Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Hiroshima

Hiroshima’s Message: Wage Peace

On August 6, 1945, the day Hiroshima was bombed with an atomic weapon, humanity walked through a door into an era in which our own annihilation as a species became possible.

The bombing was a triumph of destructive technology. It sent a message that all cities would become vulnerable to instant devastation. And indeed, over the decades that followed Hiroshima, all cities did become vulnerable to annihilation.

Nuclear “weapons” are not weapons in the traditional sense of being used to injure or kill enemy forces. Rather, they are devices capable of inflicting massive destruction on population centers, and taking countless innocent lives. In this sense, they are weapons of terrorists.

The countries that possess nuclear weapons and base their security on the threat of their use do not ordinarily think of themselves as terrorist states, but by any reasonable definition of terrorism they are. They are states that threaten massive retaliation against civilian populations, in violation of the rules and norms of international law.

There is only one way to assure a human future in which cities are not held hostage to the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that is by developing new methods of cooperation among nations and peoples. The logical place for this cooperation to take place is in the United Nations, the organization of the world’s nations created with the strong support and leadership of the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt viewed the United Nations as essential if mankind were to avoid the “scourge of war” which twice in the first half of the 20th century had caused “untold sorrow.” After Roosevelt’s death in April1945, Harry Truman assured that his predecessor’s dream became a reality.

In the 21st century, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction can cause even worse consequences than “untold sorrow.” These weapons can cause unimaginable and unalterable silence; they are capable of bringing history to an end by bringing humankind and most other forms of life to an end. We should never lose sight of this. We should never become too comfortable or complacent with these destructive devices holding the potential for our shared demise.

Missile defenses will not protect us. Such plans offer only comforting illusions. Nor will the threat of retaliation protect us. There will always be some who are too crazed or unreasonable to be deterred by threat of retaliation. There will always be the possibility of human error that leads us stumbling into a disastrous war.

The only way out is to end the nuclear era by agreeing to the phased elimination of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Such agreements must be solidly built with inspections and other means of verification. Such agreements among nations are possible, but they require leadership and particularly leadership from the United States, the world’s most powerful nation.

We live in a nation in which government is “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Therefore, we, the people, can prevail if we make our voices heard. If the people of this country speak out with a strong voice, the United States could reassume leadership in the United Nations. We could help to build a world free of the threat of all weapons of mass destruction.

This is a future worth believing in and fighting for. And the effort must begin with each of us. As Albert Camus, the great French writer and philosopher, said in reaction to learning of the bombing of Hiroshima, “Peace is the only battle worth waging. It is no longer a prayer, but an order which must rise up from peoples to their governments – the order to choose finally between hell and reason.”

*David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

August 5, 2001
The Power of an Early Visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

I first visited Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial Museum when I was 21 years old. The visit changed the course of my life.

I was in Japan on an exchange program, and the program included a trip to Hiroshima around Hiroshima Day in 1963. I was apprehensive about going to Hiroshima. I thought the people of Hiroshima would be angry with Americans, probably hostile and perhaps even violent. After all, we Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on the city just 18 years before, killing well over 100,000 people.

My fears proved to be unfounded. If the people of Hiroshima were hostile to Americans, they didn’t show it. They were kind and welcoming to young Americans, as were people throughout Japan.

Here is what I had learned in high school and college about Hiroshima: The American military dropped an atomic bomb on the city, followed by the dropping of another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and these bombings brought World War II to an end.

Here is what I learned at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum when I was 21 years old: There were people under that bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. Most were civilians. The bomb slaughtered its victims, killing men, women and children indiscriminately. I also learned that many of the people killed by the bomb were burned alive, some were incinerated. These were powerful details – details that were certainly not emphasized in the story we learned in school in the United States.

One of the strongest impressions on me was the shadow on the wall that was left behind where someone had been sitting at the time the bomb was dropped. The person was incinerated and only his shadow remained.

Visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum had a strong influence on my views on war, and particularly nuclear war. The museum, which was filled with artifacts and photographs, powerfully demonstrated the futility of nuclear warfare. Hiroshima’s past was eloquent testimony to an intolerable future.

The course of my life made a subtle shift. I was set on a course of wanting to do something to end the tragedy of war. Later, when I returned to the United States, other events would solidify the shift in my life, particularly my experience in the army and my fight in court against orders to go to Vietnam.

Some 20 years later I was a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, where I have served as president for almost 20 years. Hiroshima has never left my mind. I have written many poems and articles about the tragedy that occurred there and its meaning for our lives. I have worked for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I have done all that I can to further this goal. I was a founder of Abolition 2000, now a global network of over 2000 organizations working to abolish nuclear weapons. I have traveled around the world speaking out for realizing the dream of Hiroshima and the survivors of the bombing — the abolition of nuclear weapons.

I believe that museums matter. They capture moments in time and freeze them for the future to examine. Of course, it is important for museums to be honest. It is possible for museums to be deceptive by overt acts or by omission. There is a museum about the first atomic bombs that I visited at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That museum celebrates only the technology. There are no photographs or displays of the people who were killed and injured in the bombings. The museum is steely and antiseptic. In visiting this museum, one would have no emotional connection with or even knowledge of the suffering and death caused by the bombings.

It would be more than 35 years before I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum again. When I did return in 1998, it was to give a speech at the museum. I began my speech with these words: “It is with profound appreciation and gratitude that I return to this city of peace, this sacred city of Hiroshima. This city was made sacred not by the tragedy which befell it, but by the rebirth of hope which emerged from that tragedy. From the ashes of Hiroshima, flowers of hope have blossomed, bringing forth a renewed spirit of possibility, of peace, to a world in which hope has been too often crushed for too many.”

In another visit to the museum early in the year 2000, the museum director, Minoru Hataguchi, showed my wife and me through the museum. He was carrying with him a small box. At one point, he stopped and opened the box. He told us that this was the first time he had shared the contents of the box with visitors to the museum. The box contained the pocket watch and belt buckle of his father. Mr. Hataguchi had been in utero when the bomb fell. His father had been a train conductor, and had been near ground zero. The pocket watch and belt buckle were all that his mother recovered. We were very moved that he shared his father’s story and the artifacts with us.

In Fall 2000, our Foundation sponsored an exhibit in Santa Barbara, California from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. Mr. Hataguchi was one of the representatives of the two cities that came to Santa Barbara to open the exhibit. By bringing the exhibit to our city, we were able to share with members of our community an important perspective on Hiroshima with which many were unacquainted.

In 1995, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by creating a peace garden in our community. We called it Sadako Peace Garden after Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who had been exposed to the bombing of Hiroshima at age 2 and had died at age 12 of leukemia. Sadako had been inspired by the Japanese legend that one’s wish will come true if one folds 1,000 paper cranes, and she had attempted to fold paper cranes to regain her health and to further world peace. She wrote: “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.” Each year on August 6th, the Foundation holds a public event at Sadako Peace Garden to commemorate the anniversary of Hiroshima with music, poetry and reflection.

