We are thrilled to share that This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (1971) by Richard Falk, our Senior Vice President, has been selected as a Book for the Century (Political and Legal) on the occasion of the centennial issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs, issued by the Council on Foreign Relations. Richard’s book is part of a set considered “essential for understanding the century ahead.” The reviewers highlighted Richard’s use of terms such as “limits to growth” and “spaceship earth,” calling the book “evocative and illuminating.” In the book, Richard calls “for a revolution in consciousness that would reimagine how peoples and societies could organize themselves for sustainable life.” See the full review HERE and join us in congratulating Richard!
To celebrate this enormous honor and to revisit the topics Richard discussed in the book more than 50 years ago, our President Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Richard will meet in conversation as part of our Nuclear Dangers series. Details will be announced shortly!
UN General Assembly Hall during the closing meeting of the 10th NPT Review Conference on August 26, 2022.
Over the last four weeks, 191 countries met at the United Nations in New York for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. The month-long meeting ended without an outcome document, as consensus couldn’t be reached, primarily on issues related to nuclear disarmament.* The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) participated in this important conference, delivering a statement that highlighted the urgency of nuclear disarmament in the current moment and organizing and participating in several side events focused on related issues. Given the failure of the NPT Review Conference to deliver meaningfully on nuclear disarmament, NAPF calls upon all NPT states to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or TPNW. This treaty came into force in January of 2021 and has been ratified by 66 countries and counting. All other NPT states parties should join their ranks.
This August marked the 77th anniversary of the unconscionable atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which as Einstein put it, “changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” In the intervening decades, more countries joined the nuclear weapons club, with the United States and the Soviet Union proliferating in the extreme, reaching – near the end of the Cold War – arsenals of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons each. Over that time, we experienced numerous close calls, including the most famous one – the Cuban Missile Crisis – and many experts agree that good luck played a big role in averting a nuclear apocalypse. “But luck is not a strategy,” the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned at the opening session of this review conference. Given that a nuclear weapon state (Russia) has brutally attacked and invaded a non-nuclear weapon state (Ukraine), that the war has implicated other nuclear weapon states as well, and that there are additional rising geopolitical tensions, we need a far better strategy. In fact, the only reasonable answer to the present state of affairs is nuclear disarmament.
In 1970, the NPT came into force, setting up a two-tier system of five countries – that had nuclear weapons by that point and were allowed to keep them – and the rest of the world. However, this arrangement was meant to be a temporary one and the five nuclear weapons states (China, France, Soviet Union – now Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) were – and remain – obligated to pursue nuclear disarmament, according to an article of the treaty, Article VI. Fifty-two years later, the nuclear weapon states have not only not fulfilled their NPT obligations, but they are doing precisely the opposite of pursuing disarmament. No wonder an agreement couldn’t be reached at the NPT conference.
But there is good news on the horizon. In 2017, 122 countries negotiated the TPNW and the treaty went into force in January of 2021. What these states essentially said is that nuclear weapons have no place in this world and must be eliminated. This view has been shaped by deep knowledge and understanding of humanitarian harm of nuclear weapons from their use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to their testing around the world, from places like the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia in the Pacific, to the deserts of the American southwest, Algeria, Australia, western China, and Kazakhstan. Moreover, the past use and testing – whose devastating consequences persist to today – is just a sliver of the harm that would be unleashed upon humanity should nuclear weapons be used in the future.
First, the weapons in today’s nuclear arsenals are much more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and there are 13,000 of them rather than just a few. Second, at present, the nuclear weapon states have delivery systems that can deliver up to ten warheads to different locations – locations that are either far or close to one another. Finally, unlike with what happened in Japan, where there was no possible nuclear retaliation, there would almost certainly be a response to a nuclear attack anywhere in the world. And unlike with nuclear tests, where efforts were made not to cause widespread fires, nuclear weapon attacks on cities would cause such widespread fires so as to shut off food production and agriculture, leading to widespread famine and the death of billions of people.
This is the second review conference in a row, following the 9th NPT Review Conference in 2015, that has failed to reach consensus. The urgency for disarmament couldn’t be higher and our commitment to it must be reinvigorated rather than allowed to falter. There is a way forward with the TPNW and we look forward to doing our part to strengthen and implement this treaty in full.
* Technically, Russia blocked the outcome document over what their delegate referred to as “politicized” paragraphs regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. Subsequent statements from individual countries such as Costa Rica and South Africa, to joint statements by TPNW states, New Agenda Coalition, and the Non-Aligned Movement, reflected deep concern about the lack of progress and ambition on nuclear disarmament and the fulfillment of NPT’s Article VI obligations. I was particularly inspired by the South African statement, which quoted Nelson Mandela as saying, “Why do they need them, anyway?”
We held our 28th Annual Sadako Peace Day once again in the Sadako Peace Garden at La Casa de Maria to remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all innocent victims of war. The event took place on Tuesday, August 9, 2022, from 6:00 – 7:00 pm PT. It was the first time we were able to hold Sadako Peace Day at at La Casa de Maria since 2018, when the retreat center suffered terrible damage from the mudslides that took place after the Thomas Fires. Frank Bognar, NAPF Board Chair, welcomed everyone to this special event. This year, we introduced Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, our President, who gave a moving keynote talk about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. There were poetry readings by Emma Trelles, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, Father Larry Gosselin, and Perie Longo, Chair of NAPF’s Poetry Committee. Hal Maynard and Sandy Jones, local singer/songwriters, played original music, Dr. Jimmy Hara spoke about Sadako’s short life and her inspiring wish for peace, and Bob Sedivy, a komusō monk, opened and closed the evening on the shakuhachi. Our poets read their own and the poetry of David Krieger, our Co-Founder and President Emeritus, reminding us of the need to care for each other and for our mother Earth. We were touched to see so many members of our wonderful community in attendance. Thank you to all who were able to join us! For a video of Dr. Hughes delivering her keynote, see HERE. For photos from the event by Rick Carter, see HERE.
Our President, Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, delivered a statement on behalf of NAPF at the NGO Session of the 10th NPT Review Conference. The session took place in General Assembly Hall at the United Nations in New York on August 5, 2022. Our statement focused on the urgency of nuclear disarmament in the current moment and the legal obligations and other reasons for nuclear weapons states to pursue disarmament.
We are inspired by remarks from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who delivered his statement to the NPT Review Conference on August 1, 2022. Secretary-General stated that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. We need the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as much as ever.” Watch the entire statement:
President of Soka Gakkai International, Daisaku Ikeda, also issued a statement to the NPT Review Conference on July 26, 2022. The statement calls for No First Use of Nuclear Weapons and has NAPF’s full support. View statement HERE.
You can read all of the NPT Review Conference statements from States Parties and NGOs HERE.
By Richard Appelbaum, PhD
Doctoral Faculty – School of Leadership Studies
Director of Leadership for Sustainability Doctoral Concentration
As I write this, I cannot erase the images of Ukraine under siege. A bloodied mother, ready to give birth fleeing from a maternity hospital reduced to burning rubble. Endless lines of refugees under Russian fire in “safe” evacuation corridors. Ukrainian teenage boys and girls are taking up arms in what must seem a fight to the death against overwhelming odds. I am inspired by Zelenskyy’s fearless courage and resolve; I am enraged and frightened by Putin’s determination to reclaim Ukraine at whatever human cost.
