Thank you, Hal Maynard and Sandy Jones for the beautiful song; Perie Longo for reading my poems and for her poetic response; and Dan Ellsberg, Rick Wayman, Steve Parry, Rob Laney and Mara for their kind and eloquent remarks.
Thank you also to the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for this honor.
And thank you all for being here and making this Evening for Peace so special.
I have been very fortunate in my life to have a loving wife and family, and to have been able to do the work that mattered most to me – the work of trying to assure a human future.
When we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the world was adrift in nuclear dangers. We began with no resources, only a belief in the necessity of awakening people everywhere to the dangers of the Nuclear Age – a time in which our technological prowess exceeds our ethical development.
We took a chance in 1982, and here we are nearly four decades later. The Foundation has been a steady, consistent and creative voice for Peace and a world free of nuclear weapons.
In the mid-1980s there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Today there are less than 14,000.
This is progress, but clearly the job is not completed. The use of only a small percentage of these remaining weapons could end civilization as we know it and possibly the human species.
To end the nuclear threat to life on our planet, we must overcome ignorance and apathy. We must, as Einstein warned, change our modes of thinking or face “unparalleled catastrophe.”
At the Foundation we are working to create peace literate societies – societies based upon empathy, caring, kindness and overcoming fear, greed and trauma. Our Peace Literacy Initiative, headed by Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate, goes to the root causes of war and nuclear weapons. It is a profound way of waging peace.
As the next generation prepares to take the helm at the Foundation, I leave to them these thoughts, which go back to our founding:
First, peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. Any war can become a nuclear war – by malice, madness, mistake, miscalculation or manipulation.
Second, we must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us. There is no doubt that this potential exists.
Third, to succeed will require extraordinary ordinary people to lead their political leaders.
I put great faith in Rick Wayman’s leadership skills. I know he will steer the Foundation competently into the future.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” I would add, as I’m sure he would, that we must work diligently to attain this reality. That is what the Foundation does each day, and its work must continue.
It is up to all of us to assure that this happens. The future requires no less from us, and we should demand no less from ourselves.
Among the books I’ve written is a dialogue with the Buddhist leader, philosopher, poet and educator Daisaku Ikeda called Choose Hope. My hope for each of you is that you will choose hope, continue to support the Foundation, and help change the world.
I will conclude with a poem, “A Conspiracy of Decency.”
A CONSPIRACY OF DECENCY
We will conspire to keep this blue dot floating and alive,
to keep the soldiers from gunning down the children,
to make the water clean and clear and plentiful,
to put food on everybody’s table and hope in their hearts.
We will conspire to find new ways to say People matter.
This conspiracy will be bold.
Everyone will dance at wholly inappropriate times.
They will burst out singing non-patriotic songs.
Perie Longo read this poem that she wrote for David Krieger at the 36th Annual Evening for Peace on October 20, 2019. The poem is a response to Krieger’s poem “I Refuse.”
For David Krieger
2019 Distinguished Peace Leader Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Yes David, our hero, we hear you in the words
of the dissenting Meija, and in hundreds
of your writings and poems that circle the globe
for good, insisting return to common sense
in this trigger happy age. Seer and sage,
you must wear a fire proof shield
the way you’ve confronted the flames of evil
and still be in one piece, waving your pen
at once dove gentle and warrior fierce.
From the beginning you’ve crossed many lines,
and crossed out some too, stating your case
in the name of truth. In the field of this room,
we, who’ve followed your lead, gather
as many more will because of your valor
speaking volumes loud and clear. Nukes, never!
For humanity’s sake, Hope and Peace forever!
David, your distinguished life’s work is the poem,
blend of mind and heart which knows no end.
by Perie Longo
Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2007-09
Oct. 20, 2019
36th Annual Evening for Peace
Dr. Mara Sweeney delivered these remarks at the 36th Annual Evening for Peace on October 20, 2019.
My name is Mara, and I am David Krieger’s daughter. It is an honor to be standing up here tonight speaking about my dad. My dad, David Krieger. (The Peace Dude.)
I grew up in a home where some of the finest people of our time came. The Dalai Lama, Jacques Cousteau, Daniel Ellsberg, and Linus Pauling to name a few, have all been to my house. In fact, a few times a year, someone was at our house, sitting at our dining table or in our living room with my dad. I knew this wasn’t normal, but it actually kind of was at my house. These people came to speak with my Dad. What I am really proud of and continue to be in awe of is my dad’s thoughtful, measured and deliberate responses and questions. He is wise.
My dad has a PhD in international relations and is also an attorney. He had opportunities to teach at university, to practice law…shoot he was almost the in house counsel to a little gaming company called Nintendo way back in the day…However, he could not turn away from the work of waging peace and nuclear abolition. I am so proud of his dedication.