I am quite certain that my first visit to Hiroshima at the age of 21 left a strong enough impression on me to guide the course of my life. I am dedicated to ending the nuclear weapons era, and bringing the spirit of Hiroshima and its survivors, the hibakusha, to people everywhere.

If a visit to the Peace Memorial Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a requirement of office for all leaders of nuclear weapons states, it just might change the world.

*David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

June 15, 2001
A Peace Message: On the fifty-fifth anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The world changed dramatically in the 20th century, a century of unprecedented violence. We humans learned how to release the power of the atom, and this led quickly to the creation and use of nuclear weapons. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this terrible new power was unleashed at the end of a bloody and costly war. Tens of thousands of persons, including large numbers of women and children, were killed in the massive explosion and radiation release of these new tools of destruction. A new icon was born: the mushroom cloud. It represented mankind’s murderous prowess. In the years that followed, nuclear weapons multiplied in a mad arms race. We achieved the possibility of creating a global Hiroshima and ending most life on Earth.

If, one hundred years from now, you read this message, humanity will probably have succeeded in freeing itself from the scourge of nuclear weapons. That will be a great triumph. It will mean that we have met the first great challenge to our survival as a species. It will mean that we have learned and applied the lesson that the hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, worked so diligently to teach us, that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.

There is an alternative possibility, that of no civilization or human beings left alive one hundred years from now. Such a future would mean that we failed completely as a species, that we could not put away our primitive and violent means of settling our differences. Perhaps we would have simply stumbled by a combination of apathy and arrogance into an accidental nuclear conflagration. It would mean that all the beauty and elegant and subtle thought of humans that developed over our existence on Earth would have vanished. There would be no one left to appreciate what was or might have been. No eyes would read this letter to the future. There would be no future and the past would be erased. Meaning itself would be erased along with humanity.

We have a choice. We can end the nuclear weapons era, or we can run the risk that nuclear weapons will end the human era. The choice should not be difficult. In fact, the vast majority of humans would choose to eliminate nuclear weapons. Today, a small number of individuals in a small number of countries are holding humanity hostage to a nuclear holocaust. To change this situation and assure a future free of nuclear threat, people everywhere must exercise their rights to life and make their voices heard. They must speak out and act before it is too late. They must demand an end to the nuclear weapons era.

If this message reaches one hundred years into the future it will mean that enough of my contemporaries and the generations that follow will have heard the messages of the hibakusha and will have chosen the paths of hope and peace. Humanity will have conquered its most terrible tools of destruction. If this is the case, I believe that your future will be bright.

August 10, 2000
Season of Hiroshima

The season of Hiroshima arrives each August in the heat of summer. The bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and three days later a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki. Total destruction. The flattening of cities, the incineration of all forms of life. It is a season of memory, reflection, and rededication to the future of life.

Hiroshima was the awakening of the Nuclear Age. It was a moment in history when time stood still. The clocks were frozen at 8:16 a.m. It was not the end of war as had been hoped, but the end of a certain innocence that could never return. Hiroshima taught us that time was not infinite for humanity, that the future was not assured. We had harnessed the awesome and awful power of the atom, and with this the power to destroy ourselves.

Hiroshima neither was nor is about victory or defeat. Nor is it about the Japanese, the Americans, or the people of any other single country. Hiroshima belongs to all humanity, residing in our collective consciousness. It is universal. We share in its destructive fire. We share in its suffering, its death, and rebirth.

The spirit of Hiroshima is “Never Again!” The promise on the Memorial Cenotaph at Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park reads “Let All Souls Here Rest in Peace; For We Shall Not Repeat the Evil.” It is a promise to not only those who died, but to those who lived. It is a promise to all humanity and to the future. The “We” in the promise is all of us. It is a promise to ourselves.

Wherever you live, take note of this season, and spend some time in contemplation on the meaning for humanity of the historic, somber events which took place on August 6 and August 9, 1945.

August 12, 1999
The City of Hiroshima Peace Declaration

“Today as Hiroshima marked its 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing of our city, we solemnly held the Peace memorial Ceremony in front of the Memorial Cenotaph in Peace Memorial Park, Japan, with thousands of people from Japan and overseas….This Peace Declaration expresses our desire for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace. The situation of the world is still changing suddenly. I would appreciate it if you would read through the Declaration to renew your understanding of the “Spirit of Hiroshma” and convey it to as many people as possible.” -Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, Hiroshma City

A century of war, the twentieth century spawned the devil’s own weapons-nuclear weapons -and humankind has yet to free itself of their threat. Nonetheless, inspired by the memory of the hundreds of thousands who died so tragically in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of war’s victims, we have fought for the fifty-four years since those bombings for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

It is the many courageous hibakusha and the people who have identified with their spirit who have led this struggle. Looking at the important contributions these hibakusha have made, we cannot but express our deepest gratitude to them.

There are three major contributions:

The first is that they were able to transcend the infernal pain and despair that the bombings sowed and to opt for life. I want young people to remember that today’s elderly hibakusha were as young as they are when their families, their schools, and their communities were destroyed in a flash. They hovered between life and death in a corpse-strewn sea of rubble and ruin-circumstances under which none would have blamed them had they chosen death. Yet they chose life.

We should never forget the will and courage that made it possible for the hibakusha to continue to be human.

Their second accomplishment is that they effectively prevented a third use of nuclear weapons. Whenever conflict and war break out, there are those who advocate nuclear weapon’s use. This was true even in Kosovo. Yet the hibakusha’s will that the evil not be repeated has prevented the unleashing of this lunacy. Their determination to tell their story to the world, to argue eloquently that to use nuclear weapons is to doom the human race, and to show the use of nuclear weapons to be the ultimate evil has brought about this result. We owe our future and our children’s future to them.

Their third achievement lies in their representing the new world-view as engraved on the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and articulated in the Japanese Constitution. They have rejected the path of revenge and animosity that leads to extinction for all humankind. Instead, they have taken upon themselves not only the evil that Japan as a nation perpetrated but also the evil of war itself. They have also chosen to put their “trust in the justice and faith” of all humankind in order to create a future full of hope. As peace-loving people from all over the world solemnly proclaimed at the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference this May, this is the path that humankind should take in the new century. We ardently applaud all of the countries and people who have written this philosophy into their Constitutions and their laws.

Above all else, we must possess a strong will to abolish nuclear weapons following the examples set by the hibakusha. If the entire world shares this commitment-indeed, even if only the leaders of the nuclear weapons states will it so-nuclear weapons can be eliminated tomorrow.

Such will is born of truth-the truth that nuclear weapons are the absolute evil and cause humankind’s extinction.