Why has one European nation invaded another with inevitably tragic consequences – something we thought (or at least hoped) had ended with the Cold War? I am no expert on Ukraine, nor have I ever been there, although my forebearers left its shtetls in the 19th century, fleeing pogroms and economic hardship. Like all of you reading this, I have tried to make sense of the senseless, drawing on whatever sources I can find. I have also been educated by a UCSB doctoral student who has lived with us on and off for a decade, James Altman. He spent two years in Donbas (eastern Ukraine) along the line of fire, documenting the plight of children for UNICEF.
Why is this happening? I have encountered two plausible explanations.
One lays the blame squarely at the feet of the U.S. and NATO. In a recent article in Salon, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges lays this out clearly and forcefully. In his view, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, NATO’s eastward expansion – which eventually included many of the countries that had been part of the Soviet Union – brought the military alliance (and its nuclear weaponry) to within 100 miles of Russia’s borders. Let’s not forget that when the Soviet Union tried to put nuclear missiles on our doorstep in Cuba, we risked nuclear war to prevent that from happening. George F. Kennan, then considered U.S.’s foremost Russian expert, in a 1997 New York Times op-ed called this expansion of NATO “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era,” predicting that it “may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
The other explanation agrees that NATO expansion, and the Europeanization of much of the former Soviet Union, have fueled Putin’s nationalistic desire to restore what he sees as the greatness of the Russian empire. But it takes that explanation one step farther and places the blame squarely on Putin. Fiona Hill served in various high-level Russian and Eurasian intelligence posts under Bush, Obama, and Trump. She famously testified on Trump’s mishandling of Ukraine during the first impeachment hearings. In a recent New York Times discussion piece, she argues that Putin, after 22 years in power and with virtually total control, is “focused on regathering the lands of the old Russian Empire, not just the Soviet Union… his fear, as far as I can tell from some of his speeches, is not just that Ukraine is going to fall into a NATO security umbrella, but there’s going to be a Westernization or even a Ukrainianization of the identity of the Ukrainian people. And once that is done, then Russia can’t get them back, because then you are just occupying a land, not reintegrating with your brothers and sisters.”
There is plenty of blame to go around, but none of this helps end Putin’s destruction of Ukraine, the bombing of its people, the flood of refugees. But it does suggest one possible face-saving way out—what the pundits call an “off-ramp”(how gentle!) that would enable Putin to claim victory and cut his losses in a war of resistance by the Ukrainian people. There are rumors that Zelenskyy has offered to take NATO membership off the table. NATO could find some way to back that pledge, which, in turn, would remove at least one of Putin’s concerns and call his bluff.
I draw two long-range conclusions. Neither directly addresses the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine, but both are clearly revealed by the conflict.
First, there is an urgent need to get rid of nuclear weapons. Once again, the world is teetering at the brink of nuclear warfare. ICAN, the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, provides an excellent portal for activism. In my community of Santa Barbara, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), a member of ICAN, “wages peace” to play this role.
Long-term goal: nuclear 0.
Second, there is an urgent need to end our global economic dependence on fossil fuels. The war in Ukraine reveals the global dependency on oil supply chains. Stopping the global flow of Russian oil would likely trigger a global economic collapse. Americans may champion Ukraine’s courageous fight for democracy, but whether they are willing to pay an economic price—even in the form of high gasoline prices—will be tested in the midterm elections. Most of us are all for cutting carbon emissions for environmental reasons; global interdependence on oil adds another compelling reason to prioritize this. There are countless organizations addressing carbon dependency; for those of my (aging) generation, check out Third Act and Elders for Climate Action; for the more youthful, there are the Sunrise Movement and UNICEF’s Youth for Climate Action.
October 4, 1957 – The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite, as the Space Age began. U.S. government leaders concerned that a missile capable of launching satellites (particularly follow-on Soviet space missions that carried animals and hundreds of pounds of equipment) might soon be able to place a nuclear warhead on U.S. or allied territory led to fears of a “missile gap.” Inflated estimates from the U.S. Air Force and intelligence community predicted that the Soviets might deploy up to 500 operational intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by 1961. However, some of the first U.S. military spy satellites, including CORONA, determined by 1960 that the Soviets, in fact, possessed only four operational ICBMs. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. military and scientific communities studied the deployment of nuclear weapons into outer space including a Deep Space Force nuclear-armed manned program, a nuclear-powered spacecraft (Project Orion), and the testing of nuclear weapons on the Moon. The Soviets also worked on antisatellite weapons as well as orbital nuclear weapons platforms called FOBs (Fractional Orbit Bombardment system). On October 17, 1963, multilateral negotiations culminated in the passage of U.N. General Assembly Resolution No. 1884 (XVIII) which called on nation-states “to refrain from placing in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction or from installing such weapons on celestial bodies.” More negotiations followed which resulted in the signing and ratification of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Comments: While in the ensuing decades since Sputnik, nuclear weapon states, especially the United States, have spent tens of billions of dollars on military assets to utilize outer space for communication, reconnaissance, threat assessment, and nuclear strike warning, recent trends toward actually weaponizing outer space, including the deployment of tremendously expensive space missile defenses, are dangerously destabilizing trends. The long-established international legal paradigm of demilitarizing outer space and preventing nuclear war have been dealt lethal blows by President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and by President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Agreement of 2015 and the INF Treaty of 1987, the creation of a sixth military branch The Space Force, and a refusal to commit to renew the New START (Moscow) Treaty before it expires in February 2021. The defeat of Trump in the November 2020 election is a necessary prerequisite to reduce the dangers of nuclear war on Earth, under or on the surface of the seas, and in outer space. (Sources: Marcia Dunn. “Trump Directs Pentagon to Create ‘Space Force.’” The Associated Press, June 18, 2018 https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trump-directs-pentagon-to-create-space-force/ accessed April 28, 2019 and Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 28 and Bob Preston, et al., “Space Weapons: Earth Wars.” Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation and Project Air Force, 2002, p. 11.)
