development, when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was negotiated in 1963 because of the shock and horror at the amount of radioactive strontium-90 in our baby’s teeth, the labs made sure there was continued funding to enable testing to go underground. And when Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 to cut off nuclear testing, he bought off the labs with a $4.6 billion annual program—the so-called “stockpile stewardship “ program– in which nuclear testing was now done in computer simulated virtual reality with the help of so-called “sub-critical tests”, 1,000 feet below the desert floor, where plutonium is blown up with chemicals without causing a chain reaction. This program created a vast loophole in the not-so-comprehensive Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It is the fruits of this Faustian bargain that produced the research for the new nukes Bush is now prepared to put into production.

    What’s to be done?

    Although the majority of the Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, and most of the media keep stirring the pot with scare stories about nuclear proliferation from so called “rogue” states, we hardly hear about the essential bargain of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1970, which has kept the lid on the spread of nuclear weapons until very recently. The NPT is a two-way street. It was a deal, not only for non-nuclear weapon states not to acquire nuclear weapons, but also for the nuclear weapons states to give them up in return. India and Pakistan never signed the treaty, as it elevated the privileges of the then five existing nuclear weapons states—US, USSR, UK, France and China. And while India had tested in 1974 for its own nuclear arsenal, it wasn’t until 1998, after the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed over its objections, that India broke out of the pack, swiftly followed by Pakistan. Under Bush, annual funding for the weapons labs went from $4.6 billion under Clinton to $6.4 billion—an obvious recipe for proliferation. Because we cling to our nuclear weapons despite our treaty obligations to eliminate them, other nations attempt to acquire them. Furthermore, our determination to “dominate and control the military use of space”, threatening the whole world from the heavens, is another incentive to less powerful nations to make sure they have the only equalizer that can hold us at bay—nukes of their own. In August, Russia, for the first time joined China at the UN disarmament talks in Geneva, calling for a treaty to prevent the weaponization of space. To eliminate the nuclear threat, we need to close down our military space program, close the Nevada test site, put the weapons designers out to pasture and begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear arms.

  • We Stand Our Ground

    Originally published by truthout.org

    I must begin by saying that standing here before you is, simply, one of the greatest honors of my life. I have never served in the armed forces in any capacity. My father, however, did. He volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1969. The changes that war wrought upon him have affected, for both good and ill, every single day of my life. Vietnam did not only affect the generation that served there. It affected the children of those who served there, and the families of those who served there. That war is an American heirloom, great and terrible simultaneously, handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter, from father to daughter and from mother to son. The lessons learned there speak to us today, almost thirty years hence.

    Let me tell you a quick story about my father. His call to the freedom bird came while he was still out in the field. He arrived at Dulles Airport to meet my mother still dressed in his bush greens, still wearing the moustache, with the mud of Vietnam still under his fingernails and stuck inside the waffle of his boot sole.

    A few days earlier, he had come across a beautiful old French rifle. It was given to him by a Vietnamese friend, a former teacher with three children who had been conscripted permanently into the military. My father managed to bring this rifle home with him, and sent it on the flight in the baggage hold along with his duffel.

    My father and my mother stood waiting at the baggage claim for his things to come down. The people there – and this was 1970, remember – backed away from him as if he was radioactive. They knew where he had just come from. If the greens were not a giveaway, the standard issue muddy tan he and all the vets wore upon return from Vietnam was. When the rifle came down the belt, not in a package or a box, just laying there in all its reality, the crowd was appalled and horrified. My mother and father looked at each other and wondered what these people were thinking. What did they think was happening over there? What did they think it is that soldiers do? Did they even begin to understand this war, and what it meant, what it was doing to American soldiers, to the Vietnamese soldiers like my father’s friend, and to the civilians caught in the crossfire?

    The looks on those people’s faces there said enough. The answer was no. They didn’t know, and apparently didn’t want to know. Now, thirty three years later, we are back in that same place again, fighting a war few understand that is affecting soldiers and civilians in ways only those soldiers and civilians can truly know. Ignorance, it seems, is also an American heirloom to be passed down again and again and again.

    Many of you know, far better than I do, what my father felt that day in Dulles. That is why I am honored to speak to you tonight. If the American people fully knew what this war in Iraq was really about, if they fully knew what it means today to be a soldier in that part of the world, they would tear the White House apart brick by brick. If the people had but a taste of the horror and the lies, they would repudiate this administration and all it stands for. The don’t know, because they have been fed a glutton’s diet of misinformation and fraud. Changing that is why we are here.

    The first of August saw a very interesting article published in the Washington Post. The title was, “US Shifts Rhetoric On its Goals in Iraq.” The story quotes an unnamed administration source – I will bet you all the money in my wallet that this “source” was a man named Richard Perle – who outlined the newest reasons for our war over there. “That goal is to see the spread of our values,” said this aide, “and to understand that our values and our security are inextricably linked.”

    Our values. That’s an interesting concept coming from a member of this administration. We make much of the greatness and high moral standing of the United States of America, and there is much to be proud of. The advertising, however, has lately failed completely to match up with the product.

    Is it part of our value system to remain on a permanent war footing since World War II, shunting money desperately needed for human services and education into a military machine whose very size and expense demands the fighting of wars to justify its existence?

    Is it part of our value system to lie to the American people, to lie deeply and broadly and with no shame at all, about why we fight in Iraq?

    Is it part of our value system to sacrifice nearly three hundred American soldiers on the altar of those lies, to sacrifice thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq on the altar of those lies?

    Is it part of our value system to use the horror of September 11 to terrify the American people into an unnecessary war, into the ruination of their civil rights, into the annihilation of the Constitution?

    Is it part of our value system to use that terrible day against those American people who felt most personally the awful blow of that attack?

    Is striking first part of our value system?

    Is living in fear part of our value system?

    It is not part of my value system. It never will be.

    This new justification for our war in Iraq is yet another lie, an accent in a symphony of lies. The values this administration represents play no part in the common morality of the American people, play no part in the legal and constitutional system we adore and defend. One of the worst things ever to happen to this country was allowing the people within this administration to use words like “freedom” and “justice” and “democracy” and “patriotism,” for those good and noble words become the foulest of lies when passing their lips.

    For the record, the justification for war on Iraq was:

    The procurement by Iraq of uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program, plus 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents – 500 tons, for those without calculators, is one million pounds – almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several mobile biological weapons labs, and connections between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of September 11.

    None of these weapons have been found. The mobile weapons labs – termed “Winnebagoes of Death” by Colin Powell – turned out to be weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s. The infamous Iraq-al Qaeda connection has been shot to pieces by the recently released September 11 report. And the Niger uranium claim was based upon forgeries so laughable that America stands embarrassed and ashamed before the judgment of the world. This is all featured on the White House’s website on a page called ‘Disarming Saddam.’ The Niger claims, specifically, have yet to be removed.

    Lies. Lies. All lies.