When my son, Nat, and I joined my dad on a trip to Japan a few years ago, I was overwhelmed at the reception he received in so many places there. In Japan, where people sadly know the horrors of nuclear weapons, my dad is a hero. It was like a rock star had entered the room when he entered. It was wonderful to see the appreciation.
My dad has worked toward his goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and the threat they pose for as long as I can remember. He has worked toward a more peaceful world, a safer world for all of us, day after day, year after year because it is the right thing to do. It has not been easy. He has pushed back against complacency, ignorance and fear. He has dug in when others might have quit. He has never stopped writing, speaking, and thinking of how to accomplish this goal. I am proud of his perseverance.
Like so many daughters, my dad is my hero. He is wise, he is thoughtful, dedicated, creative.
On behalf of my family, my mom, my brothers, my husband, my kids, my niece and nephews and my uncle who are all here tonight, and those in the family who were unable to be here but are sending their love from afar, We congratulate you Dad!! Thank you for inspiring us all to be better people, for inspiring us to be global citizens.
NAPF Chair Robert Laney delivered these remarks on October 20, 2019, at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 36th Annual Evening for Peace.
With this assignment to speak about David I feel the dilemma that others have felt in similar circumstances when trying against impossible odds to do justice to a subject too large for their talents and too large for the time allotted. I proceed.
David Krieger has played a variety of roles in my life and, I suspect, in the lives of our many friends in and around the Foundation, past and present. Many of you already know much of what follows, but please bear with me.
First, David as our visionary: Since the Foundation’s beginning in 1982 David has personified a vision of a better world than the world in which we live today — a more safe, sane, secure, just, and peaceful world — a world free of the threat that nuclear weapons pose to all of humanity. Many people, especially in the political world, have scoffed at such a vision and continue to scoff. But David, knowing the true nature of the nuclear threat and having grappled with it over many years, has never lost heart or waivered from his vision of a better world. As David has reminded us on countless occasions, peace is an imperative of the nuclear age.
Next, David as our leader: The Foundation’s 37-years-and-counting campaign to create a more safe, sane, and secure world has faced daunting odds in the powers-that-be who always resist the changes that we seek. Nevertheless throughout this period the Foundation has been able to keep its lights on, its telephones and computers in operation, and its amazing and dedicated Staff fully engaged with the challenges we face. Let me be clear: none of this would have been remotely possible without David’s steady, clear-eyed leadership and hand on the helm. I shall cite just a few examples among many:
It has been David who assembled and trained our Staff of all-stars, each of whom treats his or her responsibilities as a calling rather than just a job.
It has been David who has done the heavy lifting in fund-raising throughout this period.
It has been David who has kept the Foundation current with developments in the field of nuclear weapons policy.
It has been David who caused the Foundation to achieve consultative status at the United Nations and to play an active and influential role in nuclear weapons-related conferences at the UN in New York and in Europe.
It has been David who forged essential alliances with other NGOs and various political, social, and religious leaders around the world, some of whose names you would recognize instantly.
It has been David who has guided each Staff member in his or her personal growth as a peace activist and as an effective member of our team.
And it has been David who established our program for interns and has guided our interns not only in their contributions to the work of the Foundation but also in their personal growth as peace activists.
I could go on about David’s decisive accomplishments as our leader since 1982, but you get my drift. As an organization with an effective voice in the world, we owe our existence this evening to David Krieger.
Next, David as our teacher: Not all of us were peace activists or anti- nuclear weapons campaigners when we first met David. Some of us needed to be “brought along,” as they say, and in my case, over a period of years. I confess this as one who came from all the educational
advantages that one would expect should have taught me such things. But under David’s gentle guidance I gradually came to understand not only the gravity of the nuclear threat, but also the moral impossibility of staying on the sidelines while this threat exists. I know that some of you were more developed in this respect than I was upon first meeting David. Nevertheless I suspect that you have your own stories about how David has influenced your thinking about why and how to create a safer and more secure world. But David as a teacher has gone far beyond our circle at the Foundation. As everyone knows, David’s books, essays, and letters to editors over many years have provided the public with a rich source of education on matters of peace and security in the nuclear age.
Next, David as our brother and comrade in the campaign for abetterworld: Throughout my association with David and the Foundation over more than two decades, I have observed how David places himself among our team rather than over our team, offering hints, praise, suggestions, and encouragement as circumstances would indicate. Not one to feed his ego in the position of President and CEO even though he has had plenty of opportunities to do so, David has preferred to guide by soft-spoken example in the manner of an elder brother rather than as chief executive. I have always felt and appreciated David’s genuine interest in the people of the Foundation for their own sakes, as if we are all a family.