October 8, 1993 – William Broad’s article in the New York Times, “Russia Has Doomsday Machine U.S. Expert Says” revealed that Dr. Bruce Blair, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer and nuclear weapons expert with The Brookings Institution (who later served as President of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Pentagon watchdog organization, The Center For Defense Information) became the first Westerner to disclose the existence of what was previously believed to be a fictional device mentioned in director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove” – a doomsday machine. Dr. Blair’s contacts with Russian military officials allowed him to become aware of a computer-controlled means of ensuring that if the U.S. launched a first strike and destroyed the highest levels of Russian leadership as well as a large number of Russian nuclear forces, that enough nuclear-tipped ICBMs could still be launched to ensure MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction. This system of nuclear command and control established in November 1984, designated Perimeter (Perimetr) or “Dead Hand,” was buried deep beneath the Ural Mountains and was automated (except for one human in the decision making chain). Dr. Blair noted that, “The doomsday machine provides for a massive salvo…(of) nuclear combat missiles…without any participation by local (launch) crews, weapons commanders in the field would be completely bypassed.” The continued existence of this Cold War era system was verified by one of its designers Valery Yarynich, a former Soviet colonel and 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, in March of 2009. And more recently in November 2018, the former chief of staff of the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel Viktor Yesin, noted that, “The Perimeter functions perfectly and has passed all stages of preparation and verification,” according to a Pravda article. Comments: With the onset of a new, seemingly unrestricted nuclear arms race, that includes missile defenses (thanks to U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty of 1972 by the Bush Administration) and large numbers of short range nuclear missiles to be deployed on Russia’s borders by NATO (again, thanks to U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty of 1987 by the Trump Administration), the Russians have expressed fear that even the Perimeter system may be ineffective due to Russian missile forces being overwhelmed by extremely large numbers of U.S. nuclear weapons. Such fears have triggered even more unstable responses by both sides, particularly by Russia which has accelerated the development of hypersonic nuclear-armed missiles and other “Dead Hand” type devices such as stealthy automated deep underwater mini-submarines each equipped with a 100-150 megaton warhead meant to destroy U.S. coastal port cities with nuclear tsunamis and enhanced radioactive fallout. It’s as if military and political leaders of both countries, and the other nuclear-armed nations, have forgotten that the larger the number of nuclear weapons exploded in such an insane conflict, the more likely a global nuclear winter will ensure the demise of our global civilization and possibly our entire species. Cynically it also appears that the nuclear weapons contractors are counting on enjoying unprecedented profits for many years to come. Even if a nuclear war is not triggered, humanity will still suffer contamination from reckless nuclear production and accidents as well as many other social, health, environmental and economic deficits due to the diversion of trillions of dollars to this obscene buildup. It’s time to bring a measure of sanity back into this equation starting from the bottom up as hundreds of millions of global citizenry are not only protesting this state of affairs but promising to elect new leaders who reject the failed wisdom of “Peace Through Strength” and “Nuclear Weapons Keep Us Safe,” and instead embrace a new paradigm that calls for an end to war and the nuclear arms race. (Sources: Jason Torchinsky. “The Soviets Made A Real Doomsday Device in the ‘80s and The Russians Still Have It Today.” Foxtrot Alpha. https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-soviets-made-a-real-doomsday-device-in-the-80s-and-1794225196 and “Without the INF Treaty, USA Can Destroy Russian Nuclear Weapons Easily.” Pravda. Nov. 9, 2018 www.pravdareport.com/news/russia/141954-dead-hand/ both accessed May 19, 2019.)
October 16, 1980 – China conducted its last atmospheric nuclear test exactly 16 years after it first exploded an atomic bomb. In total, that nation conducted a total of 45 such tests before joining most of the nuclear weapons states in signing (and later ratifying) the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on September 24, 1996. Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, and other detrimental health and environmental contamination still plague global populations decades after over 2,000 nuclear bombs were exploded below ground or in the atmosphere by members of the Nuclear Club over the last 75 years. But the admonition that those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it is seen in the fact that the Trump Administration and other nuclear weapons states are unfortunately considering renewed nuclear testing despite a strong international legal prohibition against such environmentally damaging and human health-impacting insanity. Comments: Although Russia signed the CTBT and ratified that agreement (by a 298-74 vote in the Russian Duma on April 21, 2000), the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty by a vote of 51-48 on October 13, 1999 and despite the establishment of a global verification regime, in the form of hundreds of seismic monitoring stations, as well as reliable national technical means of verification in place, there is no credible reason for the U.S. not to ratify the CTBT. Hopefully, a newly elected Democratic-dominated Congress should place this near the top of its agenda in January of 2021. However complicating this matter is the fact that the Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of 2018 reversed President Obama’s decision not to conduct more nuclear tests and it provided for an illogical return to such testing in order to meet “geopolitical challenges,” which unfortunately fits a pattern for this president of unreasonably ratcheting up nuclear tensions and the risk of nuclear war. The NPR also mentioned technical reasons as a justification for more testing, however a 2018 commentary by Philip E. Coyle and James McKeon notes that that issue has long been put to bed by U.S. scientific consensus. For over 25 years since U.S. nuclear testing ended in September 1992, the heads of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have assessed that the U.S. stockpile is reliable and that resuming nuclear testing is unnecessary. Coyle and McKeon point out that the Stockpile Stewardship program has perfected the use of advanced simulations using supercomputers to provide even more information about the U.S. nuclear arsenal than what was ascertained during the period of nuclear testing. (Sources: Philip E. Coyle and James McKeon. “Mushroom Clouds Beneath the Surface: The Dangers of A Return to Nuclear Testing.” WarontheRocks.com. April 20, 2018 https://warontherocks.com/2018/04/mushroom-clouds-beneath-the-surface-the-dangers-of-a-return-to-nuclear-testing/ accessed May 25, 2019 and Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 10, 12, 19, 22 and 24.)
October 28, 1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis ended on this date. “It was perhaps the most dangerous issue which the world has had to face since the end of the Second World War” according to then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Today this is still true, with the possible exception of the 1983 NATO Able Archer exercise, interpreted by Soviet leaders as a military exercise disguising a nuclear first strike by the U.S., and other Cold War era false alerts and near-misses including more recent unusually irrational nuclear threats wielded by President Trump against North Korea and Iran. During the very tense thirteen days of October 1962, the world came the closest it has ever come to thermonuclear war when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev secreted 42 SS-4 nuclear-tipped medium-range ballistic missiles (range: 1,200 miles) along with approximately 100 tactical nuclear warheads including nuclear torpedoes, cruise missiles, and short-range rockets to the island of Cuba. Several times during the crisis, unexpected events like the Russian shoot down of a U.S. U-2 spy plane over the island or the U.S. Navy’s firing of depth charges at nuclear-armed Soviet submarines, nearly triggered World War III. If the unthinkable had happened 57 years ago, it is extremely possible that a then limited Soviet nuclear arsenal might have killed about a few million Americans but because of overwhelming U.S. nuclear superiority at the time, the use of the inflexible full-scale SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) by U.S. strategic nuclear forces would probably have resulted in the killing of hundreds of millions in not only the Soviet Union but other pre-set targeted regions like China and Eastern Europe thereby triggering a then unanticipated global nuclear winter event that ultimately would have led to billions of deaths, the end of human civilization and possibly the near-extinction of our species. Thankfully that eventuality never materialized as secret diplomacy between lower-level representatives of both nations helped President John Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev agree to finally end the stalemate and remove the Cuban missiles (along with a secret quid-pro-quo promise by Kennedy to remove obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey at a later date). (Sources: Daniel Ellsberg. “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” New York: Bloomsbury, 2017 and Michael Mandelbaum. “The Nuclear Question: The U.S. and Nuclear Weapons, 1946-76.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 129 and Robert L. O’Connell. The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust. in Robert Cowley, ed. “What Ifs? of American History.” New York: Berkley Books, 2003, pp. 251-272.)