Where there is such will, there is a way. Where there is such determination, any path we take leads to our goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. However, if we lack the will to take the first step, we can never reach our goal no matter how easy the way. I especially hope our young people share this will.

Thus, we again call upon the government of Japan to understand fully the crucial role the hibakusha have played and to enhance their support policies. We also call upon the government to place the highest priority on forging the will to abolish nuclear weapons. It is imperative that the government of Japan follows the philosophy outlined in the preamble of the Constitution to persuade other countries of this course and cement a global commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. I declare the abolition of nuclear weapons to be our most important responsibility for the future of the earth, and pay my utmost respect to the souls of the many that perished in the atomic bombings. May they rest in peace.

Tadatoshi Akiba Mayor, The City of Hiroshima

August 6, 1999
The Spirit of Hiroshima

I am a hibakusha, a survivor of Hiroshima. In 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was 12 years old, a 7th grader at girls’ junior high school. I was exposed to the A-bomb at a point less than a mile away from the epicenter.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the skies were perfectly clear without a sign of clouds. As the sun of midsummer arose, the temperature began to rise rapidly. When the air-raid alarm sounded at 7:09 a.m. and was cleared at 7:31 a.m., the citizens gave a sigh of relief and started their activities. Many people had entered the city from neighboring towns and villages to work at dismantling buildings. About 350,000 people were believed to have been in the city on that day, including more than 40,000 military personnel.

There was no vacation for students during the war. Students of only 12 years old or so had to work day after day in factories or at building demolition sites. On that day, a total of about 8,400 junior high school boys and girls aged 12 to 14 were working on six building demolition sites.

After the all-clear signal was issued, we went back to work. A total of 500 girl students, 7th and 8th graders of our junior high school, were serving as mobilized students, clearing away demolished buildings. Forming groups of 4 or 5, we collected broken tile, glass and pieces of wood and carried them in baskets, shouting “Yosha, Yosha,” encouraging each other.

Suddenly my best friend, Takiko Funaoka, shouted, “I hear the sound of a B-29.” Never thinking it was possible, I looked up and there, high in the sky, the white vapor was trailing.

Then I caught a glimpse of an airplane flying away to the northwest. I thought I saw some luminous body drop from the tail of the plane. I quickly lay flat on the ground. Just at that moment, I heard an indescribable deafening roar. My first thought was that the plane had aimed at me.

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

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

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

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

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

As I was watching the horrible scene, someone called my name, “Miyoko, aren’t you Miyoko?” But I couldn’t make out who was speaking to me. She said, “I am Michiko.” Her burns were so severe they had reduced her facial features – eyes, mouth and chin – to a pulp.

Then I realized that bright red flames were blazing in the area from where I had escaped. Fearing that staying where Michiko and I were would mean that we would be trapped by the flames, we climbed up the river bank, helping each other.

Just as we were about to cross the bridge, we found that A-bomb victims were moving about in utter confusion on the bridge. They reminded me of sleepwalkers.

We crossed the bridge and on our way we witnessed countless tragedies. Those who drank from the water tank for fire prevention died as they tried to drink. They fell into the water, one on top of each other.

A bleeding mother was trying to rush into a burning house, shouting, “oh, my boy….” But a man caught her and wouldn’t let her go. She was screaming frantically, “Let me go, let me go, my boy, I must go.” The scene was hell on earth.

Helping each other, we came to the edge of another bridge. “I cannot run any further,” said Michiko. Yet she pleaded with me with her eyes to take her with me. I could not even give her a drop of water. We had to separate.

Michiko walked alone to the temple property on the hillside about a half mile away. She was dead when her parents found her three days later. I always thought that if I had been able to help her a little more to reach the rescue center, she might have lived. My heart still aches.

I managed to get to a first-aid station. I suffered from lingering high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding gums. Half of my hair fell out. I was on the verge of death. Keloid scars developed on my face, arms and legs. Someone helped me do knee bends so that my knees would not stiffen permanently.

I was shocked and filled with sorrow when I looked at my face in the mirror for the first time after eight months. It was disfigured beyond all recognition. I couldn’t believe it was my face. My mother would weep and say, “I should have been burned instead of you, for I am much older than you and will not live long.” She would also say, “It would have been much better if you had died at the moment the bomb exploded.” Seeing mother in such deep sorrow, I made up my mind never to grieve over my fate in her presence.

After eight months of treatment, I returned to my school only to find that the number of students had been reduced from 250 to about 50. Though I had suffered from the atomic bombing, I did not intend to stop my activities, so I studied very hard.

The horrible keloids on my face kept me from finding work after graduation. Around that time I began visiting Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s church, located in Nagarekawa. I faithfully attended his Monday evening gatherings for atomic bomb survivors where, listening to sermons and singing hymns with the others, my heart gradually came to find peace. With the warm help of these people and many others, I became one of sixteen young women known as the “Hiroshima Maidens” who traveled to Tokyo and Osaka for hospital treatment.

Eight years after the bombing, when I was 20, in May, 1953, I found myself inOsaka where I eventually underwent more than ten operations over a seven-month period. These operations were quite successful and, as a result, I was able to open and close my dysfunctional eyelid and to straighten out my crooked fingers. I was filled with gratitude towards those people who reached out with warm, loving hands and softly stroked my eyelid that wouldn’t shut. I returned to Hiroshima, wishing for a way to express my thanks.

Reverend Tanimoto established a facility for poor blind children without families. I and two other “Hiroshima Maidens” began work there as live-in caretakers. From morning until night, we were mothers to these children, helping them with homework, meals, going to the bathroom, and changing and washing clothes. Exactly one year later, in May 1955, my two companions left this job to travel to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York to undergo more cosmetic surgery. For myself, I just didn’t feel right about traveling to the U.S., the country which had dropped the atomic bomb. I was left behind alone.

My one pleasure each week was attending Sunday morning services at church. The Americans I met there did not fit the image I had formed of them in my mind. They were extremely kind, and deeply regretted their country’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of them was Mrs. Barbara Reynolds who later founded the World Citizenship Center (WCC) in Hiroshima. She was a pious Quaker who devoted her life and all she had to make Hiroshima internationally known. Because of her great efforts of goodwill, she eventually became a special honorary citizen of Hiroshima in 1975. Her hatred of the bombings were so strong and her caring for the victims so real, I often wondered how she could possibly be from the same country as the men who had bombed Hiroshima.

I owe what I am today to the love of Mrs. Reynolds and many other people. She is the one who persuaded and encouraged me to speak of my experience to foreigners in English even though I had no confidence in my ability nor sufficient knowledge of the English language in my view. She and many kind Americans helped me overcome the fear of speaking about my experience. I am very grateful to all of them.

Gradually coming to like and trust Americans, I realized that, had the Japanese possessed the A-bomb, we, too, would have used it. The real enemy, therefore, is not America. It is war and nuclear weapons. Those weapons must be abolished.

