Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Hiroshima

  • Setsuko Thurlow: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

    The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2017.

    Your Majesties,
    Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
    My fellow campaigners, here and throughout the world,
    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Setsuko ThurlowIt is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You each give me such tremendous hope that we can – and will – bring the era of nuclear weapons to an end.

    I speak as a member of the family of hibakusha – those of us who, by some miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For more than seven decades, we have worked for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    We have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with long-forgotten names, like Moruroa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga, Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted.

    We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

    Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in vain.

    I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. 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 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 pushing! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can.” As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation.

    Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air.

    Thus, with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its residents were civilians who were incinerated, vaporized, carbonized – among them, members of my own family and 351 of my schoolmates.

    In the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of radiation. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors.

    Whenever I remember Hiroshima, the first image that comes to mind is of my four-year-old nephew, Eiji – his little body transformed into an unrecognizable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint voice until his death released him from agony.

    To me, he came to represent all the innocent children of the world, threatened as they are at this very moment by nuclear weapons. Every second of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we hold dear. We must not tolerate this insanity any longer.

    Through our agony and the sheer struggle to survive – and to rebuild our lives from the ashes – we hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our testimonies.

    But still some refused to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities – as war crimes. They accepted the propaganda that these were “good bombs” that had ended a “just war”. It was this myth that led to the disastrous nuclear arms race – a race that continues to this day.

    Nine nations still threaten to incinerate entire cities, to destroy life on earth, to make our beautiful world uninhabitable for future generations. The development of nuclear weapons signifies not a country’s elevation to greatness, but its descent to the darkest depths of depravity. These weapons are not a necessary evil; they are the ultimate evil.

    On the seventh of July this year, I was overwhelmed with joy when a great majority of the world’s nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having witnessed humanity at its worst, I witnessed, that day, humanity at its best. We hibakusha had been waiting for the ban for seventy-two years. Let this be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

    All responsible leaders will sign this treaty. And history will judge harshly those who reject it. No longer shall their abstract theories mask the genocidal reality of their practices. No longer shall “deterrence” be viewed as anything but a deterrent to disarmament. No longer shall we live under a mushroom cloud of fear.

    To the officials of nuclear-armed nations – and to their accomplices under the so-called “nuclear umbrella” – I say this: Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential. You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.

    To every president and prime minister of every nation of the world, I beseech you: Join this treaty; forever eradicate the threat of nuclear annihilation.

    When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smouldering rubble, I kept pushing. I kept moving toward the light. And I survived. Our light now is the ban treaty. To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! See the light? Crawl towards it.”

    Tonight, as we march through the streets of Oslo with torches aflame, let us follow each other out of the dark night of nuclear terror. No matter what obstacles we face, we will keep moving and keep pushing and keep sharing this light with others. This is our passion and commitment for our one precious world to survive.

  • 2017 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    Friends, seventy-two years ago today, on August 6, at 8:15 a.m., absolute evil was unleashed in the sky over Hiroshima. Let’s imagine for a moment what happened under that roiling mushroom cloud. Pika—the penetrating flash, extreme radiation and heat. Don—the earth-shattering roar and blast. As the blackness lifts, the scenes emerging into view reveal countless scattered corpses charred beyond recognition even as man or woman. Stepping between the corpses, badly burned, nearly naked figures with blackened faces, singed hair, and tattered, dangling skin wander through spreading flames, looking for water. The rivers in front of you are filled with bodies; the riverbanks so crowded with burnt, half-naked victims you have no place to step. This is truly hell. Under that mushroom cloud, the absolutely evil atomic bomb brought gruesome death to vast numbers of innocent civilians and left those it didn’t kill with deep physical and emotional scars, including the aftereffects of radiation and endless health fears. Giving rise to social discrimination and prejudice, it devastated even the lives of those who managed to survive.

    This hell is not a thing of the past. As long as nuclear weapons exist and policymakers threaten their use, their horror could leap into our present at any moment. You could find yourself suffering their cruelty.

    This is why I ask everyone to listen to the voices of the hibakusha. A man who was 15 at the time says, “When I recall the friends and acquaintances I saw dying in those scenes of hell, I can barely endure the pain.” Then, appealing to us all, he asks, “To know the blessing of being alive, to treat everyone with compassion, love, and respect—are these not steps to world peace?”

    Another hibakusha who was 17 says, “I ask the leaders of the nuclear-armed states to prevent the destruction of this planet by abandoning nuclear deterrence and abolishing immediately all atomic and hydrogen bombs. Then they must work wholeheartedly to preserve our irreplaceable Earth for future generations.”

    Friends, this appeal to conscience and this demand that policymakers respond conscientiously are deeply rooted in the hibakusha experience. Let’s all make their appeal and demand our own, spread them throughout the world, and pass them on to the next generation.

    Policymakers, I ask you especially to respect your differences and make good-faith efforts to overcome them. To this end, it is vital that you deepen your awareness of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons, consider the perspectives of other countries, and recognize your duty to build a world where all thrive together.