November 7-11, 1983 – A supposedly routine NATO military exercise designated Able Archer 83 inadvertently almost triggered World War III! The exercise involved an unusually realistic buildup to a simulated U.S. nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The problem was that in the decades following the development of nuclear weapons in 1945 the Soviets knew about past U.S. military plans that called for a bolt-from-the-blue series of strategic bomber attacks or ICBM launches against Soviet military and civilian targets and their extreme paranoia or fear of an actual U.S. nuclear attack had grown even stronger during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). Stoking these fears were many statements by the President referring to the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” perhaps legitimately reinforced by deadly incidents such as the Soviet shootdown of the KAL 007 civilian airliner (interpreted by the Kremlin as a U.S. military spy plane flying near extremely sensitive defense installations) which killed all 269 passengers and crew (including 62 Americans) over Sakhalin Island on September 1, 1983. A large consensus of Soviet military and political leaders believed that the Able Archer exercise was, in actuality, a cover for an actual U.S. nuclear first strike. According to a declassified 1997 CIA analysis by Benjamin Fischer, when NATO generals sent a flash telegram to its Western European military bases, the Soviets believed the buildup to World War III had been initiated and they responded by readying their defenses including deploying nuclear-armed Russian aircraft on high alert at dozens of Soviet air bases. U.S. and NATO military commanders were shocked at this response and they quickly ratcheted down the exercise. In Washington, DC, the Pentagon’s plans to rehearse a nuclear conflict by escorting President Reagan to a deep underground bunker were suddenly altered by National Security Advisor Robert “Bud” McFarlane who directed the President to immediately make a televised public appearance. The Soviets breathed a sigh of relief and de-escalated their nuclear alert. Comments: Our species has been very lucky over the last 75 years as the perceived “strength and reliability” of nuclear deterrence theory has faltered countless times yet we have somehow avoided nuclear doomsday. But our rational minds know that eventually our luck will run out unless we make a major paradigm change. That is why it is a global imperative to dramatically reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons while simultaneously shrinking global conventional military forces before the human race suffers near- or total extinction. (Sources: Numerous articles from alternative and mainstream websites including the National Security Archive at George Washington University and Nate Jones. “Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War.” New York: The New Press, 2016.)
November 18, 2008 – The acclaimed publication The Nation featured a web-based article on the topic of “Smart Defense,” edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel. The article quoted representatives of the military-industrial complex which surprisingly expressed skepticism about the Bush Administration’s military intervention in the Third World. The piece noted that a senior Pentagon advisory board, the Defense Business Board, declared that the then annual military budget of more than $500 billion and the ancillary $200 billion budgeted for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “is not sustainable.” In addition, The Nation pointed to an op-ed by the highly respected military analyst Lawrence Korb of The Center for American Progress and Miriam Pemberton of the Institute of Policy Studies which concluded that, “The balance between our spending on military forces and other security tools like diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, and homeland security needs to change.” Comments: Amazingly, a decade later the Western news media has jumped unabashedly onto the bandwagon of both the perpetual Global War on Terrorism, that has escalated steadily and without any end in sight since the 9-11 attacks (few, if any, mainstream journalists, strategists, or nongovernmental experts for example have argued that the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden could have qualified as the point at which President Obama should have declared that the GWOT was won and could thereafter be ratcheted down), and Cold War II, a renewed nuclear and conventional arms race that the U.S., Russia, and other top militaries have inexplicably embraced as an essential necessity. Thankfully a recent ray of light has originated from the U.S. peace movement in the form of a campaign known as “People Over Pentagon,” which includes over twenty organizational sponsors including Daily Kos, FCNL, 350.org, Code Pink, Greenpeace, The Institute for Policy Studies, Peace Action, WAND, World Beyond War and others. This effort, begun in May of 2019, appeals to the American people as well as all the Democratic candidates running for President to demand an immediate $200 billion reduction (a modest 25-30 percent cut) in the U.S. military budget and the requirement that any President cannot single-handedly launch a war without Congressional authorization. The savings from such cuts could fuel Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and serious efforts to address climate change. However, much more work along these lines need to be done worldwide for although many international antiwar campaigns have been strengthened in the last few years, the annual SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) report released in April of 2019 noted that the world is still spending an appalling $1.8 trillion on military expenditures every year. Most relevant to these dreadful statistics are the recent comments of Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin correlating military spending and nuclear war, “Any war can turn into a nuclear war.” The dire events of the past decade require that hundreds of millions of inhabitants of this Pale Blue Dot who oppose war and nuclear weapons must redouble their efforts to educate, agitate, lobby, and push ever harder for the changes needed to make our global civilization survivable and sustainable into the indefinite future. We must not tolerate the authoritarian ethic that embraces the necessity of perpetual war, which at any time might inadvertently trigger our species’ extermination through nuclear Armageddon. (Sources: “An Agenda to End Wasteful Pentagon Spending & For a Just and More Prosperous Future.” PeopleOverPentagon.org. May 2019 https://peopleoverpentagon.org and “World Military Expenditure Grows to $1.8 Trillion in 2018.” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). April 29, 2019 https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2019/world-expenditure-grows-18-trillion-2018 both accessed May 23, 2019.)
November 30, 1950 – Within a short time period after a U.S. military victory over North Korea was reversed by the entry of the Peoples’ Republic of China into the war, a large force of U.S. Marines were surrounded by Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir on this date. In Washington, DC at a televised press conference, President Harry Truman was asked whether there was active consideration by him of the possible use of an atomic bomb in the Korean Conflict. The President responded that, “There has always been active consideration of its use.” In fact many historians as well as former nuclear war planners like Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg have revealed that President Truman’s statement, “was not an offhand comment but a statement reflecting the fact that some or all of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff actually recommended their use.” Comments: Thankfully U.S. or Soviet nuclear weapons were not used in the Korean Conflict or in Vietnam or during the tense decades of the first Cold War (1945-1991) but there were many frightening near-misses, an abundance of nuclear saber-rattling, and times like the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and the NATO Able Archer exercise in November 1983 when nuclear war was barely avoided. In the last few years, a rejuvenated Cold War II has again threatened to make nuclear war a more likely eventuality. Only a rising tide of global consensus toward the elimination of these doomsday weapons can save our species. (Source: Daniel Ellsberg. “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 315-317.)