Nuclear weapons are manufactured by human beings. War is started by us human beings, too. Peace begins when we share our sufferings with each other. We must all strive to overcome hatred and learn to love one another. The most important task for the peoples of this world is to cultivate friendship through exchanges involving religion, art, culture, sports, education, and economic assistance.

In March 1962, just before the U.S. resumed nuclear testing and after I had been working at the home for the blind for eight years, I found a way to work at helping to abolish nuclear weapons. Through the help of Barbara Reynolds, I was chosen as a representative of Hiroshima to present the heartfelt message of the survivors of the A-bomb in person to U Thant, the Secretary General of the United Nations at the 18th National Disarmament Conference in Geneva. On the way to New York and Geneva, we visited 14 countries in five months, including the United States, England, France, West and East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Everywhere we appealed for a ban on nuclear testing.

In April 1964, I joined anther group, the World Peace Study Mission, which traveled to eight countries between April and July. When I returned home, I was shocked to find that my elder brother and his wife had died from the after-effects of the bombing, leaving their three children, who were 6, 8 and 12 years old. The children had moved to our house to live with my aged parents, expecting me to bring them up. Moreover, my father’s health was very poor, due to cancer of the stomach, and the doctor said that he had only three more months to live. Although he was a survivor of the bombing himself, he had taken care of me and had worked at the first aid station treating victims and helping to dispose of dead bodies. I began to take care of my father, and my small nieces and nephew. I devoted my life to this task.

In April 1982, when the Second Special Session on Disarmament Conference was held in the U.N., I made a third trip to the United States. My journey across America took two months. Barbara Reynolds, my guide and companion, traveled with me to Los Angeles, where we had spent an intense week introducing drawings by survivors to the people and media of Southern California. We were taken by van with those drawings, four films, 400 books, 1,500 pamphlets, 130 slide-sets, etc., from the West Coast of America to New York City. We visited 29 cities in 16 different states and one city in Canada. I made my appeal to more than 110,000 people in sixty-nine gatherings. We showed the drawings by survivors and projected our films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that people in North America could hear the story of Hiroshima and nuclear weapons. Three Japanese TV crews followed the exhibition, and recorded the reaction of Americans to the pictures and to my appeal for nuclear disarmament, to show on Japanese television.

Six years after the trip to the United Nations, in September 1988, I had to take five months’ sick leave in order to have breast surgery. The Director of the National Cancer Research Center said. “At the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the radiation released adversely affected human cells undergoing division, especially in the mammary glands where the process of cell division is at its peak when a female is between 10 and 13 years old. In those girls passing through puberty when the bomb was dropped, a cancerous seed was implanted. The female hormonal system acted to promote the growth of this cancer. Forty-three years later, the chances for having breast cancer were four times greater for women who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

I may look fine and healthy now, but my old wounds still hurt all the time. I still have the fear that I will soon have the A-bomb disease again and suffer for the rest of my life. When I get depressed and worried about the future, I try to remember my friends who were killed by the bomb when they were young. I’m sure they each had their own dreams. I feel so sorry for them when I think of how much they wanted to live. But at the same time, I can hear them saying to me that I was very fortunate to have lived and I should take care of myself in order to accomplish my mission. My mission is to continue telling my experience as a survivor, a hibakusha, appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons, talking about the folly of war and the preciousness of life, to as many people as possible. That surely will console their souls.

I am grateful for being able to live, and do what I can to make peace.

As a hibakusha, I am determined to continue appealing for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Earth. That is what I must do. We survivors of the atomic bombing are against the research, development, testing, production, and use of any nuclear arms. We are opposed to war of any kind, for whatever reason.

I would like to say to young people in the United States and other countries: Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

We are at the threshold of the 21st century. It is time for us to change the international trend from confrontation to dialogue, from distrust to reconciliation, and to move towards the solidarity of nations in the world, so that every creature on Earth can live in peace on this beautiful planet. It is war itself that is wrong.

The inscription on the peace memorial cenotaph in Hiroshima reads: “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” That is what the spirit of Hiroshima is all about.

We must vow to do all in our power that never again will anyone have to face the tragedy that occurred in Hiroshima.

“We Shall Not Repeat the Evil.” No More Hiroshimas! No More War!

My only purpose is to appeal to everyone to work for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, and for a more peaceful world of mutual understanding.

July 25, 1999
My A-bomb Experience and the Spirit of Hiroshima

In the past, Japan inflicted indescribable suffering and deep sorrow on China and other countries of Asia. Fundamentally, responsibility for war damage inflicted by Japan clearly lies with the Japanese government. I believe that we as individual human beings, however, should not neglect to reflect on this matter. Though I was only a youth, I believe it is essential for me, as a Japanese who was alive at the time, to fully reflect on and etch in my mind the lessons of Japan’s invasion and war and our colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.

August 6, 1945, I was fourteen years old, in my second year of middle school. I was standing in the schoolyard 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter with about 150 other students. Suddenly, with a tremendous roar, everything went pitch black. At length, the smoke cleared and I could see the schoolyard again. I had been blown backward about 10 meters by the blast. My classmates toohad been blown forward, backward, left or right. They were fallen and scattered all around. The school building was a low pile of rubble. The surrounding houses had also vanished. Except for a few large buildings in the distance everything had vanished. For an instant I thought, “The whole city’s gone!”

As I came to my senses, I examined my own body. My uniform was burned to shreds. I had serious burns on the back of my head, my back, both arms, and both legs. The skin of both of my hands had peeled off and was dangling down on strips, revealing raw, red flesh underneath. Pieces of glass were protruding from my body in several places. Suddenly, I was attacked by an unfamiliar sense of horror. In a matter of minutes I was heading for the river as fast as I could go. Not long on my way, I heard someone calling my name. Looking around, I saw my classmate Tatsuya Yamamoto. We used to walk to school together every day. Now, he was seeking help, crying, “Mama, Mama…help me!” I said, “Stop crying! We just have to get out of here!” And with me alternating between scolding and encouraging, we fled together toward the river.

I saw a line of survivors looking dazed, dragging their legs wearily and pressing toward me. Their peeled arms dangled oddly in front of them, and their clothes were in tatters. Many were virtually naked. I couldn’t even see them as human; I felt I was watching a grotesque procession of ghosts. I saw one man with hundreds of glass shards piercing his body from the waist up. The skin of another man had peeled off his entire upper body, exposing a mass of red flesh. A woman was covered in blood, one eyeball grotesquely dangling out of its socket. Next to a mother whose skin had completely peeled off lay a loudly crying baby, its entire body burnt. Corpses were scattered everywhere. A dead woman’s internal organs had burst out onto the ground around her. It was all so utterly gruesome, a living hell indescribable in words. We continued to head resolutely for the river.