    That Washington Post story, however, reveals a deeper truth here. Now that the original and terrifying claims to justify this war have been proven to be utterly and completely phony – Niger recently asked for an apology, by the way – the administration is falling back upon the justification for war that these men have been formulating for years and years and years.

    They call it Pax Americana, a plan to invade Iraq, take it over, create a permanent military presence there, and use the oil revenues to fund further wars against virtually every nation in that region. This we call bringing our “values” over there. Norman Podhoretz, one of the ideological fathers of this group of neoconservatives who now control the foreign policy of this nation, described the process as “The reformation and modernization of Islam.” That’s a pretty fancy phrase. I am a Catholic, and can therefore call it by its simpler name: Crusade. We know all about those.

    This is the Project for a New American Century, the product of a right-wing think tank that, in 1997, was considered so far out there that no one ever thought its members would ever come within ten miles of setting American policy. One broken election, however, vaulted these men into positions of unspeakable power. Their white papers, their dreams of empire at the point of the sword, have become our national nightmare, and the nightmare of the world. I speak of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Lewis Libby, and the rest of these New American Century men who have taken our beloved country and all it stands for it and thrown it down into the mud.

    You will note that I did not name George W. Bush, for blaming Bush for the gross misadministration of this government is like blaming Mickey Mouse when Disney screws up. He is not in charge. Truman said “The buck stops here,” and so we point to Bush as a symbol of all that has gone wrong. But he is not in charge. These other men, these New American Century men, have delivered us to this wretched estate, and by God in Heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.

    But is it all ideology for these men? Of course not. There is the payout. Have you ever heard of a company called United Defense, out of Arlington, Virginia? Let me introduce you. United Defense provides Combat Vehicle Systems, Fire Support, Combat Support Vehicle Systems, Weapons Delivery Systems, Amphibious Assault Vehicles, and Combat Support Services. Some of United Defense’s current programs include:

    The Bradley Family of Fighting Vehicles, the M113 Family of Fighting Vehicles, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Future Scout and Cavalry System, the Crusader, Electric Gun Technology/Pulse Power, Advanced Simulations and Training Systems, and Fleet Management. This list goes on and on, and includes virtually everything an eternal war might need.

    Who owns United Defense? Why, the Carlyle Group, which bought United Defense in October of 1997. For those not in the know, the Carlyle Group is a private global investment firm. Carlyle is the eleventh largest defense contractor in the US because of its ownership of companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other equipment. Carlyle has ownership stakes in 164 companies which generated $16 billion in revenues in the year 2000 alone. The Carlyle Group does not provide investment or other services to the general public.

    Who works for the Carlyle Group? George Herbert Walker Bush works for the Carlyle Group, has been a senior consultant for Carlyle for some years now, and sits on the Board of Directors. This company is profiting wildly from this war in Iraq, a tidy gift from son to father.

    And then, of course, there is Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, profiting in the millions from the oil in Iraq. Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root, is also in Iraq. Their stock in trade is the building of permanent military bases. Here is your permanent military presence in Iraq, and all for an incredible fee. Cheney still draws a one million dollar annual check from Halliburton, what they call a ‘deferred retirement benefit.’ In Boston, we call that a paycheck.

    Pax Americana. That which President Kennedy spoke so eloquently and specifically against when he said, “What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced upon the world by our weapons of war.” This is now the rule of law for this nation. It must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it.

    This is America. At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies – you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work wonders.

    That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies – you can have all of that, but if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand September 11ths could never do. The men and women within this current administration are murdering the idea that is America with their Patriot Acts, their destruction of civil liberties, their lies, their daily undermining of even the most basic tenets of decency and freedom and justice that we have tried to live up to for 227 years.

    That, and that alone, should be enough to get you on your feet with your fist in the air, whether or not you believe we have any chance of stopping all this. We may not win, but we damned well have to fight them. If we don’t, we are the traitors some would say we are.

    When you stare into the obsidian darkness of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, it stares back at you. The stone of the monument is jet black, but polished so that you must face your own reflected eyes should you dare to read the names inscribed there. You are not alone in that place.

    You stand shoulder to shoulder with the dead, and when those names shine out around and above and below the person you see in that stone, you become their graveyard. Your responsibility to those names, simply, is to remember.

    Remember what that dream, that idea that is America, is supposed to be. Never forget it. Never let your children forget. Hand it down, generation after generation, because it is the most valuable heirloom we all possess. If we lose it, we have lost everything.

    When all else fails, I fall back on the words of the extraordinary anti-war activist, Daniel Berrigan. A friend of Berrigan’s, Mitchell Snyder, was for years an advocate and activist for the homeless in Washington DC. Snyder became despondent over the fact that his government could spend billions on bombs and planes and guns, but could not seem to find the money to help the homeless. Snyder became so despondent that he committed suicide. Daniel Berrigan penned these lines in memory of Snyder, and it is in these lines that I find my hope and strength when the darkness creeps too close.

    Some stood up once, and sat down Some walked a mile, and walked away Some stood up twice, then sat down, “I’ve had it” they said, Some walked two miles, then walked away. “It’s too much,” they cried. Some stood and stood and stood. They were taken for fools, They were taken for being taken in. Some walked and walked and walked. They walked the earth, They walked the waters, They walked the air. “Why do you stand,” they were asked, “and why do you walk?” “Because of the children,” they said, “And because of the heart, “And because of the bread,” “Because the cause is the heart’s beat, And the children born And the risen bread.”

    The cause is the heart’s beat. This cause is my heart’s beat. It is yours. May it be there for all time, until that day comes when we can, once again, stand in awe and pride before our flag and our government and our nation, when we can once again revel in the rescued dream that is America.

    Until then we are at the barricades, and on the streets, and in the faces of all those who would spend the precious blood of our men and women on lies and profit and greed. The obsidian darkness of that memorial demands this of us. The golden ideals of this nation demand this of us. The laws of our forefathers demand this of us. Most importantly, we demand this of ourselves.

    They can take nothing from us that we are not willing to give, and we are not willing to give this great nation up. Let them be warned. We stand our ground.

  • Nagasaki Peace Declaration 2003

    Today, the modern buildings and houses of Nagasaki’s verdant cityscape make it difficult to imagine what happened here at the end of the Second World War on August 9 at 11:02 AM, fifty-eight years ago. An American aircraft dropped a single atomic bomb that was detonated at an altitude of about 500 meters over the district known as Matsuyama-machi. In an instant, the resulting heat rays, blast wind, and radiation descended upon Nagasaki and transformed the city into a hell on Earth. Some 74,000 people were killed, and 75,000 injured. Many of those who were spared from death were afflicted with incurable physical and mental wounds, and many continue today to suffer from the aftereffects of the atomic bombing, and from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We have ceaselessly called for the eradication of nuclear weapons and the establishment of world peace, so that such a tragedy is never repeated.

    Nevertheless, in March of this year, the US and the UK launched a preemptive attack on Iraq, whom they accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction. In the ensuing war, waged in the absence of a United Nations resolution, the lives of many civilians were sacrificed in addition to those of soldiers. We deeply regret that this conflict could not be averted, despite our appeals for a peaceful resolution based on international cooperation, and a rising worldwide anti-war movement.