December 1, 1999 – America’s Defense Monitor, a half-hour documentary PBS-TV series that premiered in 1987, released a new film, a 15-minute long advocacy video titled “Back From The Brink: End The Nuclear Threat Now,” produced by The Center for Defense Information, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization and independent monitor of the Pentagon, founded in 1972, whose board of directors and staff included retired military officers (Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr.), former U.S. government officials (Philip Coyle, who served as assistant secretary of defense), and civilian experts (Dr. Bruce Blair, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer and former analyst with The Brookings Institution). The press release for the video noted that, “There are thousands of nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia on hair-trigger alert, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. The Russian early warning system is deteriorating due to the collapse of the Russian economy. As recent near-disasters prove, both countries are increasingly prone to accidents or miscalculations that could trigger a nuclear disaster. If the United States takes the initiative to de-alert its nuclear weapons, Russia will follow.” Guest commentators who spoke about the nuclear threat included the late Admiral Stansfield Turner [1923-2018], USN (Ret.) who served as CIA Director from 1977-1980, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, and Lynn Woolsey, a former U.S. Congressional Representative (California’s 6th District, 1993-2013) who served as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus from 2010-13. Comments: It is impossible to justify how much the nuclear threat has increased in these last two decades. Equally hard to contemplate is that a current or even retired CIA Director would follow Admiral Turner’s lead and call for substantial reductions or even the elimination of the U.S. nuclear arsenal (although retired Defense Secretary William Perry has made similar statements in the last few years, calling for the phase-out of all U.S. land-based ICBMs in 2016). Twenty years ago or so, President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which unfortunately Congress voted not to ratify, and the START III Framework Agreement with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. However today President Trump has committed himself to using a wrecking ball to scuttle a whole series of vital arms control treaties including the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Iran Nuclear Agreement of 2015, the INF Treaty of 1987, The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, while unnecessarily delaying or even refusing to extend the New START Treaty before it expires in February 2021. That’s why it is critical for the survival of our species to encourage the American voting electorate, including most importantly young voters, to turn out in unprecedentedly large numbers to elect a successor to Trump who will reverse all of his unwise, reckless, and dangerously destabilizing arms control, military, and diplomatic missteps before it is too late. It is also fervently hoped that the 46th President elected on November 3, 2020 will commit to the de-alerting of nuclear weapons, the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, agreeing with Russia quickly to extend the New START Treaty, and forging a new U.S. negotiating consensus to cooperate in a United Nations campaign to convince the nine nuclear weapons states including the U.S. to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by 2024.
December 22, 2008 – Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News TV, “The President is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the nuclear codes that he would use in the event of a nuclear attack on the U.S. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.” Comments: While the facts about the President’s 24-7-365 access to the nuclear “football” have been well established by many news media sources as well as being dramatized on stage, in films, and on television for some time, it is nevertheless highly disconcerting to realize that miscalculation, false nuclear alerts, irrational decision-making, combined with human infallibility under the dictates of extremely short time constraints, can, despite a plethora of safeguards, fail safes, and verification protocols, credibly result in what the late Jonathan Schell (“The Fate of the Earth”) called, “a republic of insects and grass” – the possibility of human extinction. But the nuclear threat to our species is even worse than what Cheney revealed and what today the world is faced with — a nuclear saber-rattler like Donald Trump in the White House. Because, in point of fact, the President is not the sole authority for launching nuclear weapons. Daniel Ellsberg’s intriguing 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” authoritatively concluded that, after discovering many specific cases where commanders in the field were delegated that authority in the 1950s through 1960s and more recently, the idea that the U.S. President (and most probably other top governmental leaders of nuclear weapons states) has unilateral access to the “nuclear football” represents essentially a hoax. The actual authority to press the nuclear button is delegated to a range of actors, both military and civilian, at various levels of authority. But it is critical that this relatively widespread delegation of nuclear launch capability be kept secret and the myth of sole presidential authority perpetuated in order to minimize fear on the part of citizenry, allies, and the rest of the world. The result of this secrecy, what Ellsberg calls the ‘Strangelove Paradox,’ is that nuclear arsenals represent a failed means of deterrence. In simpler terms, our human species is in even more danger from these doomsday weapons since an unconscionable number of people actually have the ability to launch a nuclear Armageddon! Nobel Peace Prize winner and former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, may have said it best, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again for any reason.” Therefore as we accelerate toward the path of eliminating nuclear weapons, until Global Zero is achieved, we must de-alert U.S., Russian, Chinese, European, North Korean, Israeli, Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenals. Give the human race at least 72 hours to think about it and change course before unleashing the end of our global civilization. (Sources: Christopher J. Coyne. Reviewer of “The Doomsday Machine” by Daniel Ellsberg. The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. Vol. 23, No. 4, Spring 2019 www.theindependent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=1380 accessed May 2, 2019 and Daniel Ellsberg. “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 68-70 and numerous news media sources including Fox News and Democracy Now.)
December 23, 1983 –The TTAPS group of scientists, R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and astronomer, astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934-1996), published the article “Nuclear Winter and Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” in the journal Science on the previously unknown global atmospheric and climate impacts of nuclear war – that as few as 100-200 nuclear weapons exploded in a period of one or two days could inject extremely large amounts of dust and smoke into the Earth’s upper atmosphere causing significant reductions in light and temperature levels triggering a “nuclear winter” that could substantially decrease agricultural yields. Their study concluded that in an all-out nuclear war, in which about 5,000 megatons were exploded, that the global impact would prevent crops from germinating and producing foodstuffs causing over a billion deaths from starvation and triggering other previously unforeseen environmental impacts that could lead to near- or total extinction of the human species. Comments: This theory, opposed by military and scientific conservatives for decades, has been replicated and expanded by Professor Alan Robock and other colleagues to the point that by the 21st century most nuclear experts were able to authoritatively argue that neither side can actually “win” a nuclear war. Such a horrendous all-out nuclear Armageddon has become tantamount to committing mass Omnicide of the human race. (Sources: Joshua Coupe, Charles G. Bardeen, Alan Robock and Owen B. Toon. “Nuclear Winter Responses to Global Nuclear War in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model Version 4 and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E.” Journal of Geophysical Research Atmos. 2019, 124, 8522-8543, Alan Robock. “Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict: Nuclear Winter Is Still A Danger.” Rutgers University, 2014 http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/ and Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon. “Let’s End the Peril of a Nuclear Winter.” New York Times. Feb. 11, 2016 and the Carl Sagan Portal http://www.carlsagan.com accessed May 22, 2019.)
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signatures in 1968 and entered into force in 1970.[i] Despite its name, the NPT sought not only to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, but also, in Article VI, called for good faith negotiations for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date, for nuclear disarmament, and for general and complete disarmament. The treaty also had provisions for review conferences to be held at five-year intervals and for an extension conference to be held 25 years after the treaty entered into force. The purpose of the extension conference was for the parties to the treaty to decide by a majority vote whether the treaty should be extended indefinitely, for a period or periods of time, or not at all.
The decision on extending the NPT was an important one. As the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference approached in the spring of 1995, there was considerable discussion and lobbying with regard to the best course of action for the future of the treaty. The nuclear-armed states parties to the treaty (US, Russia, UK, France and China) wanted an indefinite extension of the treaty, which would preserve their favored (but still highly dangerous) position under the treaty as nuclear weapons states to possess nuclear arms while prohibiting other states from doing so. Some civil society groups, particularly those that favored arms control measures over disarmament, supported the position of the nuclear weapons states for indefinite extension of the treaty.
On the other hand, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, as well as dozens of other civil society groups working on nuclear disarmament, took note of the general lack of effort and progress by the nuclear-armed parties to the treaty in fulfilling their Article VI nuclear disarmament obligations for good faith negotiations for ending the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. Given this, these organizations favored some version of an extension for periods of time, and for the periodic extensions to be contingent upon clear progress toward nuclear disarmament made by the nuclear-armed parties to the treaty. We saw this as a unique opportunity to put pressure on the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their nuclear disarmament obligations under the treaty, rather than continuing indefinitely to ignore those obligations, as they had done for the first 25 years of the treaty’s existence.