But all the streets and pathways leading to the riverbank were blocked by the wreckage of toppled houses. It often seemed impossible to get through. In a mindless state of utter desperation we crawled on all fours over and through the ruins until at last we managed to find the river. Luckily, just where we emerged on the bank we found a small wooden bridge that had miraculously withstood the blast.

Then it happened, just as we were stepping out onto the bridge. Tongues of fire burst violently out from the collapsed houses on both sides of the street. As we stood and gaped, the whole riverside transformed into a sea of fire. Crackling loud as thunder, towering pillars of fire shot up towards the heavens, like the eruption of a volcano. Fortunately we were beyond the reach of the conflagration, but my friend Yamamoto had somehow vanished.

Finally I escaped to the other side of the river where there wasn’t any fire. Having reached relative safety, the intensity of my flight subsided somewhat, and I was suddenly aware that my whole body was burning hot. To ease the pain I went down to the river, dipping myself three times. The cool water of the river was to my scorched body an exquisite, priceless balm. “Ah, I’m saved!” And with that thought, for the first time, my tears flowed and would not stop. I came up from the river and was guided to a temporary relief station hastily set up in a bamboo grove. There I received some minimal first aid and rested a while. As I sat there it started to rain, the first black rain I had ever seen. Huge drops that made a big noise when they fell. I just watched, bewildered, thinking, “Is there really such a thing as black rain?” I waited for it to stop, then started walking home.

After a while, again I heard someone calling my name. I turned and saw Tokujiro Hatta, another friend who used to walk to school with Yamamoto and me. “Takahashi, help me! Take me home with you!” he begged, groaning. For some reason, the soles of his feet were burned so badly that the skin had peeled, revealing the red flesh beneath. He certainly couldn’t walk. Though I myself was seriously burned, I was not the sort to abandon a friend and continue on my way alone. I decided immediately to take Hatta along with me. But how? Luckily, though his feet were burned, the rest of his body had escaped serious burns or cuts. After considering the possibilities for a while, I decided there were two ways to get him home without having his feet touch the ground: one was to have him crawl on his hands and knees; the other was to lean him back on his heels while I supported him. Thus we began our trek, alternating between these two methods. Plodding along slower than cows, step after agonizing step, somehow we managed to help each other along. At one point, overcome by fatigue, we were forced to sit by the road and rest. For no particular reason I looked back over my shoulder. “Hey! Isn’t that my great aunt and uncle? They’re coming this way!” I used every ounce of strength I could muster to shout to them, and they stopped. They were on their way home from a memorial service in the country. Our meeting was a complete coincidence. With their help we made it home.

Once home, I collapsed in a coma and remained unconscious for three weeks. Later, I was treated by a doctor–an ear, nose, and throat specialist–who came to our house morning and night to see me. Ordinarily, severe burns would not be treated by an otolaryngologist, but with nearly all the doctors and nurses in the city either dead or incapacitated, I was extremely fortunate to receive treatment from any sort of doctor at all. I battled my burns and disease for a year and a half, hovering between life and death. A Japanese saying goes, “Nine deaths for one life, ” and that was precisely my experience. My friends passed from this world with acute radiation sickness: Tokujiro Hatta two days later, and Tatsuya Yamamoto after one month-and-a-half.

I have survived these many years, but my right elbow and the fingers of my right hand except for my thumb are bent and immobile. Keloid scars remain on my back, arms and legs. The cartilage in my ears deteriorated from the blood and pus that collected there, leaving my ears deformed. I continue to grow a “black nail” from the first finger of my right hand. (You may have seen two samples of this “black nail” that fell off and are on display at the Peace Memorial Museum.) Further, I am afflicted with chronic hepatitis, a liver infection that is a nationally recognized aftereffect of the bomb. I have been hospitalized ten times since 1971. Besides my liver problem, I am afflicted with numerous other ailments and cannot help but constantly worry about my health.

While struggling with this frail and damaged body, I have often wondered in despair, “Do I really need to live with all this pain?” But each time I have answered, “But you’ve already come so far.” And that thought has kept me going. Of my sixty classmates that day, fifty were cruelly slaughtered by the atomic bomb. To date, I have confirmed the survival of only thirteen of us; I am one of the very few still alive.

“I cannot let the deaths of my classmates be in vain. I must be the voice conveying their silent cries to the generations to come. As a survivor, this is my mission and my duty.” These ideas are engraved on my heart, and I have lived to this day repeating such words to myself continually. My friends were helplessly sacrificed to the atomic bomb without ever reaching adulthood. They died writhing in agony. Their short, young lives abruptly ended. Such enormous sorrow. Such horrible frustration.

Among humankind’s abilities, it is said imagination is the weakest and forgetfulness the strongest. We cannot by any means, however, forget Hiroshima, and we cannot lose the ability to abolish war, abolish nuclear weapons, and imagine a world of peace. Hiroshima is not just a historical fact. It is a warning and lesson for the future. We must overcome the pain, sorrow, and hatred of the past, we must conquer the argument that the damage inflicted and the damage incurred in the name of war were justifiable, we must conquer the logic that the dropping of the atomic bomb was justifiable. We must convey the Spirit of Hiroshima– the denial of war and hope for the abolition of nuclear weapons–throughout Japan and throughout the world. I sincerely hope you have understood the Spirit of Hiroshima. I will always be praying for your steadfast efforts and progress toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

July 11, 1998
Countless Voices of Hope

It is with profound appreciation and gratitude that I return to this city of peace, this sacred city of Hiroshima. This city was made sacred not by the tragedy which befell it, but by the rebirth of hope which emerged from that tragedy. From the ashes of Hiroshima, flowers of hope have blossomed, bringing forth a renewed spirit of possibility, of peace, to a world in which hope has been too often crushed for too many.

The massive destruction that was visited upon this city on August 6, 1945 gave birth to the Nuclear Age, an age in which our species would move from the too often practiced power of genocide to the potential of omnicide, the destruction of all humanity and perhaps all life. The devastating power of nuclear weapons, as manifested first at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki, has made peace not only desirable but imperative.

Through the memories of the survivors, the hibakusha, we may learn of the horror they experienced so that we may act to prevent that horror from ever recurring anywhere again. The scenes etched in their memories can pierce us to the marrow of our bones. Sumie Mizukawa, a young girl at the time of the bombing, remembered the sight of a blinded young mother. She wrote:

Her eyes blinded

her dead infant in her arms

with tears streaming

from those sightless eyes

that would never see again.

I saw this in my childhood

as my mother led me by the hand.

That image will never leave

my memories of that dreadful time.

Kosaku Okabe described a scene of misery with “countless bodies of men, women, and children” floating in the river. “It was then,” he wrote, “that I first began to understand the brutality of war.” He continued, “Burned into my memory is the sight of a young mother, probably in her twenties, a baby on her back and a three- or four-year-old child clasped tightly in her arms. Caught against a girder on a bridge her body bobbed idly in the gentle current.”