    Civil society fully understands that nuclear weapons are useless for national security. The dangers involved in controlling nuclear materials are widely understood. Today, a single bomb can wield thousands of times the destructive power of the bombs dropped 72 years ago. Any use of such weapons would plunge the entire world into hell, the user as well as the enemy. Humankind must never commit such an act. Thus, we can accurately say that possessing nuclear weapons means nothing more than spending enormous sums of money to endanger all humanity.

    Peace Memorial Park is now drawing over 1.7 million visitors a year from around the world, but I want even more visitors to see the realities of the bombing and listen to survivor testimony. I want them to understand what happened under the mushroom cloud, take to heart the survivors’ desire to eliminate nuclear weapons and broaden the circle of empathy to the entire world. In particular, I want more youthful visitors expanding the circle of friendship as ambassadors for nuclear abolition. I assure you that Hiroshima will continue to bring people together for these purposes and inspire them to take action.

    Mayors for Peace, led by Hiroshima, now comprises over 7,400 city members around the world. We work within civil society to create an environment that helps policymakers move beyond national borders to act in good faith and conscience for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    In July, when 122 United Nations members, not including the nuclear-weapon and nuclear-umbrella states, adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, they demonstrated their unequivocal determination to achieve abolition. Given this development, the governments of all countries must now strive to advance further toward a nuclear-weapon-free world.

    The Japanese Constitution states, “We, the Japanese people, pledge our national honor to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all our resources.” Therefore, I call especially on the Japanese government to manifest the pacifism in our constitution by doing everything in its power to bridge the gap between the nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states, thereby facilitating the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I further demand more compassionate government assistance to the hibakusha, whose average age is now over 81, and to the many others also suffering mentally and physically from the effects of radiation, along with expansion of the “black rain areas.”

    We offer heartfelt prayers for the repose of the atomic bomb victims and pledge to work with the people of the world to do all in our power to bring lasting peace and free ourselves from the absolute evil that is nuclear weapons.

    August 6, 2017

    MATSUI Kazumi

    Mayor

    The City of Hiroshima

  • 2017 Sadako Peace Day: August 9th

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation invites you to attend the 23rd annual Sadako Peace Day. It will take place on Wednesday, August 9, from 6:00-7:00 p.m. at La Casa de Maria (800 El Bosque Road, Montecito, CA 93108). There will be music, poetry, and reflection to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all innocent victims of war. The event is free and open to the public. Click here to RSVP to the event on Facebook.

    For more information about Sadako Peace Day, including photos from previous years’ events, click here.

    Sadako Peace Day 2017

  • Testimony of a Hiroshima Survivor

    United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination

    New York, 27 March 2017

    Testimony by Fujimori Toshiki, Assistant Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations)

    President Ambassador Whyte, Distinguished Delegates,

    I would like to thank the President for giving me the opportunity to speak.

    My name is Fujimori Toshiki, and I am the Assistant Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo, Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations. I am one of the people who was exposed to the atomic bomb the U.S. forces dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

    Hibakusha established Nihon Hidankyo eleven years after the bombing. Since then, we have called for “No More Hibakusha” within Japan and abroad. The treaty you will be negotiating today must reflect this call of Hibakusha in express terms so that the world makes remarkable progress towards nuclear weapons abolition.

    I was 1 year and 4 months-old when the bomb was dropped. We were a big family of twelve, consisting of my grandfather, father, mother, six elder sisters, two elder brothers, and myself. Two of my elder sisters and my two elder brothers had evacuated out of the city of Hiroshima to avoid air raids. The eight of us who stayed in Hiroshima were exposed to the bomb.

    My fourth-eldest sister was 13 years old and was in her first year of an all-girls junior high school. She was around 400m from the hypocenter when the bomb was dropped. Together with her teachers and other students, my sister was there to demolish houses to create firesafe areas against air raids. All of 676 of them including my sister were killed instantly through direct exposure to radiation, the heat, and the blast from the bomb. It is said that all together in the city of Hiroshima, 8400 students in the first and second year of junior high schools were being mobilized for similar purposes that day. The lives of 6300 of them were lost.

    I was sick that day, so my mother was heading to the hospital with me on her back when the bomb was dropped. We were 2.3 km from the hypocentre. Fortunately, a two-story house between the hypocentre and us prevented us from directly being exposed to the heat. Yet, we were thrown all the way to the edge of the river bank. My mother, with me in her arms, managed to get to the nearby mountain called Ushitayama. Our family members were in different locations at the time of the bombing, but everyone escaped to the same mountain of Ushitayama, except for my fourth-elder sister. For many days that followed, my parents and my sisters kept going back to the area near the hypocentre to look for my fourth-eldest sister, who was missing. We never found her. We never found her body either. In the meantime, I had my entire body covered with bandages, with only eyes, nose, and mouth uncovered. Everybody thought I would die over time. Yet, I survived. It is a miracle. I am here at the UN, asking for an abolition of nuclear weapons. I am convinced that this is a mission I am given as a survivor of the atomic-bomb.