Finally, David as our poet in residence: Most of you know that David has a poetic soul. Indeed one wonders where this poetic inclination would have taken him but for his 37 years at the helm of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Look into his poetry, and you will see what I mean. This is where you will see David’s heart most clearly – the heart of one deeply in touch with humanity’s cri de coeur for a better world – a world free of war, free of mindless cruelty, and free of the threat that nuclear weapons present to all that we hold dear.
So David, as our visionary, our leader, our teacher, our brother and comrade, and our poet in residence, you have brought us farther in 37 years than we ever had a right to expect. But our journey is not over, and I for one look forward to continuing our work together in the ranks of our comrades in disarmament. May it ever be thus.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation honored David Krieger at the 2019 Evening for Peace, which took place on October 20, 2019.
David co-founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 1982 and has led the organization as its President for nearly four decades. He has dedicated his life’s work to ending the nuclear age and has been a mentor, a respected colleague, and an inspiration to countless people across the globe.
I’m really humbled by this award and grateful for the opportunity to celebrate this evening with you. I want to start first by thanking David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and of course the board and the staff of the foundation for their long-term commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and their work as one of the original organizations to join ICAN. I also want to give a special thanks to Jill Dexter and Diane Meyer Simon, the co-chairs of the honorary committee that put together this wonderful event tonight. It has really been a remarkable evening and it’s not over yet. I also would like to take a moment to recognize Kikuko Otake, a survivor of Hiroshima (hibakusha), for being here. It is the survivors of nuclear weapons who remind us why we’re doing this. Their human stories make us understand why this is an imperative issue. I would also like to thank California State Assemblymember Monique Limón for being here. She was responsible for the great resolution that shows that California, is supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Yay!
Asm. Monique Limón with ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn.
So working in nuclear disarmament for the last few years, means constantly finding yourself in a state of either complete terror or inspiring hope. In that sense too it’s a little bit like being a parent. But instead of young children like the two ones that I have in my home giving us near nervous breakdowns constantly it’s the two most powerful men in the world acting like children. Threats to wipe out an entire nation on Twitter: terror. A majority of states in the world, over 120, agreeing to prohibit nuclear weapons rooted in humanitarian reality and law: hope. North Korea testing a missile that could reach us in this room: terror. The treaty opening for signature a year ago and already been signed by 69 states, ratified by 19, at a record pace: hope. Over one million Americans waking up one morning to a text message saying “ballistic threat inbound to Hawaii, seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill”: absolute sheer terror. And people are beginning to wake up to the reality that we are still living under the threat of these weapons every single day.
They are starting to experience the terror of the Cold War, and it’s our job to give them hope. Following the end of the Cold War, we were promised a world where reasonable men and democratic states would slowly reduce their nuclear arsenals in an orderly fashion, until there were none left: from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty under California’s own Ronald Reagan; to START under George Bush; to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty under Bill Clinton; to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty under George W. Bush, when he said, “This treaty liquidates the Cold War legacy of nuclear hostility between our countries”; and Obama’s soaring Prague speech calling for the end of nuclear weapons era and his support of New START as the latest treaty. But the weapons weren’t liquidated. The threat remains. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was never ratified by the Senate, and just yesterday Donald Trump confirmed plans of the United States pulling out of the INF Treaty. You know, in honesty, it would be all too easy to just blame Donald Trump as a rogue, but the truth is that a system that one impulsive or unpredictable person can uproot is not an appropriate security system in the first place. Maybe the problem is not the man, maybe it is the weapon.
Since the end of the Cold War, India, Pakistan, North Korea have become nuclear-armed states. You know, we might see Iran join them, and Saudi Arabia has said that if Iran can develop nuclear capability, they will too. The old plan has not been working. So what went wrong? Why are all these weapons still here threatening us all almost three decades on from the fall of the Berlin Wall?
It’s not the treaties. Each one has value and must be fought for, including the INF right now, but it is a fact that we forgot to actually outright reject nuclear weapons – to ban them.
Thanks to the leadership of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, one of the first organizations to join ICAN, we are seeing monumental progress in a time of great danger – hope and opportunity in this time of terror and fear. The past approach was centered around abstract concepts of security, realism about geopolitics, but they really ignore the reality that keeping these weapons around forever means that they will eventually be used again. They ignore the reality that if you say nuclear weapons are instruments of power, and they keep you safe, other nations will want to follow you. Then they ignore the reality that nuclear weapons cause humanitarian catastrophes and violate the laws of war. The mission of ICAN and our many partner organizations, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, was to bring those realities into the conversation about nuclear weapons.
We highlighted the humanitarian reality of these weapons. Relief organizations would not be able to send help into nuclear blast zones. As the International Committee of the Red Cross stated, “There will be no effective means to provide aid to the dying and wounded.” People will essentially be on their own. Our recent climate modeling shows a relatively limited nuclear exchange involving about a hundred nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan could result in a nuclear winter lasting two to three years. Beyond the unacceptable immediate deaths from the blast and fires, billions more around the world would die from the resulting famine. Our food system would collapse and our societies would likely follow.