How could these images not be seared into memory? And how vitally important it is that such images be shared with others throughout the world so that this pain will not again be inflicted on young mothers and their children in other cities at other times. As Akihiro Takahashi, a former director of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Center, wrote, “‘Hiroshima’ is not merely a historic fact in the past. It is an alarm bell for the future of humankind.”

I have had the great privilege of knowing Miyoko Matsubara, who was a twelve year old child when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. Miyoko struggled to learn English so that she could tell the story of what she witnessed and experienced — including her own injury, pain and disfigurement — to young people throughout the world. She was only a child, but she has carried the pain throughout her life. She also carries hope, and her courage gives hope to others.

Miyoko’s message is the message of Hiroshima: “Never again! We shall not repeat the evil.” This message is a clarion call to sanity. It is a cry to the human species to remember our humanity. If we fail to do so, the consequences will be severe. We run the risk of destroying ourselves and much of life. Our capacity for destruction tests our wisdom. The most important issue of our time, although not widely viewed as such, is that of assuring that the evil is not repeated.

I would like you to know that the message of your city awakened me. I first visited Hiroshima when I was 21 years old. At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I learned of the human cost of nuclear destruction, of the tragedy and suffering caused by that single bomb. The spirit of Hiroshima entered my soul. I had no choice but to find a way to work for peace and an end to the threat of future nuclear holocausts.

A second experience solidified my commitment to peace. Returning from Japan in 1964, I found that I had been called into the army. Not realizing the full range of my options, I joined a reserve unit rather than serve on active duty. However, four years later this reserve unit was called to active duty, and I received orders to go to Vietnam as an infantry officer. At that time I believed, and continue to believe today, that this was a war both immoral and illegal. I knew that if I went to Vietnam I would be forced to kill and order others to do so. I, therefore, as a conscientious objector, refused the order to go to Vietnam, and ended up fighting the army in federal court.

It was a great awakening for me to realize that my power as an individual was greater than that of the United States Army. The army had the power to give me an order, but I had the power to say No to their order. I might have gone to jail for doing so, but that was my choice. I had a choice, as we all do, to do what I believed was right. To exercise that choice is tremendously empowering. It is the power of conscience, which is a defining human characteristic, one that separates us from all other forms of life.

Above all else, I consider myself to be a citizen of Earth. I believe that the bonds of our common humanity uniting us are far stronger than the artificial boundaries that divide us. I am also a citizen of the United States, having been born in Los Angeles three years before the Nuclear Age began. Speaking as a single individual, but I’m sure representing millions of others throughout the world, I deeply regret the crime against humanity that occurred here. As an American, I apologize to you, although I know from Miyoko and other hibakusha that your forgiveness came long ago.

I apologize because my government has not yet done so. I apologize because my government has not yet heard the message of Hiroshima, nor learned its foremost lesson — “Never again!” I apologize because my government still bases its national security on the threat to use nuclear weapons. I apologize because your pain and your suffering should not be borne by you alone.

What happened here affects us all. If we can find it in ourselves to share in your tragedy — a tragedy that for most people on Earth today is only of historical memory — we may be capable of sharing in your hope. And, if we can do that, we may be capable of bringing forth a new world in which the ever present threat of nuclear holocaust is ended for all time.

Just over 40 years ago, Josei Toda, your second president, called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons, and called upon the youth of Soka Gakkai to help lead the way. Five months ago I was in Tokyo and Yokohama for the commemoration of that fortieth anniversary. In the short time since that fortieth anniversary, the youth of Soka Gakkai, beginning here in Hiroshima, have gathered over 13 million signatures for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I am in awe of your effort and your accomplishment. I know that President Ikeda is as well. I can only imagine how proud Josei Toda would have been to know of your effort. Your effort inspires and motivates. It is a source of hope.

In your effort to gather signatures you have become educators and activists. You have brought this critical issue of nuclear weapons abolition to the attention of over 13 million people, and have obtained their affirmation of the need to end this nuclear weapons era which threatens the future of humanity and, indeed, all life.

The petition on which you gathered signatures was prepared by Abolition 2000, which is a global network of over 1000 citizens organizations in some 75 countries working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Abolition 2000 draws its strength from the grassroots, from the people. In this respect, it is similar to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. When the landmines campaign succeeded in having a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines signed in Ottawa, Jody Williams, the coordinator of the campaign, said, “Together we are a superpower. It’s a new definition of superpower. It’s not one of us; it’s all of us.” In Abolition 2000, as in the landmines campaign, we are not alone, and together we can become the most powerful grassroots movement in the history of humankind.

The Abolition 2000 International Petition asks for three actions. First, end the nuclear threat by such reasonable steps as withdrawing all nuclear weapons from foreign soil and international waters, separating warheads from delivery vehicles, and committing to unconditional no-first-use of nuclear weapons. Second, sign an international treaty — a Nuclear Weapons Convention — by the year 2000, agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a fixed period of time. Third, reallocate resources from military purposes to assuring a sustainable global future.

Each signature you have gathered represents a voice of hope. Together they represent a chorus of hope that can move the world. We don’t know with certainty what forces you have set in motion by your effort, but we do know that you have touched many lives and that they in turn will touch more lives. If other concerned citizens throughout the world will follow your lead, we can achieve our goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

You have concluded your petition campaign, but please don’t consider your task finished until the last nuclear weapon is removed from the world. This will not happen overnight. It will take sustained effort and commitment. It will require the often under-appreciated virtue of perseverance. All that is truly worth achieving requires perseverance — loving relationships, healthy communities, and a decent world.

I will take the message of your achievement to the leaders of the United Nations, to the delegates preparing for the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, to non-governmental organizations working for nuclear weapons abolition throughout the world, and to the leaders of my own country and other nuclear weapons states.

I urge you to take the message of these 13 million voices to your own government, which has not been true to the people of Japan in its nuclear policies. Your government has not only been content to rely upon the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but — by its accumulation of reprocessed plutonium — has become a virtual nuclear weapons power capable of assembling hundreds of nuclear weapons in days or weeks. If we are to have a world free of nuclear weapons, we must convince our respective governments to change their policies. You must help to convince your government and I must help to convince mine that reliance upon nuclear weapons for defense is an act of folly that endangers our future and undermines our decency as well as our security.

Sometimes we cannot see the full fruits of our efforts during our lifetimes. This has been true of many great peace leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also true of Josei Toda whose vision forms the foundation for your effort. It is true for all of us — if our vision is great enough. I believe, however, that a world free of nuclear weapons can and will be achieved within our lifetimes.

I urge you to dream of what can be, and to always hold fast to your dreams. I beseech you never to lose the dream of a world free from the threat of nuclear holocaust. I implore you to listen to your conscience, and to act courageously upon it. I encourage you to walk the path of peace, which is also the path of justice. I call upon you to follow President Ikeda’s sage advice, “Continue to advance, step-by-step! Never, ever, give up hope.”