    Two hundred and ten thousand people died by the end of 1945 due to the atomic bombs the U.S. forces dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hibakusha experienced hell on earth beneath the mushroom clouds. In fact, Hibakusha have continued to suffer for the twenty six thousand one hundred sixty six days until today, March 27th , 2017.

    Nobody, in any country, deserves seeing the same hell on earth again.

    Every year, on August 6th, my mother would gather all of us children and would talk to us about her experience in tears. I once asked my mother why she would speak about it if recalling the experience makes her suffer.

    “I can’t make you go through the same experience.” That was her answer.

    Her tears were her heartfelt appeal. She called, as a mother, for a world with no more hell on earth.

    Three International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons hosted by Norway, Mexico, and Austria, as well as the Joint Statements on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons at the Preparatory Committee meetings for the NPT Review Conference and the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, repeatedly and strongly reaffirmed the following conclusions:

    That whether intended or not intended, the effects of a nuclear weapon detonation are not constrained by national borders;

    That no state or international body could address its immediate humanitarian emergency or long-term consequences;

    That in the interest of the very survival of humanity nuclear weapons must never be used again; and

    That the only assurance against the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation is the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Many Hibakusha received these messages with thousands of thoughts about the long journey that they had come.

    Nuclear weapon states and their allied nuclear-dependent states are against concluding a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Despite being the only country in the world that experienced the wartime use of nuclear weapons, the Japanese government voted against the UN resolution 71/258, which established this negotiating conference.

    As a Hibakusha, and as a Japanese, I am here today heartbroken.

    Yet, I am not discouraged.

    Government representatives who are present at this conference, international organizations, and representatives of civil society organizations are making efforts to conclude a legally binding instrument to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    In April of last year, Hibakusha initiated the International Signature Campaign, which calls on all state governments to conclude a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons. We reached out to countries across the world, and last October, we delivered our first batch of five hundred sixty thousand signatures to the Chair of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly. Today, we have over one million seven hundred twenty thousand signatures. We will continue the campaign until 2020, and we aim to collect hundreds of millions of signatures.

    Let us work together to achieve the nuclear ban treaty.

    Thank you very much for listening.

  • Hiroshima Survivor’s Letter to President Obama

    This letter, by Hiroshima survivor and NAPF Advisory Council member Setsuko Thurlow, was delivered to President Obama via Ben Rhodes on June 6, 2016.

    Dear President Obama,

    Since your historic visit to Hiroshima in May, several people have been asking me to share my thoughts.  What would I have said to you directly if we’d had an opportunity to sit down and speak face to face?

    Setsuko Thurlow
    Setsuko Thurlow at the 2015 NAPF Evening for Peace.

    The first thing that comes to mind that I would have shared with you is an image of my four-year-old nephew Eiji — transformed into a charred, blackened and swollen child who kept asking in a faint voice for water until he died in agony.  Had he not been a victim of the atomic bomb, he would be 75 years old this year. This idea shocks me. Regardless of the passage of time, he remains in my memory as a 4-year-old child who came to represent all the innocent children of the world.  And it is this death of innocents that has been the driving force for me to continue my struggle against the ultimate evil of nuclear weapons.  Eiji’s image is burnt into my retina.

    Many survivors have been passing in recent years with their dreams of nuclear abolition unfulfilled.  Their motto was, “abolition in our lifetime”.  The reality of our twilight years intensifies our sense of urgency, now met with stronger commitment.  When you say: “it may not happen in my lifetime”, this gives us enormous grief.

    I was not in Hiroshima when you visited, but I understand it was packed with media, and I could tell that of course your visit was carefully controlled and choreographed: who sat where; who were invited to approach you; the children and hibakusha who were hand picked by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. But still you came.  Your speech was heartfelt but it avoided the issue.  I know from my personal experience as hellish as all war is nothing can be equivalent to nuclear violence.

    You said, “Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.” To me your words echoed those of former German President Richard von Weizeker’s inspiring speech on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Germany’s surrender.  Many Japanese people were deeply inspired by the manner in which he confronted the past and dealt with wartime atrocities with integrity, when he said, “We Germans must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion… There can be no reconciliation without remembrance.”

    The Japanese Government should emulate this profound sentiment in confronting the past and dealing with our as yet unresolved relationships with neighboring countries, particularly Korea and China.  Tragically, the current Abe Administration is seeking to expand Japan’s military role in the region and forsake our much-cherished Peace Constitution.

    And in the United States, as you are no doubt aware, an unfortunate remembrance has been underway.  The National Park Service and the Department of Energy will establish the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.  Unlike the memorials at Auschwitz and Treblinka, the United States seeks to preserve the history of the once top-secret sites at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford, as a sort of celebration of that technological ‘achievement’. Among the first so-called ‘successes’ of this endeavor was creating hell on earth in my beloved Hiroshima.

    Is this how we should ensure that the “memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade”?