    In January of last year, the United States government conducted a nuclear posture review, recommending the development of mini-nuclear weapons and the resumption of nuclear explosions for test purposes, and openly proposing the use of nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. At the same time, following nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, the disclosure by North Korea that it too possesses nuclear weapons has served to heighten the tension of international society. International agreements supporting nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and the prohibition of all nuclear weapons testing now appear to be on the verge of collapse.

    Mother Theresa, when she visited Nagasaki, commented as she viewed a picture of a boy whose body had been burnt black in the atomic bombing, “The leaders of all the nuclear states should come to Nagasaki to see this photograph.” We do indeed invite the leaders of the US and the other nuclear weapons states to visit the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, so that they may witness with their own eyes the tragic outcome of these instruments of destruction.

    We also urge the government of Japan, the only country to have sustained a nuclear attack, to stand at the forefront of efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. In response to concerns voiced both domestically and internationally over the possibility of Japan’s remilitarization and nuclear armament, the government must uphold the principle of an exclusively defensive posture, and the Three Non-Nuclear Principles (stating that Japan will not possess, manufacture or allow nuclear weapons into the country) must be passed into law, thus demonstrating the sincerity of Japan’s intentions. The Korean Peninsula Non-Nuclear Joint Statement must be realized in cooperation with other nations, and, based on the spirit of the Pyongyang Declaration, work must begin on the establishment of a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone.

    It is our hope that younger generations may continue to work for the advancement of science and technology in pursuit of human happiness. May they also consider what has been wrought upon humanity when these have been misused, and learn from the events of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. May they turn their eyes to the wider world around them, consider what must be done to bring about peace, and join hands in concerted action.

    Here in Nagasaki, the hibakusha atomic bomb survivors, growing increasingly older, are continuing to earnestly retell their experiences of the atomic bombing, and large numbers of young people are actively engaged in peace promotion and volunteer activities. Nagasaki City will persevere in providing opportunities for learning and reflection, that the experiences of the atomic bombing may not become lost and forgotten. In November of this year, we will host for the second time the Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, an international gathering of peace-supporting NGOs and individuals, held in advance of the 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, calling to the peoples of the world for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Today, on the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we pray for the repose of those who died and recall to mind their suffering, we the citizens of Nagasaki pledge our commitment to the realization of true peace in the world, free from nuclear weapons.

    Iccho Itoh
    Mayor of Nagasaki
    August 9, 2003

  • Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Sponsors Sadako Peace Day Event

    On August 6, 2003 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation held its the 9th Annual Sadako Peace Day event to commemorate the anniversary of the tragic atomic bombing of Hiroshima with music, poetry, and inspiring words.

    Sadako Peace Day celebrates the courage of Sadako Sasaki, a young survivor of Hiroshima, who developed leukemia at age twelve, ten years after the bombing. Following the Japanese legend that if one folds 1,000 paper cranes one’s wish will come true, Sadako began folding paper cranes, wishing to be well and to achieve world peace. She only folded 646 cranes before she died, and her classmates finished folding the cranes after her death. On August 6, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria inaugurated the Sadako Peace Garden in Montecito, California, where they have since held the Sadako Peace Day event every year.

    The Mayor of Santa Barbara, Marty Blum, noted the importance of this year’s event, stating, “Your presence here today acknowledges the need to learn from the past.” In addition to Mayor Blum, several other moving speakers shared their insights on the struggle towards a more peaceful world, including Nuclear Age Peace Foundation President David Krieger, and Reverend Mark Asman. Reverend Asman asserted, “The message of nuclear power and might is a completely wrong message enshrined and encapsulated by fear.”

    Jackson Kunz, a fifth grader at Marymount School, read a hopeful poem entitled World Peace by Sky McLeod, the winner of the 2002 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, 12 and under category. Additional poems where read by Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Perie Longo. Reflective music was performed by EdWing on the butterfly harp and zithers, Ming Freemen on keyboards, Claudia Kiser on cello, and Sudama Mark Kennedy on shakuhachi. Jim Villanueva, Executive Director of the La Casa de Maria, concluded the ceremony.

    The Foundation would like to thank the public libraries in Venice, Florida and Coloma, Wisconsin for sending hundreds of beautiful paper cranes used to decorate the Sadako Peace Garden for the event. If you would like to be a part of next year’s Sadako Peace Day but are not in the Santa Barbara area, you can send your folded origami cranes to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at 1622 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101. The origami paper crane is now recognized around the world as a symbol of peace.

    Thank you.

     Poems read at the event:

    A Space Where A Poem Ought Be 
    by Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

    I’ve known of missing poems before
    poems stronger than the suppressing hand
    poems more powerful than the invisibility

    poems that speak from the realm of the soul
    from the place that needs no facade
    the place unpalpable where the poem touches

    a father’s unrenderable gaze

    absent from the family photograph
    frozen in clenched smile abstraction
    hovering somewhere near the unfathomable

    a hole where a heart once lay

    cached between bone and muscle
    a conduit for that which makes life livable
    its beat but an echo its rhythm but a spasm of memory

    hurt where a friendship once was

    its demise never anticipated
    its loss never contemplated
    it measure infinite

    space where a leg ought be

    the missing limb but bits of flesh femur blood
    soft shrapnel on a once abandoned war ground
    the mined soil holding secret its maiming terror

    nothing where something ought be

    it is said that to which the missing was adjoined
    the left behind
    mourns its disattached

    one sees the shining knee –
    the favored other

    there is emptiness – longing
    grief is spoken
    and desire


    Listen to That Finch
    by Perie LongoListen to that finch, small thing
    with red neck
    singing its heart out in all this traffic
    unconcerned with where we race,
    not plotting against us,
    not giving a fiddle for the news
    or anyone’s views but his
    about the tops of trees, and light.

    If we hadn’t stood up
    in the beginning of time, we’d do the same,
    voice boxes high in the throat,
    no way to make words,
    just notes coming through,
    clicks or growls.

    Maybe its time to get down,
    crawl on our hands and knees
    around on the earth between
    the daisies and land mines
    and pray, call loud our loved one’s names,
    hiss when someone who doesn’t love us
    gets too close
    but not blow him up, no.

    He might have the code for survival
    some cure to forget our fear.
    He might be God
    looking for something new to create
    just in case we obliterate ourselves

  • Sadako Peace Day 2003

    Sadako Peace Day 2003

    Welcome to our 9th annual Sadako Peace Day on the occasion of the 58th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

    In this beautiful garden, named for a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima, we remember Sadako and all innocent victims of war. These children all have names. Their lives, as all lives, were precious. They were not meant to be collateral damage or statistics of war. All war kills, and no war spares the innocent, nuclear war least of all.

    It matters that we remember these victims and these historical events. It also matters how we remember. We live in a culture where victory is celebrated, but victory by means of nuclear devastation is no cause for celebration. It is cause for sober reflection on our past so that we may not intentionally or inadvertently destroy our future, nor the future of our children and of those yet unborn.