We told these stories where they needed to be heard. And most importantly we brought democracy to disarmament. For decades, the non-nuclear armed states have been told that they have no say in this issue. They were told that they have no right to speak up and create laws even though many bore the burden of these weapons when they were tested, and they will all bear the burden if they’re used again. Through working with those states and negotiating the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we help those nations exercise their rights on the international stage and fulfill their obligation to protect their citizens.
The treaty was adopted by 122 states at the UN last year, bringing credible pressure to the nuclear-armed states and countries living under the nuclear umbrella. It will create even more pressure once it legally enters into force when fifty states have ratified it.
NAPF Deputy Director Rick Wayman spoke at the negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in June 2017.
But it’s not just nation states. Local communities and individuals play a really important role.
So do we have any University of California graduates here? Gauchos? Banana Slugs? Bruins? Bears? I really have to admit I had no idea what those things meant before, but all of you UC alumni and in fact every single taxpaying California resident has a unique opportunity to effect change.
The atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed at a lab run by University of California. Every U.S. nuclear weapon ever tested was designed by a UC lab. Every American warhead currently deployed around the world was designed in one of those labs now co-managed by the University of California. These labs are now developing Trump’s new generation of nuclear weapons. And their current task? Make nuclear weapons that are more likely to be used, what they call more usable.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the East Bay will receive nearly $1.5 billion in 2019 from the U.S. government. Eighty-eight percent of that will be going to nuclear weapons. While they have their grants, we have our plans.
We’re targeting cities and states, businesses like right here in Santa Barbara, banks like Wells Fargo, universities, like the University of California, and we will succeed. And how do I know that?
Well, first, we have the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We aren’t just guessing this, we know this approach works because we’ve seen it happen with other weapons: biological weapons, chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions. Treaties, prohibition treaties, they have an impact. We know that shifting norms and changing law have a concrete impact.
We can look at examples like Textron, for example, a U.S. company that actually stopped producing cluster bombs in 2016, even though the U.S. did not participate in the negotiations for the ban of cluster bombs or have any intention of signing or ratifying it. But because the rest of the world had banned them, it suddenly became bad business.
Second, because we have partners like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, working in this state and across the country, and have allies like all of you here. The ICAN movement has grown to over 500 organizations in over 100 countries working across generations to finally end the threat of nuclear weapons.
And third, because we’re already having historic success even without the nuclear-armed states’ administrations on board. Take California for example. In a true expression of representative democracy, the California state legislature has said that it is their role to tell their federal counterparts how to represent California on the world stage, and we are telling them to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They passed Assembly Joint Resolution 33 to do just that and to make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of our national security policy and spearhead a global effort to prevent nuclear war. And even more local, the L.A. City Council recently passed a similar resolution, and a Santa Barbara resolution to make Santa Barbara a nuclear free city is in the works, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been working to make that happen.
The California State Legislature adopted a resolution in August 2018 calling on the U.S. government to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This state and those cities will join a host of major cities around the world who are speaking up on the rational side of nuclear disarmament through the treaty. ICAN will soon be launching a new campaign for a groundswell of local action: cities, regions, businesses, all joining our cause. What happens in these communities, in these cities, in California, matters around the world. I know this because I’ve heard it directly from global decision makers.
Just a few weeks ago during the leader’s week at the United Nations in New York, people from as far away as Africa were talking about California embracing the treaty. It has motivated and inspired diplomats and leaders everywhere else in the world and your work is changing attitudes about what is possible and having a direct impact on building a nuclear weapons free world. This is really what momentum looks like, and this is democracy, and this is the impact that partner organizations of ICAN like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation are having right now.
I know many of you here have long cared about this issue and to you I say, never sink to the unimaginable level of those who tell you that nuclear disarmament is a pipe dream, that the U.S. will never give up their nuclear weapons.Prove them wrong. And some of you, many young people and students in the crowd, never knew the duck and cover drills of the Cold War and the constant fear of nuclear attack, and to you I say we need a new generation of leaders to take up the mantle of peace so that you will never have to know those fears. You inherited a problem not of your own making. But by the same token, you can better imagine a new international security not based on the risk of nuclear weapons, because many others can’t. Don’t buy into their terror, and join us on the side of hope.
We’ve had a lot of very powerful opponents in this work, and they told us that we would never be taken seriously; we were. They told us that we would never ban nuclear weapons; we have. They told us the people would never feel secure without nuclear weapons, but the opposite is true.