I represented the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, which was held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Along with other NGO representatives, we lobbied the non-nuclear weapons countries not to go along with the indefinite extension of the treaty being argued for by the nuclear weapons states and their allies. I remember that Canada took a leadership role in promoting an indefinite extension of the treaty, seemingly as a relatively benign cover for the position of the nuclear weapons states, particularly the United States.
Together with Bas Bruyne from the Netherlands, I prepared a lobbying paper calling for limited extensions of the NPT, which we distributed at the conference. Here is a portion of the argument that we made:
The end of the Cold War has brought us to a crossroads in human history. An important choice will be presented by the NPT Extension Conference in April-May 1995. The world community has the choice to continue on the path of the present two-tier structure of states which possess nuclear weapons and states which do not, or to take a different path.
The declared nuclear-weapons-states seem intent upon perpetuating the two-tier structure of nuclear weapons “haves” and “have nots.” These states are lobbying for an indefinite extension of the NPT. If they are successful in their efforts to gain a majority of parties to the NPT to support an indefinite extension, they will assure a continuation into the indefinite future of the two-tier structure of states. They will also assure that their special privileges and powers in the world community will be undergirded by their continued ability to possess nuclear arsenals.
The likely result of such a world order is that more and more states will aspire to and eventually attain the status of nuclear-weapon-states. Non-nuclear-weapons-states will find many compelling rationales for providing their own national security in the same manner as the nuclear-weapons-states, that is, with nuclear weapons as instruments of policy and warfare.
As we approach the 21st century, the needs of global security stand in stark contrast to Cold War conceptions of national security. Throughout the Cold War, a small number of states justified the possession and threat of use of nuclear weapons by treating such weapons as essential to their security. With the Cold War ended, an imperative has arisen to place national security interests within the framework of common security interests. The pursuit of national security by nuclear deterrence is increasingly unable to guarantee that the collectivity of people’s needs are met on national, regional, or global levels.
The policies that underlie the principle of nuclear deterrence are part of the analytical framework that puts national security above global security. Nuclear weapons, which seemingly provide security for the nations that possess them, in fact threaten the security of all nations, including those that possess them. The security of the whole must not be undermined by such dangerous and outmoded policies. There is no logic to do so, for if the security of the whole is breached, so is the security of the part. If global security is threatened, so is the security of all nations.
If the goal of the international community in the 21st century is common security, then the goal of abolition of nuclear weapons must be taken seriously. At no time since the beginning of the Nuclear Age have conditions in the world been more suitable for developing and implementing a realistic plan for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
No possible justification exists for providing some nations of the world with special privileges and not others. In practice, the NPT has provided for such special privileges by holding declared nuclear-weapons-states and non-nuclear-weapons-states to different standards. Nuclear-weapons-states have been allowed to possess and further develop their nuclear arsenals, while non-nuclear-states are prohibited from developing and possessing nuclear weapons.
The NPT makes sense only as an interim agreement, and not as an agreement that extends indefinitely into the future assuring the two-tier structure of states. In fact, if Article VI of the NPT is to be taken seriously, then the Treaty by its own terms is of limited duration, lasting only until the “good faith” negotiations of the declared nuclear-weapons-states are successful in achieving nuclear disarmament. Thus, there is no possible condition which would justify an indefinite extension of the NPT.
Since the declared nuclear-weapons-states have already gone on record as seeking an indefinite extension of the NPT (which could be interpreted to mean that they are satisfied with the status quo and do not intend to fulfill their Article VI promise to negotiate nuclear disarmament), it is up to the non-nuclear-weapons-states party to the NPT to oppose an indefinite extension and support a limited extension contingent upon the declared nuclear-weapons-states’ fulfilling their obligations under Article VI.[ii]
As the days of the conference wore on, it became more and more evident that the indefinite extension was likely to prevail. A few of us from civil society groups favoring limited extensions began drafting an Abolition 2000 Statement, which became the founding document for the Abolition 2000 Global Network. Key drafters included Jackie Cabasso, Alice Slater, John Burroughs and me. The statement called for the completion of negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention by the year 2000. Some 60 civil society groups, disappointed by the way the NPT extension conference was developing and fearing the indefinite extension would prevail, met in the United Nations cafeteria and adopted the statement calling for nuclear weapons abolition and establishing the Abolition 2000 Global Network.
I continue to think it is one of the best such statements ever produced. Its opening paragraphs state:
A secure and livable world for our children and grandchildren and all future generations requires that we achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and redress the environmental degradation and human suffering that is the legacy of fifty years of nuclear weapons testing and production. Further, the inextricable link between the “peaceful” and warlike uses of nuclear technologies and the threat to future generations inherent in creation and use of long-lived radioactive materials must be recognized. We must move toward reliance on clean, safe, renewable forms of energy production that do not provide the materials for weapons of mass destruction and do not poison the environment for thousands of centuries. The true “inalienable” right is not to nuclear energy, but to life, liberty and security of person in a world free of nuclear weapons.
We recognize that a nuclear weapons free world must be achieved carefully and in a step by step manner. We are convinced of its technological feasibility. Lack of political will, especially on the part of the nuclear weapons states, is the only true barrier. As chemical and biological weapons are prohibited, so must nuclear weapons be prohibited.[iii]
In the end, the delegates to the NPT Review and Extension Conference adopted an indefinite extension by consensus. There was not even a vote on the matter. The US and the other nuclear-armed countries were ecstatic. They would be able to maintain the status quo without having checks on their progress in negotiating in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. Another outcome of the conference was a resolution drafted by the US, UK and Russia calling for a Middle East Zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In nearly a quarter century since then, nothing has come of this resolution but frustration for the Arab states, and Israel remains the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal.
I have participated in many NPT Review Conferences and their Preparatory Committee meetings since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, but I’ve never experienced as much lost opportunity as occurred at that particular crossroads of the NPT in the aftermath of the Cold War, when there was a real opening to put continuing pressure on the nuclear-armed states party to the treaty to fulfill their nuclear disarmament obligations.
The latest breakthrough on nuclear weapons abolition occurred in 2017 when 122 members of the United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).[iv] Once again, civil society organizations were in the forefront of the lobbying efforts, in the form of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN),[v] which received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for attaining support by UN member states for the creation of the TPNW and for the new treaty’s adoption. Unfortunately, the nuclear-armed countries, led by the US, have made it clear that they do not and will not support this new treaty. The treaty, which is now gathering signatures and ratifications, will enter into force 90 days after its 50th ratification or accession is deposited with the United Nations. It is moving steadily toward this goal with the continuing support of ICAN and its more than 500 civil society partner organizations.
[ii] Krieger, David and Bas Bruyne, “Preventing Proliferation by Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Supporting a Limited Extension of the NPT.” Nuclear Proliferation and the Legality of Nuclear Weapons. Eds. William M. Evan and Ved P. Nanda. New York: University Press of America, Inc., 1995.
Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award on October 25, 2015.
Setsuko Thurlow at the 2015 NAPF Evening for Peace.