    Nuclear weapons have given us new responsibilities. The Nuclear Age, now 58 years old, requires us to accept personal responsibility for preserving our species and all life from the utter devastation that we know from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the result of using nuclear weapons.

    Today we remember the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose prayer is fervent: “Never Again! We must not repeat the evil.”

    We remember also that hibakusha do not just happen.
    It is our job to break the silence, to speak up for the sanity of eliminating nuclear weapons, to urge our country to be a leader in this effort, rather than an obstacle. It is significant challenge, one that each of us is called upon to accept for the good of all and for all that is good.

     

    Hibakusha
    Do Not Just Happen
    by David Krieger

    For every hibakusha
    there is a pilot

    for every hibakusha
    there is a planner

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bombardier

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bomb designer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missile maker

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missileer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a targeter

    for every hibakusha
    there is a commander

    for every hibakusha
    there is a button pusher

    for every hibakusha
    many must contribute

    for every hibakusha
    many must obey

    for every hibakusha
    many must be silent

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). This is an edited version of his welcoming remarks at the 9th annual Sadako Peace Day, held in Santa Barbara on August 6, 2003.

  • Statement at Sadako Peace Day

    I recently received a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima as I am a member of the “Mayors for Peace” organization. In asking for assistance in his quest for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, he pointed out the following:

    “For a time in the late 1980s and early 90s, it appeared that we were moving in the right direction. The Cold War ended amid deep reductions in nuclear weaponry and a moratorium on nuclear testing. It seemed we would at last take down the words of Damocles hanging over our heads for so long.

    Unfortunately the culture of war has launched a powerful counterattack. Rather than reducing military spending and shifting funding toward the alleviation of human suffering, governments around the world appear to be increasing military budgets. In the wake of September 11, we appear to be more convinced than ever that the answer to violence is more killing”.

    I appreciate his wise words and his commitment to the cause. As the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sit with us over the next few days, your presence acknowledges the importance of learning from the past and creating urgency today in calling for a nuclear-free future.

    Fifty-eight years have passed since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it seems we have not learned many lessons from the past.

    • The White House has issued an academic-sounding report called the “Nuclear Posture Review” that views nuclear weapons as viable, tactical tools of war.
    • The Bush Administration has called for resumption of underground nuclear testing and funds to rebuild the Nevada test site.
    • While our armed forces search in vain for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, our administration quietly seeks the repeal of a restriction on the development of so-called “mini-nukes”. What makes our own weapons of mass destruction so much safer and moral when human lives are in the balance?
    • From an environmental standpoint, the US Senate just passed a bill which seeks deployment of nuclear reactors and reprocessing of nuclear waste.

    For many of our friends and neighbors, it is easy to ignore what is going on in the world with the pressures of daily life and the fact that we live in a city as beautiful as Santa Barbara. Your presence here today, however, brings focus, attention and intention to a problem that must be addressed. To cast a wider net, why not talk to a friend or two tomorrow about what you did today and tell them why you came…. Thank you all for attending.

  • Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2003

    This year again, summer’s heat reminds us of the blazing hell fire that swept over this very spot fifty-eight years ago. The world without nuclear weapons and beyond war that our hibakusha have sought for so long appears to be slipping deeper into a thick cover of dark clouds that they fear at any minute could become mushroom clouds spilling black rain.
    The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is U.S. nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called “useable nuclear weapons,”appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.
    However, nuclear weapons are not the only problem. Acting as if the United Nations Charter and the Japanese Constitution don’t even exist, the world has suddenly veered sharply away from post-war toward pre-war mentality. As the U.S.-U.K.- led war on Iraq made clear, the assertion that war is peace is being trumpeted as truth. Conducted with disregard for the multitudes around the world demanding a peaceful solution through continued UN inspections, this war slaughtered innocent women, children, and the elderly. It destroyed the environment, most notably through radioactive contamination that will be with us for billions of years. And the weapons of mass destruction that served as the excuse for the war have yet to be found.
    However, as President Lincoln once said, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” Now is the time for us to focus once again on the truth that “Darkness can never be dispelled by darkness, only by light.” The rule of power is darkness. The rule of law is light. In the darkness of retaliation, the proper path for human civilization is illumined by the spirit of reconciliation born of the hibakusha’s determination that “no one else should ever suffer as we did.”
    Lifting up that light, the aging hibakusha are calling for U.S. President George Bush to visit Hiroshima. We all support that call and hereby demand that President Bush, Chairman Kim Jong Il of North Korea, and the leaders of all nuclear-weapon states come to Hiroshima and confront the reality of nuclear war. We must somehow convey to them that nuclear weapons are utterly evil, inhumane and illegal under international law. In the meanwhile, we expect that the facts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be shared throughout the world, and that the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Course will be established in ever more colleges and universities.
    To strengthen the NPT regime, the city of Hiroshima is calling on all members of the World Conference of Mayors for Peace to take emergency action to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons. Our goal is to gather a strong delegation of mayors representing cities throughout the world to participate in the NPT Review Conference that will take place in New York in 2005, the 60th year after the atomic bombing. In New York, we will lobby national delegates for the start of negotiations at the United Nations on a universal Nuclear Weapons Convention providing for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
    At the same time, Hiroshima calls on politicians, religious professionals, academics, writers, journalists, teachers, artists, athletes and other leaders with influence. We must establish a climate that immediately confronts even casual comments that appear to approve of nuclear weapons or war. To prevent war and to abolish the absolute evil of nuclear weapons, we must pray, speak, and act to that effect in our daily lives.
    The Japanese government, which publicly asserts its status as “the only A-bombed nation,” must fulfill the responsibilities that accompany that status, both at home and abroad. Specifically, it must adopt as national precepts the three new non-nuclear principles – allow no production, allow no possession, and allow no use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world – and work conscientiously toward an Asian nuclear-free zone. It must also provide full support to all hibakusha everywhere, including those exposed in “black rain areas” and those who live overseas.
    On this 58th August 6, we offer our heartfelt condolences to the souls of all atomic bomb victims, and we renew our pledge to do everything in our power to abolish nuclear weapons and eliminate war altogether by the time we turn this world over to our children.

    Tadatoshi Akiba,
    Mayor
    The City of Hiroshima

  • Remarks at Sadako Peace Day

    I want to begin my remarks today by thanking Chris Pizzinat and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for inviting me to offer some reflections on the 58th anniversary of the day the United States government dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. In the shadow of this horrific event, I want to dedicate my remarks this afternoon to someone many of us know and love, Frank Kelly. For anyone who knows Frank, today is a day of somber and yet, at the same time, hopeful reflection. Frank is someone who, in spite of man’s inhumanity to man, has great hope for the human family. So here is to you Frank, in gratitude for a life lived in the power of hope.