Now when they tell you it is not worth trying, that the U.S. will never give up its nuclear weapons, what will you choose? To continue to live in terror, or to join us on the side of hope? You are here tonight and you are part of this Evening for Peace and you support the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, so I know your answers pretty much already. And my question for you all is then, who will you bring with you on this journey and what will you do tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day, to assure that hope will win the day? This movement really needs your passion, your talent, and your commitment.
And with that, and with partners like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we will end nuclear weapons before they end us.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presented Dr. Ira Helfand and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War with the 2017 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. Dr. Helfand’s acceptance speech is below. You can also download a MP3 audio file of the speech here.
Thank you very much. The work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been so important in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons for so many decades, it is a particular honor for us to receive this award from Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. And on behalf of all of the many thousands of doctors in IPPNW and in, especially, our American affiliate Physicians for Social Responsibility, thank you so much for giving us this award tonight.
The citations of the Nobel Committee both in 1985 and in 2017 essentially spoke to the same issue, which was not the organizational effectiveness of the groups that they were awarding the prize to but the message that they brought to the world. The simple message that nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to human survival and must be abolished. That message I think is more important today than it’s ever been. There was a time about a generation ago in the 1980s when almost everybody understood this. People all around the world knew what was going to happen if there was a nuclear war. That was in part due to the educational work that we did then, but it was also due to just the constant attention that the nuclear question received in the media, and the obsessive concern about nuclear weapons that dominated the lives of so many of us at that time. When the Cold War ended, we, all of us, including people who are active in this movement, started to act as though the problem had gone away. As we know, it didn’t. There are still 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world today, several thousand on a hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in less than 10 minutes’ notice.
And in addition to that fundamental fact, we have to recognize that the danger of nuclear war has increased dramatically in the last few years. The situation in North Korea of course is in the news every day, and we cannot ignore this. There is the real possibility that there will be a war which will almost certainly turn nuclear between the United States and North Korea sometime in the very near future. It could happen this month, next month, the beginning of next year. But that’s only one of the flashpoints that exist in the world today. Relations between the United States and Russia are at the worst point in three decades. Relations between the United States and China are at the worst point in four decades. There is fighting every single day on the border between India and Pakistan, which are armed with significant and growing arsenals of nuclear weapons.
In addition to these geopolitical flashpoints, there are several other factors that increase the risk of nuclear war. There is the danger of cyber terrorism. We used to think that the worst thing a terrorist could do would be to get a single nuclear warhead and bring it into New York or London or Tel Aviv or Bombay and set it off. Now we understand that the far greater danger is of a cyber attack. The terrorist will hack into the command and control systems of the United States or Russia, or possibly one of the other nuclear states, and either directly set off the launch of nuclear armed missiles or, perhaps more likely, create a false warning under which the country that’s being hacked thinks it’s being attacked by nuclear weapons from the other side and responds with a nuclear attack of its own.
There is also the Trump phenomenon, and we simply cannot ignore this either. The US and other nuclear weapon states have predicated their policies over the last decades, their insistence on maintaining nuclear arsenals, on the assumption that the leadership of the nuclear-armed states would be composed of wise, temperate, well-informed people. It’s not my judgement, but the judgement of the experts in his own party, that Donald Trump possesses none of these qualities. And the fact that he is in charge of 6,800 nuclear warheads should be a cause of great concern to all of us. And it should also lead us to having a very different view of the whole nuclear enterprise.
Finally, among the factors that are increasing the danger of nuclear war is the issue of climate change. We are told by the United States repeatedly that it seeks the abolition of nuclear weapons sometime in the future when conditions are safer. Conditions are not getting safer. Climate change is making large parts of this planet essentially uninhabitable by their current populations. And as this process progresses, and it will even if we take drastic action now, there’s going to be an increase in conflict in these regions that are facing severe environmental stress. There is going to be mass migration on a scale which absolutely dwarfs what has taken place so far in the last decade, and the possibility of conflict escalating to nuclear conflict is going to grow and grow and grow, unless the weapons are removed.
The central concept behind PSR and IPPNW’s work has always been that, if people understood how bad nuclear war would be, how likely it was to happen, and the fact that this is not the future that needs to be, they would act to get rid of nuclear weapons. I want to spend a few minutes reviewing for you the part that has been our central piece of this message: What happens if there is a nuclear war? And I do apologize, this has been a lovely evening, everyone’s been enjoying a wonderful meal in great fellowship, but we do need to remind ourselves regularly of what it is that we are facing. So let me talk a little bit first about limited nuclear war.