I am delighted to be here tonight, and meet all of you, working hard for a peaceful and just world free of nuclear weapons. I am honored and humbled to receive your Award tonight. I am truly grateful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Tonight I would like to share with you my personal testimony of surviving the atomic bombing as a child victim, and then living in North America advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons. For the 70th anniversary of the bombings, it is appropriate to reflect upon and ponder the meaning of living in the nuclear age.
For most of my adult life, I have devoted my energy to disarmament education through sharing my experience of Hiroshima. It is always difficult for me to remember my painful childhood memories, and repeat that story over the years. However, I believe that it is important for me to provide a human face and voice in the complex and abstract discourse on nuclear weapons and help people to increase their awareness of the issue with empathy, sensitivity, and moral and ethical consideration.
That fateful day, August 6, 1945, as a 13-year-old school girl and a member of the Student Mobilization Program, I was at Army headquarters, 1.8 kilometers from ground zero. About 30 of us students were assigned to work as decoding assistants of secret messages. At 8:15 a.m., as Major Yanai was giving us a pep talk at the assembly, suddenly I saw in the window a blinding bluish-white flash and I remember having the sensation of floating in the air. As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building. I could not move. I knew I faced death. I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries, “Mother, help me,” “God, help me.” Then, suddenly I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man saying, “Don’t give up! Keep moving! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening. Crawl towards it. Get out as quickly as possible.” As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that same room were burned alive.
Outside, I looked around. Although it was morning, it was as dark as twilight because of the dust and smoke rising in the air. A soldier ordered me and two other surviving girls to escape to the nearby hills.
I saw streams of ghostly figures, slowly shuffling from the center of the city towards the nearby hills. They did not look like human beings; their hair stood straight up and they were naked and tattered, bleeding, burned, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing, flesh and skin hanging from their bones, some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands, and some with their stomachs burst open, with intestines hanging out. We students joined the ghostly procession, carefully stepping over the dead and injured. There was a deathly silence broken only by the moans of the injured and their pleas for water. The foul stench of burned skin filled the air.
We managed to escape to the foot of the hill where there was an army training ground, about the size of two football fields. It was covered with the dead and injured, who were desperately begging, often in faint whispers, “Water, water, please give me water.” But we had no containers to carry water. We went to a nearby stream to wash off the blood and dirt from our bodies. Then we tore off our blouses, soaked them with water and hurried back to hold them to the mouths of the injured, who desperately sucked in the moisture. We did not see any doctors or nurses all day. When darkness fell, we sat on the hillside and all night watched the entire city burn, numbed by the massive, grotesque scale of death and suffering we witnessed.
My father left town early that morning. When he saw the mushroom cloud rising above the city he hurried back to the devastated city. My mother was rescued from under our collapsed home, and was able to escape to her brother’s house outside the city. My sister and her four-year-old son were burned beyond recognition while crossing a bridge going to the doctor’s office in the center of the city. Several days later they both died in agony. An aunt and two cousins were found as skeletons. My sister-in-law is still missing.
We rejoiced in the survival of my uncle and aunt in the outskirts of the city, but several days later they began to have purple spots all over their bodies, which was a sign of radiation poisoning. According to my parents, who cared for them until their deaths, their internal organs seemed to be rotting and coming out as a thick, black liquid. Radiation, the unique characteristic of the atomic bombing, affected people in mysterious and random ways, with some dying instantly, and others weeks, months or years later by the delayed effects, and radiation is still killing survivors today, 70 years later.
While my own group was at the army headquarters, the majority of my school friends along with several thousand grade 7 and 8 students from all the city’s high schools were engaged in the task of clearing fire lanes in the center of Hiroshima. Most of them were killed instantly by the heat of 4,000 degrees Celsius. Many were simply carbonized or vaporized. My sister-in-law was there, supervising students, and never came back to her young children.
Thus, my beloved city of Hiroshima suddenly became desolation, with heaps of ash and rubble, skeletons and blackened corpses. Out of a population of 360,000, most were non-combatant women, children and elderly who became victims of the indiscriminate massacre of the atomic bombing. By the end of 1945 some 140,000 had perished. As of now, 260,000 have perished in Hiroshima alone from the effects of the blast, heat, and radiation. As I use the numbers of the dead, it pains me deeply. Reducing the dead to numbers trivializes their precious lives and negates their human dignity.
In the aftermath of the bombing, not only did people have to endure the physical devastation of near-starvation, homelessness, lack of medical care, rapidly spreading social discrimination against survivors as “contaminated ones by nuclear poison,” total lack of support by the Japanese government, the collapse of the authoritarian social system, and the sudden introduction to a democratic way of life, but also they suffered from psycho-social oppression by the Allied Forces Occupation Authority following Japan’s surrender.
Setsuko Thurlow’s family in 1937.
The Occupation Authorities, headed by General MacArthur, established the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose sole purpose was to study the effects of radiation of the bombs on human bodies, and not to provide treatment to the injured. Needless to say, the survivors felt treated as guinea pigs, first as the targets of the indiscriminate atomic bombing, then as the subjects of the medical research. The Occupation Authorities also censored media coverage of survivors’ suffering and confiscated their diaries, correspondence, poems, films, slides, photographs, medical records, etc.– 32,000 items in all, which were shipped to the U.S.
The triumphant scientific and technological achievement in making the atomic bomb could freely be published, but the human suffering inflicted by the atomic bomb was not to be heard by the world. Following the massive trauma of the bombing, survivors had to repress themselves in silence and isolation, and were thus deprived of the normal process of grieving and mourning.
With the return of full sovereignty to Japan in 1952, a flood of medical, scientific, historical and political and legal information became available enabling scholars, researchers, and journalists to analyze survivors’ experiences in historical perspective and global context. They became aware that the main motive for the atomic bombings was political rather than military. They rejected the American myth that the use of the bombs was necessary to avoid a costly invasion of Japan to save lives. This argument was refuted for the following reasons:
President Truman and several of his advisors knew that the Japanese military organization had practically ceased to function;
The Japanese government had made initial overtures for a negotiated surrender;
The unclarified status of the Emperor in an unconditional surrender was the main stumbling block for the Japanese;
The U.S. desire to position itself as the dominant power in East Asia in the post-war period;
The planned invasion of Japan (Operation Olympic) was not scheduled until November 1st, almost three months after the actual bombings. Why the rush?
The U.S. attempt to use the bombs before the U.S.S.R.’s promised entry into the war against the Japanese Army in Manchuria three months after the German surrender, and to claim the territorial rewards.
Also, the U.S. interest in testing two different nuclear weapons, uranium and plutonium, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, was further reason Hiroshima had been purposely left intact so that the impact of the detonation could be measured more accurately. With the understanding of the historical perspective, the survivors saw themselves as pawns in the opening moves of the Cold War rather than as sacrifices on the altar of peace.
On the cenotaph in the Peace Park in Hiroshima is an inscription that reads, “Rest in peace; the error will not be repeated.” What error and whose error were purposely left ambiguous. Although some wanted to point an accusing finger at the U.S., people came to see the issue on a higher philosophical plane as a universal need for nothing less than a cultural transformation away from our obsession with violence and war. This enlightened view did not ignore, however, the fact that the use of weapons of mass destruction against non-combatants was a crime against humanity, and a violation of international law.