    Setsuko Thurlow's family in 1937.
    Setsuko Thurlow’s family in 1937.

    As a 13-year-old schoolgirl, I witnessed my city of Hiroshima blinded by the flash, flattened by the hurricane-like blast, burned in the heat of 4000 degrees Celsius and contaminated by the radiation of one atomic bomb.  A bright summer morning turned to dark twilight with smoke and dust rising in the mushroom cloud, dead and injured covering the ground, begging desperately for water and receiving no medical care at all.  The spreading firestorm and the foul stench of burnt flesh filled the air.

    Miraculously, I was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building, about 1.8 kilometers from Ground Zero.  Most of my classmates in the same room were burned alive.  I can still hear their voices calling their mothers and God for help.  As I escaped with two other surviving girls, we saw a procession of ghostly figures slowly shuffling from the centre of the city. Grotesquely wounded people, whose clothes were tattered, or who were made naked by the blast.  They were bleeding, burnt, 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 their intestines hanging out.

    Through months and years of struggle for survival, rebuilding lives out of the ashes, we survivors, or ‘hibakusha’, became convinced that no human being should ever have to repeat our experience of the inhumane, immoral, and cruel atomic bombing.  And it is our mission, to warn the world about the reality of the nuclear threat; and to help people understand the illegality and ultimate evil of nuclear weapons. We believe that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

    And still today, to paraphrase President Kennedy, the sword of Damocles dangles evermore perilously.  Most experts agree that nuclear weapons are more dangerous now than at any point in our history due to a wide variety of risks including: geopolitical saber rattling, human error, computer failure, complex systems failure, increasing radioactive contamination 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.

    Thus, we have a moral imperative to abolish nuclear arsenals, in order to ensure a safe and just world for future generations.  As you said in Hiroshima, “we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”

    Why then, with all due respect to you Mr. President, is the US government boycotting the United Nations disarmament negotiations born of the Humanitarian Initiative, the most significant advance for nuclear disarmament in a generation?

    Within the last five years, I have witnessed the rapid development of a global movement involving states without nuclear weapons and NGOs working together to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons.  This movement has shown beyond all doubt that nuclear weapons are first and foremost a grave humanitarian problem, and that the terrible risks of these weapons cast all techno-military considerations into irrelevance. Following three International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons – inexcusably boycotted by your administration – 127 nations have joined the Humanitarian Pledge to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. These nations are calling on Nuclear Weapon States and those who stand with them, to begin a process for nuclear disarmament.

    To repeat the words of Richard von Weizeker: “We must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion.”  The truth is, we all live with the daily threat of nuclear weapons. In every silo, on every submarine, in the bomb bays of airplanes, every second of every day, nuclear weapons, thousands on high alert, are poised for deployment threatening everyone we love and everything we hold dear.

    Last month in Japan you poignantly said: “That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.”

    I beg you to reframe this profound sentiment to understand that the people we love, our smiling children, the embrace of loved ones, these precious moments and precious people are all under threat of annihilation because of the existence of nuclear weapons, and the policy of deterrence that you currently authorize and provide for nations under the US nuclear umbrella, including my home country Japan.  This perversion, in its truest sense, means that the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack in war now seeks its own protection through far more diabolical hydrogen bombs.  And you Mr. Obama, the only sitting US President to visit Hiroshima, came accompanied by a duty bound officer with the nuclear briefcase, should you need the codes to command a remote missileer to insert a floppy disc as a prelude to the end of life on earth.

    If you truly wanted to hasten our “own moral awakening” through making nuclear disarmament a reality, here are three immediate steps:

    1. Stop the U.S. boycott of international nuclear disarmament meetings and join the 127 countries that have endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge to create a new legal instrument and new norms for a nuclear weapons ban treaty as a first step in their elimination and prohibition.
    1. Stop spending money to modernize the US nuclear arsenal, a staggering $1 trillion over the next three decades, and use this money to meet human needs and protect our environment.
    1. Take nuclear weapons off high alert and review the aging command and control systems that have been the subject of recent research exposing a culture of neglect and the alarming regularity of accidents involving nuclear weapons.

    President Obama, you uniquely have the power to enact real change.  This could be your legacy. To usher in an era of real disarmament where lifting the threat of nuclear war could ease all people to “go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child.”

    Yours sincerely,

    Setsuko Thurlow

  • From Hope to Action

    This speech was delivered by Setsuko Thurlow in Toronto, Canada on August 6, 2016.

    Setsuko Thurlow
    Setsuko Thurlow at the 2015 NAPF Evening for Peace.

    Today is the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  The calendar never fails to bring me the special reminder each year of the unforgettable day, August 6, 1945, that changed my life and that of the entire world.  As I attempt to ponder the meaning of my survival from that hell on Earth I remember Einstein’s words, “Splitting the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking, thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe”.  Try to visualize his words!  It is a chillingly frightening truth.  His words have been ringing in our ears for the past 71 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with more intensity in recent years; as the world we live in is getting more dangerous with over 15,000 nuclear weapons, which are far more destructive than those that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the majority of the world’s people continue to live in denial, blissfully ignorant and complacent of the reality.