We have looked in great detail at the possibility of a war between India and Pakistan. Each of these countries has about 130 nuclear warheads at this point and they’re adding to their arsenals every month. The studies that we have done have been based on a model in which these countries use only 50 warheads each and use relatively small bombs, Hiroshima-sized weapons. They have weapons that are bigger. But it was intentionally a conservative model, so that we couldn’t be accused of overestimating the situation. The effect of a war between India and Pakistan, each using 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons in South Asia is unbelievably devastating. Twenty million people die in the first week as a result of the explosions, the fires, the direct radiation coming out of these bombs. To put that in perspective, during all World War II, 50 million people died across the whole planet over the course of eight years. In this situation, we would have a like number, 20 million people, dying in the course of a single week in one very constrained geographic area. But this local devastation is only part of the story, because these 100 bombs exploding over cities would cause 100 fire storms, and they’d put about 6.5 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere. And that would block out the sun across the entire planet, dropping temperatures, shortening the growing season, drying the planet and causing a dramatic decrease in food production.
We’ve looked at what the impact would be on food production here in the United States and in China, the world’s two largest food producers, and the results are frankly terrifying. The food production of major grain crops like corn and wheat and rice go down anywhere from 15% to 39% for a full decade after this conflict. And the world today simply cannot absorb a decline in food production of that magnitude. There are already 719 million people in the world who are malnourished, who are just getting by. They cannot afford any further decrease in their food consumption. There are 300 million people in the world today who are well-nourished, but live in countries where much of the food is imported, and this includes a number of very wealthy countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, many of the countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Under the circumstances that would pertain after a limited nuclear war and a worldwide decline in food production, those food imports would not be available.
There are a billion people in China today who are well-nourished, who live in a country where most of the food is grown in country, but who are poor, who have not shared in the great economic progress that China has made. There are a billion people who live on less than $5 a day. And given the dramatic increase in food prices that would follow a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, they would not be able to buy food. And so we have concluded that worldwide, over two billion people would be at risk of starvation as a result of a limited nuclear war in one corner of the globe involving less than 0.03% of the world’s nuclear weapons. The death of two billion people would not be the extinction of our species, but it would be the end of modern civilization as we know it. No civilization in human history has ever withstood a shock of this magnitude, and there is no reason to think that the very intricate, interdependent economic system that we all depend on would fare any better.
That’s a limited nuclear war. Let me talk to you for a few minutes about a large-scale nuclear war. And I want to start by describing what an attack on a single city would look like. Most of us are familiar with images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the warning that we received in Japan in 1945 is one which we must take to heart. But we also have to understand that Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not begin to prepare us for what will happen if nuclear weapons are used again, because it will not be one or two small bombs on one or two cities. It’ll be large numbers of much larger bombs on many, many cities. We don’t know the exact targeting strategy of the United States or Russia, but I have been told recently by someone who is familiar with US military planning that the US still targets Moscow with 100 nuclear weapons. And that doesn’t count the French and the British weapons which are also targeted on Moscow, and for that matter the Chinese weapons that are targeted on Moscow.
So, I’m going to use a model that is much smaller than 100 nuclear warheads. I’m going to use one single very large bomb. The destruction I’m going to describe is much less than will befall Moscow or New York or Washington, but I think it gives us an adequate understanding of the enormity of the danger that we face. I’m talking about a 20 megaton bomb. Within one-thousandth of a second of the detonation of this weapon, a fireball would form, reaching out for two miles in every direction, four miles across. Within this area the temperatures would rise to 20 million degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than the surface of the sun. And everything would be vaporized, the buildings, the people, the trees, the upper level of the earth itself would disappear.
To a distance of four miles in every direction, the explosion would generate winds greater than 600 miles per hour. Mechanical forces of that magnitude destroy anything that people can build. To a distance of six miles in every direction, the heat would be so intense that automobiles would melt. And to a distance of 16 miles in every direction, the heat would still be so intense that everything flammable would burn: paper, cloth, wood, gasoline, heating oil. It would all ignite into a giant firestorm 32 miles across, covering over 800 square miles. Within this entire area, the temperature would rise to a 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. All of the oxygen would be consumed and every living thing would die. The bacteria and the viruses would die. The area would be sterilized of all life.
In the case of New York, we’re talking about 12 to 15 million people dead in half an hour. And if this attack were part of a large-scale war between the United States and Russia, this level of destruction would visit every major city in both countries. In addition, the entire economic infrastructure of the country would be destroyed, and all the things that the rest of the population depend on to keep themselves alive would be gone. There’d be no electric grid, no internet, no public health system, no food distribution system, no fuel distribution system. And over the months following this attack, the vast majority of the people who did not die in the initial wave would also die; between the United States and Russia, something like 500 million people.
But again, this is only part of the story. A limited war in South Asia puts six-and-a-half million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere. A large war between the United States and Russia puts about a 150 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere. And that drops temperature across the planet, an average of 14 degrees Fahrenheit. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia, the temperatures drop 45 to 50 degrees. We essentially create an instant ice age, conditions that have not existed on the planet in 18,000 years, since the coldest point of the last ice age. In the Northern Hemisphere there would be three years without a single day free of frost. That means that at some point every day, the temperature would go below freezing. And under those conditions, all the ecosystems which have evolved over the last 10,000 years since the last ice age ended, they would all collapse. Food production would stop. The vast majority of the human race would starve to death, and we might become extinct as a species.