    I have often wondered at the irony (or is it the hubris?) of the date, August 6th, the day chosen by the United States to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On the Christian calendar, August 6th is the feast of the Transfiguration. As the story goes, the Transfiguration is an event in the life of Jesus when he went with some of his disciples onto a mountaintop. There a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice called from the cloud, “This is my son, my beloved, on whom my favor rests; listen to him.” The disciples fell on their faces in fear, and Jesus came to them and said, “Stand up, do not be afraid.”

    August 6th presents us with two images: the mushroom cloud and the cloud of transfiguration. From each cloud speaks two very different messages. One is the voice of death and destruction. The other is the voice of love and empowerment. I draw upon my Christian path not to be partisan about religion, but because it is the path I know best. I offer the story of the Transfiguration as a touchstone for what is true and good about all of our diverse spiritual paths and traditions. I personally believe that all religious traditions, whether they be of church, temple, or mosque, have at their heart a single minded recognition that we are all made in the image of the one we call love. The challenge in our several religious traditions is to hold on to this message of love in the face of the voices of fear all around us. Sadly, those voices of fear are all to often from within our own religious traditions. Throughout the centuries, these voices of fear have lead to religious, political, and social enmity among diverse peoples and tribes. In spite of this history, and because of this history, we must be ever more bold in reclaiming our common message of love and inclusion. It is this message of love that has the capacity to capture the imagination and inspire the human heart.

    Let me begin by saying that in hindsight, we don’t gain anything by taking cheap shots at those who made decisions for the United States government to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I do believe we are each held accountable to the lessons and actions we derive from the past in order to inform the values and decisions we make today. So what is our nuclear context today?

    Helen Caldicott, in her most recent book, The New Nuclear Danger, recites some sobering statistics: “The US currently has 2,000 intercontinental land-based hydrogen bombs, 3,456 nuclear weapons on submarines roaming the seas 15 minutes from their targets, and 1,750 nuclear weapons on intercontinental planes ready for delivery. Of these 7,206 weapons, roughly 2,500 remain on hair trigger alert. Russia has a similar number of strategic weapons with approximately 2,000 on hair trigger alert. In total, there is enough explosive power in the combined nuclear arsenals of the world to “overkill” every person on earth roughly 32 times…” “…(T)o overkill every person on earth roughly 32 times(!)” The greater insanity is that our government has plans to fight and win a nuclear war and, if necessary, to strike first in order to win. Then layer onto this dark and sobering strategic reality the enormous financial and human resources diverted from global concerns for education, disease prevention, the environment, and where in the world are we? In the last 58 years, have we learned nothing from Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    The Christian ethicist, Bill Rankin, in his book, Countdown to Disaster [p.91], written in the midst of the Cold War and reflecting on the Christian calling to peacemaking and nuclear disarmament, calls us all to sharpen our efforts for peace. Regardless of you faith tradition, I hope you will substitute your own faith perspective. Bill writes, “Christian peacemaking rests upon the ethical principal that life is good, that the creation is good, that each individual is precious to God, that all of us are part of one human family, and that room always must be made between persons for love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. From the perspective built upon these principles, peacemaking entails both the building up of the human community and the tearing down of militarism, understood as the precipitous resort to war as a means to solve international problems. In an apocalyptic time, salient commitments to peacemaking are both altruistic and self-interested, both idealistic and supremely realistic. Moreover, we have this on excellent authority, ‘the peacemakers are the blessed ones; they shall be called the children of God [Mat. 5:9].’”

    Which voice speaks to us today on this anniversary? Is it the voice of death and destruction, or is it the voice of love and empowerment? In my judgment, the message of nuclear power and might is a completely failed message, enshrined and encapsulated in fear. What will we do about this? We are each and together entrusted with our own voice and our own message. What are we doing with our voice and what message do we proclaim? From which voice do we draw our power and from which voice do we proclaim our message? Do we draw our inspiration from the message of fear of and power over the other, enshrined in the mushroom cloud of death, or do we stand at the center of hope and love as we proclaim our life-giving message of love and justice for all? Sadly, each of us has failed to stay centered in this life giving voice. Let us not be naïve about our failures, and let us not be naïve about the challenges we all face in hearing the voice calling each of us to live in the power of love. Let us not be naïve about the political and economic voices of darkness trying to snuff out the voice of love and empowerment.

    You and I are here because we know where we want to stand and what we want to proclaim. Our message has global political, economic and religious implications for the future of humankind. Today, in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let us redouble our efforts to reclaim our vision of love and justice as the very center of our individual and corporate voice and let us be united in our message for one another as we seek to inspire local, national and global leaders, nations and peoples to live in and share this universal message of love and justice for all. Thank you.

  • We Need Rules for War

    On the night of March 9, 1945, when the lead crews of the 21st Bomber Command returned from the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, Gen. Curtis LeMay was waiting for them in his headquarters on Guam. I was in Guam on temporary duty from Air Force headquarters in Washington, and LeMay had asked me to join him for the after-mission reports that evening.

    LeMay was just as tough as his reputation. In many ways, he appeared to be brutal, but he was also the ablest commander of any I met during my three years of service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.

    That night, he’d sent out 334 B-29 bombers, seeking to inflict, as he put it, the maximum target destruction for the minimum loss of American lives. World War II was entering its final months, and the United States was beginning the last, devastating push for an unconditional Japanese surrender.

    On that one night alone, LeMay’s bombers burned to death 83,793 Japanese civilians and injured 40,918 more. The planes dropped firebombs and flew lower than they had in the past and therefore were both more accurate and more destructive.

    They leveled a large part of Tokyo, which I had seen during a visit in 1937. It was a wooden city and burned like a match when it was firebombed.

    That night’s raid was only the first of 67. Night after night ó 66 more times ó crews were sent out over the skies of Japan.

    Of course we didn’t burn to death 83,000 people every night, but over a period of months American bombs inflicted extraordinary damage on a host of Japanese cities ó 900,000 killed, 1.3 million injured, more than half the population displaced.

    The country was devastated. The degree of killing was extraordinary. Radio Tokyo compared the raids to the burning of Rome in the year 64.

    LeMay was convinced that it was the right thing to do, and he told his superiors (from whom he had not asked for authority to conduct the March 9 raid), “If you want me to burn the rest of Japan, I can do that.”

    LeMay’s position on war was clear: If you’re going to fight, you should fight to win.

    In the years afterward, he was quoted as saying, “If you’re going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force.” He also said: “All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”

    Today, looking back almost 60 years later – and after serving as secretary of Defense for seven years during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War, including the Cuban missile crisis – I have to say that I disagree.

    War may or may not be immoral, but it should be fought within a clearly defined set of rules.

    One other thing LeMay said, and I heard him say it myself: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”

    On that last point, I think he was right. We would have been. But what makes one’s conduct immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

    The “just war” theory, first expounded by the great Catholic thinkers (I am a Protestant), argues that the application of military power should be proportional to the cause to which you’re applying it. A prosecutor would have argued that burning to death 83,000 civilians in a single night and following up with 66 additional raids was not proportional to our war aims.