    Having lived through such an unprecedented catastrophe, we survivors, Hibakusha, became convinced of our mission to warn the world about the reality of those indiscriminate, inhumane, and cruel nuclear weapons, and their utter unacceptability.  Thus, we have been calling for the total abolition of such devices of mass murder.  We believe that as long as nuclear weapons exist there is no guarantee of security.

    It was because of this awe-inducing power of the atomic bombs that some enlightened leaders of the world, foreseeing the potential annihilation of civilization, speedily established the United Nations and called for stringent control on nuclear technologies to ensure that no one would ever use them for weapons again.  The UN General Assembly’s first ever resolution tried to address “the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy”.  The U.S. enjoyed a monopoly for testing and producing nuclear weapons until the USSR caught up in 1949, and other nuclear weapon nations followed soon after.  As the arms race intensified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force in 1970 and in 1996 the International Court of Justice, the highest court of International Law, was requested to give an advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons and the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states.  Many of us here remember those days with occasional small “moral victories” we celebrated, but mostly fury and outrage for the lack of progress in the disarmament diplomacy.

    In the past several years witnessing nuclear disarmament diplomacy at work in the United Nations and at international conferences has been a relatively new experience for me.  I found it to be profoundly disturbing to see the lack of tangible progress in diplomatic negotiations in spite of the 46 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force.  The nuclear weapon states are not genuinely committed to the treaty as demonstrated by their not having complied with their legal obligations 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 interest.  This totally unacceptable nuclear status quo has been driving many exasperated non-nuclear weapon states and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to demand a legally binding instrument to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    This condition was conducive to the birth of a rapidly growing global movement, the Humanitarian Initiative, involving 127 non-nuclear weapon states and over 440 non-governmental organizations in 98 countries and the United Nations and its agencies, working together to outlaw nuclear weapons.  Over several years with three successful conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons hosted by the governments of Norway, Mexico and Austria, this movement refocused attention from the military doctrine of deterrence to the humanitarian dimension of nuclear weapons.  The result has been a strong push for a legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

    The Humanitarian Pledge was issued by the Austrian government at the conclusion of the Vienna conference in December 2014, committing Austria to “identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.  This pledge has now been endorsed by 127 nations although unfortunately not by Canada.  This reference to the “existing legal gap” is the reality that while chemical and biological weapons are banned, nuclear weapons, the most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction, have not yet been explicitly banned under international law.

    In the many years of my work for nuclear disarmament I have never felt as hopeful and as encouraged as I do now.  To witness how the Humanitarian Initiative movement has mobilized people around the world to overcome the resistance by the nuclear weapon states and to move towards prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.  This year the United Nations established the Open Ended Working Group to “substantively address and make recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly about concrete, effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms” to attain and maintain a nuclear weapons free world.  Now, the working group is in its final, crucial phase.  A growing number of non-nuclear weapon states are expressing support for the immediate commencement of negotiations on a legally binding agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons, despite strong opposition from the nuclear weapon states and their allies.  The General Assembly will vote on this report in October.  We are on the verge of a breakthrough for a path for this most significant chance in our lifetime for nuclear disarmament.  We must seize this opportunity.

    Now, let me tell you an inspiring and empowering story about the recent successful campaign that our ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a global coalition of NGOs) colleagues in the Netherlands achieved.  Frustrated by the Dutch government policy of supporting NATO policies a citizens’ initiative by PAX, ASN Bank and the Dutch Red Cross, made great efforts collecting 45,608 Dutch citizens’ signatures for a petition supporting a ban treaty and to calling for a parliamentary debate on nuclear weapons on April 28th of this year.  The result was that a vast majority of their Parliament voted for a nuclear weapons ban, which the government was forced to accept.  The public gallery was so crowded that another room was needed for the overflow of supporters.  The news media extensively covered this huge success of citizens’ action.  The intent of the motion was that the Netherlands should now be working actively to reach out to other NATO member states to build solidarity.  I was gratified to play a small part of this campaign by speaking to the Members of Parliament via a recorded video statement.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Canadian people can follow in the footsteps of the Netherlands?

    And now, where does our Canadian government stand in the fast developing international negotiations for a legally binding instrument for the prohibition of nuclear weapons?  Regrettably, Canada presents itself as a subservient defender of the nuclear weapons superstar state south of the border, and its allies with their heavy reliance on the doctrine of deterrence.

    For many of us working for nuclear disarmament we rejoiced the arrival of the Trudeau government too soon because this government seemed to have inherited the same retrograde nuclear policies from the previous government.  Foreign Minister Stephane Dion’s letters to Canadian peace groups are full of retrograde ideas and leaves me chilled, and it feels as if we are on different planets.  He is rigidly maintaining the nuclear status quo and has a seeming unwillingness to consider different perspectives of disarmament initiatives.  Sadly, his opposition to the Humanitarian Initiative leaves Canada out of step with the majority of the world.  His total lack of sense of urgency about the increasing risk of nuclear weapons can be seen in this quote from one of his letters:

    “Canada has consistently promoted the notion that complete nuclear disarmament can only occur in an environment that guarantees security for all states.”