This is not some nightmare scenario. This is the danger that we live with every day as long as these weapons exist, that we have been living with for 70 years, and that we will continue to live with until we get rid of these weapons. But this is the future that will be if we don’t take action, and I believe we are essentially living on borrowed time. It is extraordinary good luck that has saved us from this fate until this point.
Still, this is not the future that must be. Nuclear weapons are not a force of nature, they are not an act of God. We have made them with our own hands and we know how to take them apart. We’ve already dismantled more than 50,000 of them. The only thing that’s missing is the political will and commitment to do this. And that’s where all of us come in. We have allowed our governments to maintain this insanely dangerous situation year after year, exposing us to this unspeakable risk, and we have to make them stop. The good news is we can do this, we’ve done it once before.
In the early 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union were racing towards nuclear war. There were 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world and we were building 3,000 more every year. We were talking here in the United States about fighting and winning a nuclear war in Europe. And in response to that situation, an incredible movement grew up in this country. Millions of people marched across the country, gathered in Central Park in New York, petitioned their legislators, forced Congress to speak out on this. And in an extraordinary moment, we won. The Cold War arms race was stopped. And it happened so suddenly that I think most of us didn’t even realize when it took place.
In 1983, two of the many episodes where we almost blew the planet up occurred. And in January of 1984, Ronald Reagan, who until then had been the most hawkish president regarding nuclear weapons in our history, said in the State of the Union Address, “Nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.” We thought this was just rhetoric, that the guy was just making a speech for the 1984 election season that was starting. But we were wrong. We’d actually won, we had changed his mind. And it turns out we changed Gorbachev’s mind too. Over the two or three years that followed, the Cold War arms race came to an end, the Cold War itself came to an end, and frankly, all of us who were a part of this, and I suspect that’s almost everybody in this room who’s old enough, we saved the world.
So, we can do this. We’ve done it once before; we just need to do it again. And the conditions that we face now, as dangerous as they are, provide us with the opportunity to do it because the great enemy of progress on this issue has been inattention, has been the fact that the media doesn’t care about nuclear war, that the vast majority of the population doesn’t pay any attention to that. But that situation is changing, because between the crisis in North Korea and the extraordinary anxiety that Donald Trump is provoking with his behavior, people are focusing on this issue again. There are other some positive developments, which also help us. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a huge step forward, a real milestone in our effort to get rid of these weapons. And that’s going to help us. The recent Nobel Prize will also give a greater platform to all of us across the world, all 500 NGOs who are part of this network, who were trying to alert people to the danger we face.
And so, each of us needs to look at the situation and figure out what we can do. No one of us is expected to solve this problem all by ourselves. But each one of us needs to figure out what it is that we can do, who of our friends and neighbors we can mobilize, how we can work, what contribution we can make to get rid of these weapons. One of the things that happens whenever I give a talk is that people put up their hands at the end and say, “What can I do?” which is the obvious question. I want to offer something of an answer to that.
We had a symposium in Western Massachusetts a few weeks ago about the link between climate change and nuclear war, and at the end of the symposium, at one of the workshops, there were a number of people present who had been a part of the original freeze movement in 1980s, which, as you may remember, started in the small hill towns of Western Massachusetts, with people going to their town meetings and then to city councils with a simple resolution calling for the US and Soviet Union to freeze the arms race. And what these people said is, “The time is ripe for a similar initiative, not to freeze the arms race, but to eliminate nuclear weapons.” And they came up with a simple statement, modeled on the freeze, with a plan to use it like the freeze was used, to make this sort of a tool usable by everybody, owned by no organization, so that hopefully all the peace groups in the country will take this up. A simple vehicle that we can all use is to go to our towns, our cities, our labor unions, our professional associations, our churches, our civic groups, and get them all to express the need to change US nuclear policy.
I want to read it to you, it’s quite short. It’s called “Back From The Brink: A Call To Prevent Nuclear War.” “We call on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by [1] renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first; [2] ending the President’s sole unchecked authority to launch nuclear attack; [3] taking US nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; [4] cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons; [5] and perhaps most importantly, actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear arms states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.”