If we follow our dreams, if we listen to our consciences, if we act courageously, if we walk the path of peace, if we never give up hope, we will rise to our full stature as human beings. We will live lives that are rich and full. We will make a difference and, by our examples, we will influence others to live such lives. I promise you that I will do my utmost to join you in living such a life and will encourage others to join us as well.

I would like to conclude by sharing with you a poem of hope written by Sadako Kurihara just after the bombing of Hiroshima.

WE SHALL BRING FORTH NEW LIFE

It was night in the basement of a broken building.

Victims of the atomic bombing

Crowding into the candleless darkness,

Filling the room to overflowing —

The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,

The stuffiness of human sweat, the writhing moans —

When, out of the darkness, came a wondrous voice

“Oh! The baby’s coming!” it said.

In the basement turned to living hell

A young woman had gone into labor!

The others forgot their own pain in their concern;

What could they do for her, having not even a match

To bring light to the darkness?

Then came another voice: “I am a midwife.

I can help her with the baby.”

It was a woman who had been moaning in pain only moments before.

And so a new life was born

In the darkness of that living hell.

And so, the midwife died before the dawn,

Still soaked in the blood of her own wounds.

We shall give forth new life!

We shall bring forth new life!

Even to our death.

To find such hope in the darkness of that awful night is a triumph of the human spirit. In remembering Hiroshima, let us dedicate ourselves to bringing forth new life. Let us dedicate ourselves to building a world in which even the threat of nuclear devastation is not a possibility. Let us dedicate ourselves to bringing forth a new world in which no child ever again must suffer the pain of war or hunger or abandonment. Let us dedicate ourselves to building a world in which there is liberty, justice and dignity for all who share this extraordinary planet that gave birth to life. Let us walk the path of peace, and be active participants in the pursuit of peace!

February 12, 1998
Peace Declaration

It was 52 years ago today that a single atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. The skies flashed brighter than a thousand suns and a huge mushroom cloud rose above the city. Untold numbers perished in the sea of flames that followed, and the survivors still suffer from radiation’s debilitating aftereffects.

This event engendered profound distrust of the scientific civilization that has made such dramatic progress over the last hundred years. Science and technology have spawned many conveniences and made our live more comfortable, yet they have also been employed to create the weapons of mass destruction used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only do nuclear weapons imperil humanity’s future, the civilization that created them gravely impacts the whole of the global ecosystem.

We in Hiroshima are outraged that nuclear weapons have yet to be abolished and banished from the face of the earth, and we are very uneasy about the future of civilization.

In signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the international community agreed to put a halt to all nuclear explosions, but much remains to be done before the CTBT can go into force. This was the situation when the United States conducted a subcritical test which it contends is not banned by the CTBT language. On the one hand, the U.S. promises to reduce its stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and on the other hand it obstinately maintains its nuclear testing program. This attitude is utterly devoid of the wisdom needed if all peoples are to coexist. We implore the global community to recognize that nuclear weapons stand at the very apex of all the violence that war represents.

The Fourth World Conference of Mayors for Peace through Inter-city Solidarity currently meeting in Hiroshima seeks a nuclear-free world and is deliberating calling upon all governments and international institutions to conclude a pact banning the use of nuclear weapons and to expand nuclear-weapons-free zones. Hiroshima specifically calls upon the government of Japan to devise security arrangements that do not rely upon a nuclear umbrella.

Japan and other countries differ in language, religion, and customs, and there are also some differences of historical perspective, particularly with our neighbors. All the more do we hope that candid dialogue among all the peoples of the world will result in a shared vision of a brighter tomorrow.

With the world in tumultuous transition, we intend to take every opportunity at home and abroad to convey not only the terrible violence, destruction, and death the atomic bomb wrought but also the inspiring beauty of human life striving toward the future despite experiencing abject despair. The culture of peace generated in the process of Hiroshima’s rebirth is a beacon of hope for all humanity, just as the Atomic Bomb Dome, now designated a World Heritage site, stands as a symbol of hope for all who reject nuclear weapons.

Along with paying our utmost respects to the souls of those who died, we pledge ourselves anew on this Peace Memorial Day to pressing for compassionate assistance policies grounded in reality for the aging hibakusha wherever they may live.

“Since wars begin in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” This thought from the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Constitution must be indelibly etched in our hearts, and I hereby declare it Hiroshima’s resolve.

August 6, 1997
Sowing Seeds of Peace

We are in the season of Hiroshima, having just passed the 52nd anniversary of the bombing of that city by a single nuclear weapon. On the day the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, there was a tear in the fabric of the world. It became clear that a chasm had opened between our technological capabilities for destruction and our spiritual/moral precepts of respect for the dignity and sacredness of human life. Of course, war itself has been a breeding ground for undermining respect for the value of human life. But nuclear weapons brought our destructive capabilities to new heights. Albert Einstein, the great scientist who conceived of the theory of relativity, gave voice to the problem confronting humanity when he said, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

The “unparalleled catastrophe” Einstein spoke of included the end of human civilization and the destruction of most life on Earth. During the Cold War each side pursued a strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction and built up arsenals capable of destroying the other side many times over, despite the knowledge that use of these terrible weapons would entail their own destruction as well as the destruction of most life on Earth. This strategy, which has the acronym MAD, is based upon calculations of human rationality. Yet, as we all know, humans act irrationally for many reasons, not least of which are fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, and mistrust. Humans also make mistakes because they lack pertinent information, misinterpret the information they do have, misconstrue the intentions of other humans, or miscalculate their own capabilities or those of others. The strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction was and remains truly MAD.

The Nuclear Age demands greater efforts to achieve peace and a world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The great challenge of our time is to end the threat of nuclear annihilation. The end of the Cold War has made this possible, but entrenched ways of thinking have made it difficult. Even after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the nuclear weapons states are still relying upon their nuclear arsenals to provide security. But security from whom? Security against what? We need a new kind of security that does not place the human future in jeopardy. We need to learn to think and act in new ways.

Let me suggest some elements of this new way of thinking.

1. Think indigenous. Think like a person whose feet touch the land, like one who loves and respects the Earth and all its creatures. Think seven generations. Recognize that all acts have consequences. Protect the Earth that sustains you. Ask yourself what are the consequences for the Earth of each act you take. Corbin Harney, spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone, has reminded us that we have only “One Earth, one air, one water.” Chief Seattle is reported to have said:

The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites our family. If we kill snakes, the field mice will multiply and destroy our corn. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

2. Think like an astronaut. Keep a broad perspective. See the world as one. Recognize that all borders are manmade. They may exist on maps, but they do not really exist on Earth. That is what the astronauts discovered when they went into space and looked back at our small fragile planet that floats in an immensely vast universe. Astronaut Salman Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia described his experience travelling in space with other astronauts:

The first day, we pointed to our countries. The third day, we pointed to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.