    Is he waiting for an ideal, perfect time to initiate disarmament?  Has there ever been any time as that in human history?  Will there be in the future?

    We must wake up the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the entire Parliament as our colleagues in the Netherlands have succeeded in doing.  Otherwise, like Einstein says, this beautiful country of Canada, together with the rest of the world, will drift toward “unparalleled catastrophe”.

    The Open Ended Working Group is winding up, with the final report being issued in Geneva this month.  The momentum is growing.  Let’s join the historic initiative for nuclear disarmament.  Let’s seize this opportunity.  This action of hope will be the best way to honour those annihilated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 71 years ago.

  • 2016 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    hiroshima1945, August 6, 8:15 a.m. Slicing through the clear blue sky, a previously unknown “absolute evil” is unleashed on Hiroshima, instantly searing the entire city. Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, American prisoners of war, children, the elderly and other innocent people are slaughtered. By the end of the year, 140,000 are dead.

    Those who managed to survive suffered the aftereffects of radiation, encountered discrimination in work and marriage, and still carry deep scars in their minds and bodies. From utter obliteration, Hiroshima was reborn a beautiful city of peace; but familiar scenes from our riversides, patterns of daily life, and cultural traditions nurtured through centuries of history vanished in that “absolute evil,” never to return.

    He was a boy of 17. Today he recalls, “Charred corpses blocked the road. An eerie stench filled my nose. A sea of fire spread as far as I could see. Hiroshima was a living hell.” She was a girl of 18. “I was covered in blood. Around me were people with skin flayed from their backs hanging all the way to their feet—crying, screaming, begging for water.”

    Seventy-one years later, over 15,000 nuclear weapons remain, individually much more destructive than the one that inflicted Hiroshima’s tragedy, collectively enough to destroy the Earth itself. We now know of numerous accidents and incidents that brought us to the brink of nuclear explosions or war; today we even fear their use by terrorists.

    Given this reality, we must heed the hibakusha. The man who described a living hell says, “For the future of humanity, we need to help each other live in peace and happiness with reverence for all life.” The woman who was covered in blood appeals to coming generations, “To make the most of the life we’ve been given, please, everyone, shout loudly that we don’t need nuclear weapons.” If we accept these appeals, we must do far more than we have been doing. We must respect diverse values and strive persistently toward a world where all people are truly “living together.”

    When President Obama visited Hiroshima in May, he became the first sitting president of the country that dropped the atomic bomb to do so. Declaring, “… among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them,” he expressed acceptance of thehibakusha’s heartfelt plea that “no one else should ever suffer as we have.” Demonstrating to the people of the U.S. and the world a passion to fight to eliminate all remaining nuclear weapons, the President’s words showed that he was touched by the spirit of Hiroshima, which refuses to accept the “absolute evil.”

    A group of 30 young people from 23 countries met in Hiroshima in August 2015 to work together for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
    A group of 30 young people from 23 countries met in Hiroshima in August 2015 to work together for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Is it not time to honor the spirit of Hiroshima and clear the path toward a world free from that “absolute evil,” that ultimate inhumanity? Is it not time to unify and manifest our passion in action? This year, for the first time ever, the G7 foreign ministers gathered in Hiroshima. Transcending the differences between countries with and without nuclear weapons, their declaration called for political leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and fulfillment of the obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This declaration was unquestionably a step toward unity.

    We need to fill our policymakers with the passion to solidify this unity and create a security system based on trust and dialogue. To that end, I once again urge the leaders of all nations to visit the A-bombed cities. As President Obama confirmed in Hiroshima, such visits will surely etch the reality of the atomic bombings in each heart. Along with conveying the pain and suffering of the hibakusha, I am convinced they will elicit manifestations of determination.

    The average age of the hibakusha has exceeded 80. Our time to hear their experiences face to face grows short. Looking toward the future, we will need our youth to help convey the words and feelings of the hibakusha. Mayors for Peace, now with over 7,000 city members worldwide, will work regionally, through more than 20 lead cities, and globally, led by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to promote youth exchange. We will help young people cultivate a shared determination to stand together and initiate concrete action for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Here in Hiroshima, Prime Minister Abe expressed determination “to realize a world free of nuclear weapons.” I expect him to join with President Obama and display leadership in this endeavor. A nuclear-weapon-free-world would manifest the noble pacifism of the Japanese Constitution, and to ensure progress, a legal framework banning nuclear weapons is indispensable. In addition, I demand that the Japanese government expand the “black rain areas” and improve assistance to the hibakusha, whose average age is over 80, and the many others who suffer the mental and physical effects of radiation.