It’s simple, it’s direct, and it gives every constituency in this country the opportunity to raise their voice to call for an end to the nuclear weapons era. There are copies of this on the literature table out in the hallway. I hope you’ll all take a copy, sign it, and most importantly, think who it is that you can mobilize with this. How do you reach the California State Legislature? How do we ultimately reach the US Congress? How do we create a totally different view of what nuclear policy should be? I think we have a three-and-a-half year window to solve this problem. I don’t expect we’re going to see any real progress under the current administration even if Trump is removed from office; Pence, I don’t think would be any better. But in January of 2021, a new administration will take office in Washington, and our job is to create a fundamental change in US nuclear policy by that date, so that the new administration, the new President who takes office, is committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons, and to ensure that she appoints to all of the key places in the Defense Department, in the State Department, in the National Security Council, people who are likewise committed to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. It’s an ambitious goal that we set ourselves, but we turned the world around once before in this timeframe, and I don’t think we have any choice. As I said before, I believe that we are living on borrowed time and we have a very limited window of opportunity to get rid of these weapons, and we need to seize that opportunity.
When I describe the effects of nuclear war as I did for you all tonight, I do feel a certain sense of guilt, even if I’m not ruining a lovely dinner. I’m placing on your shoulders, and on my own shoulders listening to this again, a terrible responsibility. Once we know about this, we have to act. You can’t see somebody fall down and just step over them. If you know the whole world is at risk in this terrible way, you have to do something about it. And there’s no question, this responsibility is a burden, but I think it is something much more than that. I think this is a very great gift that we have all been given. Every one of us wants to do something good with our life. We have been given the opportunity to save the world and there’s absolutely nothing better that someone can do with their life than that. So it’s in that spirit that I urge you all to take up with renewed energy, because I know you’ve all been working on this issue for years, but with renewed spirit, with renewed commitment, this task. It says in the Hebrew Bible that God said “Behold, I have put before you life and death, therefore, choose life, that you and your children might live.” That is literally the choice before the world today. And so let’s all pledge tonight that we will choose life, that we will act with courage and determination and perseverance, so that indeed our children might live. Thank you.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation hosted its 34th Annual Evening for Peace on October 22, 2017 in Santa Barbara, California. The Foundation honored Dr. Ira Helfand and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War with the 2017 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.
Dr. Ira Helfand, MD, is co-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and a co-Founder and past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s U.S. affiliate. He has published studies on the medical consequences of nuclear war in the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medial Journal, and the World Medical Journal, and has lectured globally on the health effects of nuclear weapons. In April 2012, he presented IPPNW’s report, Nuclear Famine: One Billion People at Risk, at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit. When he’s not writing, speaking, listening, learning, and fundraising for nuclear abolition, he practices as an internist and urgent care physician.
IPPNW was founded in 1980 by U.S. and Soviet physicians who shared a commitment to the prevention of nuclear war, citing that doctors have an obligation to prevent what they cannot treat. IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. This year, IPPNW played an instrumental role at the United Nations Conference to negotiate a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. For over 37 years, IPPNW has been practicing peace.
Click here for a MP3 audio recording of Dr. Helfand’s acceptance speech, or here for a written transcript. Photos of the event are available here. You can also watch it on video below.
HONORARY COMMITTEE
Felix Aguilar, M.D., MPH
Ben Broder, M.D., Ph.D.
Steven Charles
Robert F. Dodge, M.D.
Chuck Genuardi, MSN
Gilberto Granados, M.D., MPH
Jimmy H. Hara, M.D.
Judith Lipton, M.D.
Diane Meyer Simon
Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D.
Jyoti Puvvula, M.D., MPH
Jose Quiroga, M.D.
Mara K. Sweeney, M.D.
Takashi Wada, M.D., MPH
Lisa Wysel
DINNER COMMITTEE
Jill Dexter, Chair
Suzan Garner
Sherry Melchiorre
Anne Schowe
Christina Schowe
THANK YOU TO OUR LEAD SPONSORS
Jill and Ron Dexter
Sarah and Chuck Genuardi
Jamal and Saida Hamdani
Diane Meyer Simon
Daniel Smith and Lucy Lee
Lisa Wysel and Dr. Glen Wysel
Noam Chomsky, one of the greatest minds of our time, will be our Distinguished Peace Leader at this year’s Evening For Peace on Sunday, October 23.
We’re calling the evening NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH because that’s what Chomsky is about– truth. He believes humanity faces two major challenges: the continued threat of nuclear war and the crisis of ecological catastrophe. To hear him on these issues will be more than memorable. Importantly, he offers a way forward to a more hopeful and just world. We are very proud to honor him with our award.
The annual Evening for Peace includes a festive reception, live entertainment, dinner and an awards ceremony. It is attended by many residents of Santa Barbara, peace activists, those interested in our work, local businesses and philanthropists.
WHEN
Sunday, October 23, 2016 from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM (PDT) Add to Calendar
WHERE
La Pacifica Ballroom and Terrace, Four Seasons Resort, the Biltmore – 1260 Channel Drive, Santa Barbara, California 93103
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.