Through months and years of struggle for survival, rebuilding lives out of the ashes, we Hibakusha survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became convinced that no human being should ever have to repeat our experience of the inhumanity, illegality, immorality, and cruelty of atomic bombing, and that our mission was to warn the world about the threat of this ultimate evil. We believe that, “Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist indefinitely,” and it is our moral imperative to abolish nuclear weapons in order to secure a safe, clean, and just world for future generations. With this conviction we have been speaking out around the world for the past several decades for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.
In the summer of 1954, after my graduation from university, I travelled to the U.S. to attend college on a scholarship. At a press interview I was asked to elaborate on and give my opinion regarding the unprecedented birth of a massive anti-nuclear movement in Japan. The interviewer was referring to the U.S. testing of the largest hydrogen bomb, up to that time, at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, which caused the Islanders severe public health problems and environmental damage. In addition, all members of the crew of a nearby Japanese fishing boat were covered by radiation fallout, “ash of death,” and became seriously ill. One fisherman died. Suddenly, Japanese realized that the U.S. had no regret or remorse about the massive consequential suffering of nuclear weapon victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now of the Marshall Islands, for the purpose of testing, production, and the potential future use of nuclear weapons. Almost overnight this anti-nuclear movement became nationwide, with citizens’ groups collecting 20 million signatures, and pushing for the passage of a resolution for the abolition of nuclear weapons at all levels of government. My response to the interviewer was frank and critical. I strongly called for the ending of the U.S. nuclear testing. As a result of my remarks I began to receive unsigned hate letters. This was my introduction to the United States.
I was deeply disturbed by the way many Americans uncritically and blindly followed the government line justifying the atomic bombings. It was a chilling reminder for me of the wartime behavior of Japanese in unthinkingly swallowing government propaganda and brainwashing. The hostile reaction I received forced me to do some soul-searching. It was a temptation to quit and remain silent, but I came out of this traumatic experience with a stronger commitment to keep speaking out against the indiscriminate massacre of civilians with new types of mass killing devices.
During this lonely time, I discovered the writings of some U.S. scholars with profound analyses of the issue. Such work inspired and supported me. One of these thinkers was Richard Falk, Professor of International Law at Princeton University, who I understand is now working with you in this organization, who said to this effect:
The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were viewed as contributions to the ending of a popular and just war. Therefore they have never been appraised in the necessary way as atrocities. They have never been understood as they certainly would have been understood had Hiroshima and Nagasaki been located [in an Allied country]. Somehow we have got to create that awareness, so that Hiroshima is understood to have been on the same level of depravity, and in many ways far more dangerous to us as a species and as a civilization than was even Auschwitz.
The failure to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities, the regarding of those two bombs as “good bombs” that contributed to winning and ending a just war, helped the American consciousness to accept the subsequent development of nuclear weapons, thus linking the justification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the disastrous nuclear arms race and Cold War.
Living in North America as a Hiroshima survivor advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons has given me many challenges as well as rewarding opportunities. In the 1950s and even in the 1970s, I often felt like a lone voice in the wilderness facing peoples’ indifference, denial, justification, and even open hostility. An example of this hostility was a bomb scare at the Hiroshima–Nagasaki photographic exhibition, which was organized at the National Gallery of Art, causing the evacuation of the entire building. But there were also times when I felt euphoric, for example in 1982 when one million people from all over the world marched in downtown New York to Central Park demanding nuclear disarmament! After the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, people went back to sleepwalking with the dream that the nuclear arms race was no longer threatening the world.
Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are more dangerous today than at any time during the brief history of the nuclear age, due to a wide variety of risks including: proliferation (with some 16,000 nuclear bombs possessed by 9 nations) and modernization (with $1 trillion planned by the U.S. alone over the next three decades); human error; computer failure; complex systems failure; radioactive contamination already in the environment and its toll on public and environmental health; as well as the global famine and climate chaos that would ensue should a limited use of nuclear weapons occur by accident or design. There is also the danger of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons.
On top of the increasing risks of nuclear weapons use, it is profoundly disturbing to see the lack of tangible progress in diplomatic negotiations in spite of the fact that it has been 45 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was introduced. The nuclear weapon states are not genuinely committed to the treaty as demonstrated by their not having complied with their legal obligation under Article VI to work toward nuclear disarmament in good faith. They are acting as if it is their right to keep their nuclear weapons indefinitely, and are manipulating the negotiation process to suit their perceived national interests. This unacceptable nuclear status quo has been driving many impatient non-nuclear weapons states and NGOs to negotiate a legally binding tool to achieve the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Setsuko Thurlow speaking at the ICAN Civil Society Forum in December 2014.
Tonight I am delighted and most hopeful to witness the mounting momentum from a rapidly growing global movement, the Humanitarian Initiative, involving 121 non-nuclear weapon states and the NGOs working together to outlaw nuclear weapons. In the past two years, Norway, Mexico, and Austria have hosted International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and, together with UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), have been reframing the narrative away from the abstract military doctrine of security and deterrence toward the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, with the result being a strong push for a Ban Treaty. The Humanitarian Pledge, introduced by Austria, “to identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons” is now supported by 121 countries. These developments are breathtakingly exciting and empowering for all of us campaigners around the world.
At this point I would like to take a few minutes to show you a yellow banner which my alma mater in Hiroshima made for me. This is a list of 351 names of my schoolmates and teachers who perished in the Hell on Earth that day. When I use large numbers to describe the massive scale of death and casualties of Hiroshima, peoples’ minds are numbed and they have difficulty relating to such abstract numbers meaningfully. As I show this to you I want you to feel and imagine that each name here represents an individual human being, a real person who was loved by someone and who was engaged in his or her life until 8:15 that morning.
I’m showing this especially to the many young people here tonight. Unlike me, who had a gift of an extra 70 years, your lives are just blossoming to embrace life’s gifts such as careers, marriages, families, and so forth. I want you to live your God-given lives as fully and happily as you can. But, to do so, we all must ensure that our common home, planet Earth, is here intact for you to enjoy. It is a shared responsibility to protect it and nurture it, not only for ourselves, but for future generations.
Before closing, I have one more thought I would like to share with you: President Obama, in his famous speech in Prague on April 5, 2009, said, “…As the only nuclear power to have used nuclear weapons, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead… So, today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
The world was overjoyed by his integrity, and the Nobel Peace Prize was presented to encourage him to do more for peace as the new president of the most powerful nation of the world.
He rightfully acknowledged the U.S. moral responsibility to lead the world’s most urgent task of abolishing nuclear weapons. As disappointed as we may be in his lack of accomplishment in this field, President Obama is the only U.S. President, while in office, who publicly acknowledged America’s responsibility of using the first nuclear weapons in history. If he has the political will and enormous courage, he can still achieve more towards a nuclear weapons-free world during his remaining year at the White House. But not without public pressure. Study the issue, do critical thinking, and urgently communicate your thoughts and feelings with your families, friends, neighbors, political representatives, and President Obama. That’s the citizen’s responsibility in a democratic nation.
To learn more about the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Evening for Peace, click here.