    Today, we renew our determination, offer heartfelt consolation to the souls of the A-bomb victims, and pledge to do everything in our power, working with the A-bombed city of Nagasaki and millions around the world, to abolish nuclear weapons and build lasting world peace.

    August 6, 2016
    MATSUI Kazumi
    Mayor
    The City of Hiroshima

  • A Moral Revolution?

    A MORAL REVOLUTION?
    Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima

    richard_falkThere is no doubt that President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima this May crossed some thresholds hitherto taboo. Above all the visit was properly heralded as the first time a sitting American president has dared such a pilgrimage, which has already been critically commented upon by patrioteers in America who still think that the Japanese deserved such a punishment for initiating the war or believed that only such “shock and awe” could induce the Japanese to surrender without a costly invasion of the mainland. As well many in Asia believe that Obama by the visit is unwittingly letting Japan off the accountability hook for its seemingly unrepentant record of atrocities throughout Asia, especially given the perception that the current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is doing his conservative best to reinvigorate Japanese nationalism, and even revive imperial ambitions.

    Obama is a gifted orator who excels in finding the right words for the occasion, and in Hiroshima his rhetoric soared once more. There he noted “[t]echnological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of the atom requires a moral revolution as well.” Such stirring words would seem to be a call to action, especially when reinforced by a direct challenge: “..among nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.” Obama at Prague in 2009, shortly after being sworn in as president, set forth an inspiring vision along the same lines, yet the small print there and now makes us wonder whether his heart and head are truly aligned. The words flow with grace and even passion, but where are the deeds?

    As in Prague, Obama expressed the cautionary sentiment in Hiroshima that “[w]e may not realize this goal in my lifetime.” At which point Obama associates himself with the stabilizing agenda of arms control, reducing the size of the stockpile, making the weapons less obtainable by “fanatics,” and implementing nonproliferation goals. Apparently, neither Obama nor the media take note of the tension between eliminating the weaponry and these proposals designed to stabilize the nuclear weapons environment by making it more reliably subject to prudent and rational policies of control. Yet at the same time making proposals to eliminate the weaponry seem less needed, and even at risk of threatening the stability so carefully constructed over the course of decades.

    The real reason for skepticism about Obama’s approach is his unexplained reasons to defer the abolition of nuclear weaponry to the distant future. When Obama declares that a world without nuclear weapons is not likely to happen in his lifetime without telling us why he is changing his role from an advocate of the needed ‘moral revolution’ so as to achieve the desired political transformation to that of being a subtle endorser of the nuclear status quo. Of course, Obama may be right that negotiating nuclear disarmament will not be easy or quick, but what is the argument against trying, why defer indefinitely?

    The global setting seems as favorable as it is likely to get. We live at a time when there are no fundamental cleavages among leading sovereign states, all of whom seek to benefit from a robust world economy and to live together without international wars. It would seem to be an overall situation in which dramatic innovations of benefit to the entire world would seem politically attractive. In such an atmosphere why could not Obama have said at Hiroshima, or seven years earlier at Prague, “that during the Cold War people dreamed of a world without nuclear weapons, but the tensions, distrust, and rivalry precluded a reliable disarming process, but now conditions are different. There are no good reasons not to convert dreams of a world without nuclear weapons into a carefully monitored and verified disarmament process, and there are many important reasons to try to do so.” What holds Obama back? Why does he not table a proposal or work with other nuclear governments to produce a realistic timetable to reach nuclear zero?

    Worse than the seeming absence of what the great theologian, Paul Tillich, called “the courage to be” is the worrisome evidence of double dealing—eloquent words spoken to warn us of the menace of nuclearism coupled with deeds that actually strengthen the hold of nuclearism on the human future. How else should we interpret by plans of the U.S. Government to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years for the modernization and further development of the existing nuclear weapons arsenal, including provocative plans to develop nuclear weapons with potential battlefield, as opposed to deterrent, missions? Such plans are provocative because they weaken inhibitions on use and tempt other governments to emulate the United States so as offset feared new vulnerabilities to threat and attack. What stands out is the concreteness of the deeds reinforcing the nuclear established order and the abstractness of the words challenging that same order.

    Beyond this, while calling for a moral revolution, Obama seems at the same time to give his blessings to nuclear energy despite its profound moral shortcomings. Obama views nuclear energy as a contribution to reducing carbon emissions in relation to global warming concerns and as a way to sell nuclear technology abroad and at the same time satisfy the energy goals of countries, such as India, in the global South. What is not acknowledged by Obama is that this nuclear energy technology is extremely dangerous and on balance detrimental in many of the same ways as nuclear weapons, prone to accidents of the sort associated with the incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, subject to the hazards of accumulating and disposing of nuclear wastes, vulnerable to nuclear terrorism, and creating the technological capacity for the development of the weapons in a series of additional states.

    Obama made a point of announcing before visiting Hiroshima that there would be no apology for the attacks by the United States. Clearly, Obama was unwilling to enter a domain that in America remains inflamed by antagonistic beliefs, interpretations, and priorities. There is a scholarly consensus that the war would have soon ended without an invasion or the atomic bomb, but this thesis continues to be challenged by veterans and others who think that the bomb saved American lives, or at minimum, ended the captivity of captured soldiers far sooner than would have been the case without the attacks.