3. The late Carl Sagan, a space scientist and author of Cosmos and Contact, described the Earth as a “pale blue dot”. He wrote:

After Voyager 2 passed Neptune, I got a chance to do something I had wanted to do for many years: turn the cameras around and photograph the distant Earth…

I look at that picture and I see a pale blue dot. One pixel, one picture element, just a dot. I think, that’s us. That’s our home world. Everybody you know, everybody you love, everybody you’ve ever heard of, everybody who ever lived, every human being in the history of the universe lived on that blue dot. Every hopeful child, every couple in love, every prince and pauper, every revered religious leader, every corrupt politician, every ethnocentrist and xenophobe, all of them there on that little dot.

It speaks to me of fragility and vulnerability, not for the planet, but for the species that imagines itself the dominant organism living as part of a thin film of life that covers the dot. It seems to me that this perspective carries with it, as does so much else we know, an obligation to care for and cherish that blue dot, the only home our species has ever known.

4. Think with your heart. Learn to stand in the other person’s shoes. Ask yourself how you would feel if you were in that other person’s shoes. Act with compassion. Follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t be stopped or molded by so-called enemies. Look into the faces, the eyes, the hearts of those who are labeled enemies. Find their humanity. In doing so, you will also find your own.

5. Think peace. Peace is a process. It requires constant effort to maintain a dynamic balance. I define peace in this way: Peace is a dynamic process of nonviolent social interaction that results in security for all members of a society. Thus, peace is more than the absence of war. Without security, there is no peace.

6. Think like a seed. Recognize that you have the inherent power of growth. You are not static. A tiny seed may become a majestic tree.

Potential is realized in many ways, in the seemingly small decisions that one makes each day. When Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give up her seat in the front of a public bus to a white man, she was realizing her potential. Her simple act of courage, which caused her to be arrested, led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the modern civil rights movement. When Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department analyst, risked imprisonment by turning over the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, thus exposing secret reports on the Vietnam War to the American people, he was realizing his potential as a human being.

Let me contrast this way of thinking with what I believe are the main characteristics of the old way of thinking. It is short-sighted without due regard for consequences; technology centered, seeking technological rather than human solutions to problems; high-risk, and often propelled by testosterone; rooted in secrecy, which is maintained by official classification of information in the name of national security; and often arrogant, bureaucratic, and hierarchical. In short, it is thinking and behavior which divides rather than unites, dominates rather than shares, and destroys rather than heals. This is the thinking which underlies war, nuclearism, disparity, environmental devastation, and human rights abuses.

Which kind of thinking do you choose? It is an important question because the world of tomorrow will be rooted in the thinking of today. And your thinking and your acts will help to form the world of tomorrow.

Forty years ago when Josei Toda called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons his thinking was ahead of its time. But he sowed a seed of peace that has taken root. He referred to nuclear weapons as an “absolute evil.” Nearly four decades later, the International Court of Justice issued its opinion that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal under international law. The Court said that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would be subject to the rules of international humanitarian law. This means that nuclear weapons cannot be threatened or used if they would fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians or if they would cause unnecessary suffering to combatants. In issuing this opinion, the President of the Court, Mohammed Bedjaoui, wrote, “Atomic warfare and humanitarian law therefore appear to be mutually exclusive; the existence of the one automatically implies the non-existence of the other.” He also referred to nuclear weapons in a manner similar to the way that Josei Toda had referred to them in 1957. He called them the “ultimate evil.”

In many ways we have been too complacent in tolerating this absolute evil in our world. As citizens of the world, we must confront this evil and demand an end to the nuclear weapons era. I have the following suggestions for you:

1. Increase your awareness. Inform yourself. One place to start is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s or other similar web sites. The Foundation’s web address is https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com. We also have a free electronic newsletter, The Sunflower, which provides information on the abolition of nuclear weapons and other issues relating to peace in the Nuclear Age. You can sign up for this at the Foundation’s web site. We are publishing a booklet in our Waging Peace Series on Creating a Nuclear Weapons Free World, A Guide for Students and All Concerned Citizens. You can order a copy from our Foundation.

2. Exercise your citizenship. Speak out. Make your voice heard. If necessary, protest. Demand information, and fight against government secrecy. You have a democratic right to informed consent on government policies. The late ocean explorer, filmmaker and environmentalist, Jacques Cousteau, said, The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act. I urge you, every time you have an opportunity, make your opinions known by physical presence. Do it!

3. Sow seeds of peace. You can sow seeds of peace in many ways — by a smile or a kind word, by caring and sharing, by compassion, by demonstrating in your daily acts that life matters, that the Earth matters, that you are committed to creating a safer and saner future.

4. Support Abolition 2000. This is a worldwide network of over 700 citizen action groups around the world working for a treaty by the year 2000 that calls for the prohibition and elimination of all nuclear weapons in a timebound framework. Sign the Abolition 2000 International Petition, and help circulate it. There is also an Abolition 2000 Resolution for Municipalities and one for College Campuses. You can help in having these enacted in your municipality and on your college campus.

5. Grow to your full stature as a human being. Think about not only your rights, but your responsibilities as a human being fortunate enough to be alive at this amazing time in history. Recognize that you are a miracle, that all life is a miracle, and treat yourself and all life with the respect due a miracle. One important responsibility of each generation is to assure that the chain of life is not broken. This responsibility is heightened in the Nuclear Age, and thus more is demanded of us all. My greatest hope for each of you is that you will fulfill your promise and potential as human beings, and be a force for peace in a world that is crying out to be healed.

I would like to end with a story about sunflowers. When the former Soviet Union split apart, Ukraine was left with a large nuclear weapons arsenal. Ukraine agreed, however, to become a nuclear weapons free state, and to send all of the nuclear weapons left on its territory to Russia for dismantlement. When Ukraine completed this transfer in June 1996, the Defense Ministers of Ukraine and Russia along with the Secretary of Defense of the United States commemorated the occasion in an extraordinary way. They scattered sunflower seeds and planted sunflowers on a former Ukrainian missile base which once housed 80 SS-19 nuclear-armed missiles aimed at the United States. Secretary of Defense William Perry said, “Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil would ensure peace for future generations.”

Of course, sunflowers alone will not be enough. But sunflowers are a great symbol of hope. They are bright and beautiful. They are hardy and healthy. They make us smile, and they can nourish us. They represent everything that missiles do not. They are life and they affirm life. Nuclear armed missiles, on the other hand, are technological instruments of genocide. They are symbols death and the mass destruction of life.

Sunflowers have become the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. They are a powerful symbol, but they are not enough. To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons will require a great effort of citizens united from all parts of the world, and particularly an effort by young people who will inherit tomorrow’s world. I urge you to be part of this effort, and one day we will plant sunflowers to celebrate the end of the nuclear weapons era on our planet.

*David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

August 1, 1997