    War will not be eliminated in the foreseeable future, if ever. But we can – and we must – eliminate some of the violence and cruelty and excess that go along with it.

    That’s why the U.S. so badly needs to participate in the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, which was recently established in The Hague.

    President Clinton signed that treaty on New Year’s Eve 2000, just before leaving office, but in May 2002 President Bush announced that the U.S. did not intend to become a party to the treaty.

    The Bush administration believes, and many agree with it, that the court could become a vehicle for frivolous or unfair prosecutions of American military personnel. Although that is a cause for concern, I believe we should join the court immediately while we continue to negotiate further protection against such cases.

    If LeMay were alive, he would tell me I was out of my mind. He’d say the proportionality rule is ridiculous. He’d say that if you don’t kill enough of the enemy, it just means more of your own troops will die.

    But I believe that the human race desperately needs an agreed-upon system of jurisprudence that tells us what conduct by political and military leaders is right and what is wrong, both in conflict within nations and in conflict across national borders.

    We need a clear code, internationally accepted, so that not only our Congress and president know, but so that all our military and civilian personnel know as well what is legal in conflict and what is illegal. And we need a court that can bring wrongdoers to trial for their crimes.

    Is it legal to incinerate 83,000 people in a single night to achieve your war aims? Was Hiroshima legal? Was the use of Agent Orange – which occurred while I was secretary of Defense – a violation of international law?

    These questions are critical.

    Our country needs to be involved, along with the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, in the search for answers.

     

    –Robert S. McNamara was secretary of Defense under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

  • Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    At 1:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a US B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay, took off from Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands. It carried the world’s second atomic bomb, the first having been detonated three weeks earlier at a US test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Enola Gay carried one atomic bomb, with an enriched uranium core. The bomb had been named “Little Boy.” It had an explosive force of some 12,500 tons of TNT. At 8:15 a.m. that morning, as the citizens of Hiroshima were beginning their day, the Enola Gay released its horrific cargo, which fell for 43 seconds before detonating at 580 meters above Shima Hospital near the center of the city.

    Here is a description from a pamphlet published by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum of what happened immediately following the explosion:

    “The temperature of the air at the point of explosion reached several million degrees Celsius (the maximum temperature of conventional bombs is approximately 5,000 degrees Celsius). Several millionths of a second after the explosion a fireball appeared, radiating white heat. After 1/10,000th of a second, the fireball reached a diameter of approximately 28 meters with a temperature of close to 300,000 degrees Celsius. At the instant of the explosion, intense heat rays and radiation were released in all directions, and a blast erupted with incredible pressure on the surrounding air.”

    As a result of the blast, heat and ensuing fires, the city of Hiroshima was leveled and some 90,000 people in it perished that day. The world’s second test of a nuclear weapon demonstrated conclusively the awesome power of nuclear weapons for killing and maiming. Schools were destroyed and their students and teachers slaughtered. Hospitals with their patients and medical staffs were obliterated. The bombing of Hiroshima was an act of massive destruction of a civilian population, the destruction of an entire city with a single bomb. Harry Truman, president of the United States, upon being notified, said, in egregiously poor judgment, “This is the greatest thing in history.”

    Three days after destroying Hiroshima, after failing to find an opening in the clouds over its primary target of the city of Kokura, a US B-29 bomber, named Bockscar, attacked the Japanese city of Nagasaki with the world’s third atomic weapon. This bomb had a plutonium core and an explosive force of some 22,000 tons of TNT. It had been named “Fat Man.” The attack took place at 11:02 a.m. It resulted in the immediate deaths of some 40,000 people.

    In his first speech to the US public about the bombing of Hiroshima, which he delivered on August 9, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Harry Truman reported: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.” While Hiroshima did have a military base in the city, it was not the base that was targeted, but the center of the city. The vast majority of the victims in Hiroshima were ordinary civilians, including large numbers of women and children. Truman continued, “But that attack is only a warning of things to come.” Truman went on to refer to the “awful responsibility which has come to us,” and to “thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies.” He prayed that God “may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purpose.” It was a chilling and prophetic prayer.

    By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries. Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued over the years due primarily to the effects of radiation poisoning.

    Now looking back at these terrible events, inevitably our collective memory has faded and is reshaped by current perspectives. With the passage of time, those who actually experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become far fewer in number. Although their own memories of the trauma to themselves and their cities may remain vivid, their stories are unknown by large portions of the world’s population. The message of the survivors has been simple, clear and consistent: “Never Again!” At the Memorial Cenotaph in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is this inscription: “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” The “we” in the inscription refers to all of us and to each of us.

    Yet, the fate of the world, and particularly the fate of humanity, may hang on how we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we remember the bombings of these cities as just another point in human history, along with many other important points, we may well lack the political will to deal effectively with the challenges that nuclear weapons pose to humanity. If, on the other hand, we remember these bombings as a turning point in human history, a time at which peace became an imperative, we may still find the political will to save ourselves from the fate that befell the inhabitants of these two cities.

    In the introduction to their book, Hiroshima in America, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell write, “You cannot understand the twentieth century without Hiroshima.” The same may be said of the twenty-first century. The same may be said of the nuclear predicament that confronts humanity. Neither our time nor our future can be adequately understood without understanding what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there has been a struggle for memory. The story of the bombings differs radically between what has been told in America and how the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recount this tragedy. America’s rendition is a story of triumph – triumph of technology and triumph in war. It views the bomb from above, from the perspective of those who dropped it. For the vast majority of US citizens, the creation of the bomb has been seen as a technological feat of extraordinary proportions, giving rise to the most powerful weapon in the history of warfare. From this perspective, the atomic bombs made possible the complete defeat of Japanese imperial power and brought World War II to an abrupt end.

    In the minds of many, if not most US citizens, the atomic bombs saved the lives of perhaps a million US soldiers, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is seen as a small price to pay to save so many lives and bring a terrible war to an end. This view leaves the impression that bombing these cities with atomic weapons was useful, fruitful and an occasion to be celebrated.

    The problem with this rendition of history is that the need for dropping the bombs to end the war has been widely challenged by historians. Many scholars, including Lifton and Mitchell, have questioned the official US account of the bombings. These critics have variously pointed out that Japan was attempting to surrender at the time the bombs were dropped, that the US Army Strategic Survey calculated far fewer US casualties from an invasion of Japan, and that there were other ways to end the war without using the atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities.

    Among the critics of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leading US military figures. General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II and later US president, described his reaction upon having been told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that atomic bombs would be used on Japanese cities:

    “During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, attempting to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. . . .”

    In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

    General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces during World War II, wrote, “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

    Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, wrote,

    “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children….”

    Despite these powerful statements of dissent from US World War II military leaders, there is still a strong sense in the United States and among its allies that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified by the war. There is insufficient recognition that the victims of the bombings were largely civilians, that those closest to the epicenters of the explosions were incinerated, while those further away were exposed to radiation poisoning, that many suffered excruciatingly painful deaths, and that even today, more than five decades after the bombings, survivors continue to suffer from the effects of the radiation exposure.

    The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in the past. We cannot resurrect these cities. The residents of these cities have done this for themselves. What we can do is learn from their experience. What they have to teach is perhaps humanity’s most important lesson: We are confronted by the possibility of our extinction as a species, not simply the reality of our individual deaths, but the death of humanity. This possibility became evident at Hiroshima. The great French existential writer, Albert Camus, wrote in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima:

    “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    To rely upon nuclear weapons for security is to put the future of our species and most of life at risk of annihilation. Humanity is faced with a choice: Eliminate nuclear weapons or continue to run the risk of them eliminating us. Unless we recognize this choice and act upon it, we face the possibility of a global Hiroshima.

    Living with Myths

    In his book, The Myths of August, former US Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall writes:

    “In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the US government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history. These exhilarating, excessive utterances depicted a profoundly altered universe and produced a reorientation of thought that influenced the behavior of nations and changed the outlook and the expectations of the inhabitants of this planet.”

    Many myths have grown up around the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that have the effect of making the use of nuclear weapons more palatable. To restate, one such myth is that there was no choice but to use nuclear weapons on these cities. Another is that doing so saved the lives of in excess of one million US soldiers. Underlying these myths is a more general myth that US leaders can be expected to do what is right and moral. To conclude that our leaders did the wrong thing by acting immorally at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering civilian populations, flies in the face of this widespread understanding of who we are as a people. To maintain our sense of our own decency, reflected by the actions of our leaders, may require us to bend the facts to fit our myths.

    When a historical retrospective of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – which was to include the reservations of US military leaders such as Eisenhower, Arnold and Leahy – was planned for the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of these events at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, a major outcry of opposition arose from veteran’s groups and members of the US Congress. In the end, the Smithsonian exhibition was reduced under pressure from a broad historical perspective on the bombings to a display and celebration of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

    Our Myths Help Shape Our Ethical Perspectives

    Our understanding of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helps to give rise to our general orientation toward nuclear weapons. Because of our myths about the benefits of using nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a tendency to view nuclear weapons in a positive light. Despite the moral issues involved in destroying civilian populations, most US citizens can justify reliance on such weapons for our “protection.” A good example of this rationalization is found in the views of many students at the University of California about the role of their university in the management of the US nuclear weapons laboratories.

    Recently, I spoke to a class of students at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I presented the students with a hypothetical situation. They were asked to imagine that they were students at a prestigious German university during the 1930s after the Nazis had come to power. They discovered a secret laboratory at their university where professors were researching and developing gas chambers and incinerators for the Nazis to use in exterminating their enemies. I then posed the question: What were their ethical responsibilities after making this discovery?

    The hypothetical generated a lively discussion. The students took their ethical responsibilities within the hypothetical situation seriously. They realized that there would be danger in overtly opposing the development of these genocidal devices. Nonetheless, they were willing to take risks to prevent the university from going forward with their program to develop the gas chambers and incinerators. Some were ready to go to the authorities at the university to protest. Others were prepared to form small groups and make plans to secretly sabotage the program. Others were intent upon escaping the country to let the world know what was happening in order to bring international pressure to bear upon the Nazi regime. The students were not neutral and most expressed a strong desire to act courageously in opposition to this university program, even if their futures and possibly their lives would be at risk.

    After listening to the impressive ethical stands that the students were willing to take and congratulating them, I changed the hypothetical. I asked them to consider that it was now some 70 years later and that they were students at the University of California in the year 2003. This, of course, is not hypothetical. The students are in fact enrolled at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I asked them to imagine that their university, the University of California, was involved in the research and development of nuclear weapons, that their university managed the US nuclear weapons laboratories that had researched and developed nearly all of the nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. This also happens to be true since the University of California has long managed the US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore.

    After presenting the students with this scenario, I asked them to consider their ethical responsibilities. I was expecting that they would reach similar conclusions to the first hypothetical, that they would express dismay at discovering that their university was involved in the research and development of weapons of mass destruction and would be prepared to oppose this situation. This time, however, only a small number of students expressed the same sense of moral outrage at their university’s involvement and indicated a willingness to take risks in protesting this involvement. Many of the students felt that they had no ethical responsibilities under these circumstances.

    Many students sought to distinguish the two scenarios. In the first scenario, some said, it was known that the gas chambers and incinerators were to be used for the purpose of committing genocide. In the second scenario, the one they were actually living in, they didn’t believe that the nuclear weapons would be used. They pointed out that nuclear weapons had not been used for more than 50 years and, therefore, they thought it was unlikely that they would be used in the future. Further, they didn’t think that the United States would actually use nuclear weapons because our leaders would feel constrained from doing so. Finally, they thought that the United States had a responsibility to defend itself, which they believed nuclear weapons would do.

    Frankly, I was surprised by the results of this exercise. I had expected that the students would oppose both scenarios and that their idealism would call for protest against their university’s management of the nuclear weapons laboratories. In the second scenario, however, they had many rationales and/or rationalizations for not becoming involved. This scenario was not hypothetical. It was real. It would actually demand something of them. Many were reluctant to commit themselves. Most had accepted the mythology about our leaders doing the right thing and the further mythology about nuclear weapons protecting us. They had not thought through the risks associated with possessing and deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons. They had not considered the risks of accidents and miscalculations, the dangers of faulty communications and irrational leaders. They had not considered the possibilities that deterrence could fail and the result could be future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis, in fact, globalized Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.

    Most of the students were able to avoid accepting personal responsibility for the involvement of their university in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction. Some also dismissed their personal responsibility on the basis that the university did not belong solely to them and that in fact nuclear weapons were a societal problem. They were, of course, right about this: nuclear weapons are a societal problem. Unfortunately, it is a problem for which far too few individuals are taking personal ethical responsibility. The students represented a microcosm of a larger societal problem of indifference and inaction in the face of our present reliance on nuclear weapons. The result of this inaction is tragically the likelihood that eventually these weapons will again be used with horrendous consequences for humanity.

    Making the Nuclear Weapons Threat Real

    Just as most of these students do not take personal ethical responsibility to protest involvement in nuclear weapons research and development by their university, most leaders and potential leaders of nuclear weapons states do not accept the necessity of challenging the nuclear status quo and working to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    What helped me to understand the horrendous consequences and risks of nuclear weapons was a visit to the memorial museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when I was 21 years old. These museums keep alive the memory of the destructiveness of the relatively small nuclear weapons that were used on these two cities. They also provide a glimpse into the human suffering caused by nuclear weapons. I have long believed that a visit to one or both of these museums should be a requirement for any leader of a nuclear weapons state. Without visiting these museums and being exposed by film, artifacts and displays to the devastation that nuclear weapons cause, it is difficult to grasp the extent of the destructiveness of these devices. One realizes that nuclear weapons are not even weapons at all, but something far more ominous. They are instruments of genocide and perhaps omnicide, the destruction of all.

    To the best of my knowledge, no head of state or government of a nuclear weapons state has actually visited these museums before or during his or her term in office. If political leaders will not make the effort to visit the sites of nuclear devastation, then it is necessary for the people of their countries to bring the message of these cities to them. But first, of course, the people must themselves be exposed to the stories and messages of these cities. It is unrealistic to expect that many people will travel to Hiroshima or Nagasaki to visit the memorial museums, but it is not unrealistic to bring the messages of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to communities all over the world.

    In Santa Barbara, where the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is located, we have tried to bring the message of Hiroshima to our community and beyond. On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima we created a peace memorial garden that we named Sadako Peace Garden. The name Sadako comes from that of a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to radiation as a two-year-old in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. Sadako lived a normal life for the next ten years until she developed leukemia as a result of the radiation exposure. During her hospitalization, Sadako folded paper cranes in the hopes of recovering her health. The crane is a symbol of health and longevity in Japan, and it is believed that if one folds one thousand paper cranes they will have their wish come true. Sadako wished to regain her health and for peace in the world. On one of her paper cranes she wrote this short poem, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

    Sadako did not finish folding her one thousand paper cranes before her short life came to an end. Her classmates, however, responded to Sadako’s courage and her wish for peace by finishing the job of folding the thousand paper cranes. Soon Sadako’s story began to spread, and throughout Japan children folded paper cranes in remembrance of her and her wish for peace. Tens of thousands of paper cranes poured into Hiroshima from all over Japan. Eventually, Sadako’s story spread throughout the world, and today many children in distant lands have heard of Sadako and have folded paper cranes in her memory.

    In Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park there stands a monument to Sadako. At the base of that monument is this message, “This is our cry. This is our prayer. For peace in this world.” It is the message of children throughout the world who honor Sadako’s memory.

    Sadako Peace Garden in Santa Barbara is a beautiful, tranquil place. In this garden are some large rocks, and cranes are carved in relief onto their surfaces. Each year on August 6th, Hiroshima Day, we celebrate Sadako Peace Day, a day of remembrance of Sadako and other innocent victims of war. Each year on Sadako Peace Day we have music, reflection and poetry at Sadako Peace Garden. In this way, we seek to keep the memory of Hiroshima alive in our community.

    In addition to creating Sadako Peace Garden and holding an annual commemoration on Hiroshima Day, we also made arrangements with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums to bring an exhibition about the destruction caused by the atomic weapons to our community. The museums sent an impressive exhibition that included artifacts, photographs and videos. The exhibit helped make what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki real to many members of our community.

    At the time of the exhibit, several hibakusha, survivors of the bombings, visited our community and spoke in public about their experiences. They brought to life the horrors of nuclear weapons by relating their personal experiences. There are also many books that collect the stories of atomic bomb survivors. It is nearly impossible to hear or read of their experiences without being deeply moved.

    Here is the description of one hibakusha, Miyoko Matsubara, who was a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. Her description begins upon awakening from being unconscious after the bombing:

    “I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko, who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by the blast.

    “I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone, leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on me were dirty white underwear.

    “Then I realized that my face, hands, and legs had been burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

    “On my way home, I saw a lot of people. All of them were almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out for their mothers to help them.

    “I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river. There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless dead bodies were being carried away by the water – some floating, some sinking. Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt all over.”

    After describing her personal struggle as a survivor of the bombing, Miyoko Matsubara offered this message to the young people of the world: “Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.”

    A Simple Proposal

    I would like to offer a simple proposal related to remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is also a way to confront the deadening myths in our culture that surround the bombing of these cities. I suggest that every community throughout the globe commemorate the period August 6th through August 9th as Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days. The commemoration can be short or long, simple or elaborate, but these days should not be forgotten. By looking back we can also look forward and remain cognizant of the risks that are before us. These commemorations also provide a time to focus on what needs to be done to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. By keeping the memory of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive we may also be helping to keep humanity alive. This is a critical part of our responsibility as citizens of Earth living in the Nuclear Age.

    Each year on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days, August 6th and 9th respectively, the mayors of these two cities deliver proclamations on behalf of their cities. These proclamations are distributed via the internet and by other means. Copies may be obtained in advance and shared on the occasion of a community commemoration of these days. It is also a time in which stories of the hibakusha, the survivors, may be shared and a time to bring experts to speak on current nuclear threats.

    The world needs common symbols to bring us together. One such common symbol is the photograph of the Earth from outer space. It is a symbol that makes us understand immediately that we all share a common planet and a common future. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other common symbols. We know that these names stand for more than cities in Japan; they stand for the massive destructiveness of nuclear weapons and for the human strength and spirit needed to overcome this destructiveness.

    The world needs to recall and reflect on the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as symbols of human strength and indomitable spirit. We need to be able to remember truly what happened to these cities if we are going to unite to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. We need to understand that it is not necessary to be victims of our own technologies, that we are capable of controlling even the most dangerous of them.

    In their book, Hiroshima in America, Lifton and Mitchell conclude:

    “Confronting Hiroshima can be a powerful source of renewal. It can enable us to emerge from nuclear entrapment and rediscover our imaginative capacities on behalf of human good. We can overcome our moral inversion and cease to justify weapons or actions of mass killing. We can condemn and then step back from acts of desecration and recognize what Camus called a ‘philosophy of limits.’ In that way we can also take steps to cease betraying ourselves, cease harming and deceiving our own people. We can also free our society from its apocalyptic concealment, and in the process enlarge our vision. We can break out of our long-standing numbing in the vitalizing endeavor of learning, or relearning, to feel. And we can divest ourselves of a debilitating sense of futurelessness and once more feel bonded to past and future generations.”

    The future is in our hands. We must not be content to drift along on the path of nuclear terror. Our responsibility as citizens of Earth and of all nations is to grasp the enormity of our challenge in the Nuclear Age and to rise to that challenge on behalf of ourselves, our children and all future generations. Our task must be to reclaim our humanity and assure our common future by ridding the world of these inhumane instruments of indiscriminate death and destruction. The path to assuring humanity’s future runs through Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s past.
    * David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002) and the editor of Hope in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity’s Future (Capra Press, 2003). This article is being published as Blackaby Paper #4 by Abolition 2000-UK.
    Sources

    _____, “Records of the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing,” Nagasaki: City of Nagasaki, 1998.

    _____, “The Outline of Atomic Bomb Damage in Hiroshima,” Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1994.

    _____, The Spirit of Hiroshima, An Introduction to the Atomic Bomb Tragedy, Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1999.

    Cantelon, Philip L., Richard G. Hewlett and Robert C. Williams (eds.), The American Atom, A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present (Second Edition), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

    Hogan, Michael J. (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

    Lifton, Robert J. and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, New York: Avon Books, 1996.

    Matsubara, Miyoko, “The Spirit of Hiroshima,” Santa Barbara, CA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1994, online at: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/hiroshima-hibakusha.html.

    Udall, Stewart L., The Myths of August, A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

    Walker, J. Samuel, Prompt and Utter Destruction, Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.