    In fairness, Obama did acknowledge the unspeakable tragedy for Japanese civilians that experienced the Hiroshima bomb, and he showed real empathy for survivors (hibakusha) who were there in the front rows when he spoke in Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park, but he held back from saying the use of the bomb was wrong, even the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Obama’s emphasis, instead, was on working together to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. In this sense, Obama was indirectly legitimating the impunity that was accorded to the victors after World War II, which contrasted with the punitive measures of accountability used to deal with the crimes committed by the surviving leaders of defeated Japan and Germany. The main value of an apology is to bring a degree of closure to those directly and indirectly victimized by those terrible, events that took place more than 70 years ago. By so doing the United States would have moved a bit closer to suspending its self-serving insistence on impunity and this would have withdrawn geopolitical legitimacy from the weaponry.

    There is something disturbing about America’s unwillingness to live up to the full horror of its past actions even while making a never again pledge. In another recent development that is freighted with similar moral ambiguities, former Senator Bob Kerrey was named the first Chair of the Board of the new Fulbright Vietnam University, a laudable joint educational project of the two countries partly funded by the U.S. Congress, despite his apparent involvement in a shameful atrocity committed during the war. The incident occurred on February 25, 1969 in the village of Thang Phong where a unit of Navy SEALS was assigned the task of assassinating a Viet Cong leader believed to be in the vicinity. Instead of a military encounter, 20 civilians were killed, some brutally. 13 were children and one a pregnant woman.

    Kerrey contends that the carnage was a result of mistakes, while both a fellow member of the SEALS squad and village residents say that the killing of the civilians was a result of deliberate actions, and not an accident in the darkness. Kerrey received a Bronze Star for the mission, which was reported falsely to his military superiors as resulted in killing 21 Viet Cong militants. What is almost worse, Kerrey kept silent about the incident for more than 30 years, and only spoke about it in public after learning there was about to be a published piece highly critical of his role. Kerrey now says “I have been haunted for 32 years” and explains, “It was not a military victory, it was a tragedy, and I had ordered it.” The weight of the evidence suggests that Kerrey participated as well as ordered the killings, and that although certainly a tragedy it is more properly acknowledged as a severe war crime amounting to an atrocity.

    We can only imagine what would be the American or Chinese reaction if Japan sent to the United States or China a comparable person to provide an honorific link between the two countries. For instance, sending a Japanese officer to the U.S. who had cruelly administered a POW camp where Americans were held captive and tortured or sending to China a Japanese commander who had participated in some of the grisly happenings associated with “the rape of Nanking.” It is good that Kerrey is finally contrite about his past role and appears to have been genuinely involved in promoting this goodwill encouragement of quality education in Vietnam, yet it seems unacceptably insensitive that he would be chosen to occupy such a position in an educational institution in Vietnam that is named after a prominent American senator who is particularly remembered for his efforts to bringing the Vietnam War to an end.

    What connects these two seemingly distinct concerns is the steadfast refusal of the United States Government to take responsibility for its past crimes, which ensures that when future political pressures push toward immoral and unlawful behavior a similar disregard for minimal decency will be papered over. Obama’s refusal to consider accountability for the unabashed reliance on torture during the presidency of George W. Bush similarly whitewashes the past while unconvincingly promising to do better in the future. Such a pattern makes a mockery of claims made by Obama on behalf of the United States that unlike its adversaries this is a country that reveres the rule of law whenever it acts at home or abroad. From the pragmatic standpoint of governing America, in fairness, Obama never really had a choice. The political culture would have rebelled against holding the Bush administration accountable for its crime, which brings us closer to the truth of a double standard of suspending the applicability of international criminal law with respect to the policies and practices of the United States while championing individual legal responsibility for its adversaries as an expression of the evolution of moral standards in international life.

    I believe that double standards has led Obama to put himself forward both as a visionary who seeks a transformed peaceful and just world and also as a geopolitical manager that accepts the job description of the presidency as upholding American global dominance by force as necessary. Now that Obama’s time in the White House is nearing its end we are better able to grasp the incompatibility of his embrace of these two roles, which sadly, and likely tragically, leads to the conclusion that the vision of a world without nuclear weapons was never meant to be more than empty words. What the peoples of the world need to discover over and over again is that the promising words flow easily from the lips of leaders have little significance unless supplemented by a robust movement from below that challenges those who are governing from above. As activists in the 1960s began to understand is that only when the body pushes against the machine will policies incline toward peace and justice, and we in the 21st century will have to rediscover this bit of political wisdom if hope for a nuclear free world is to become a genuine political project.

    If more than rhetoric is attached to the call for a “moral revolution,” then the place to start would be to question, prior to abandoning, the mentality that is comfortable with double standards when it come to war making and criminal accountability. The whole idea of impunity for the victors and capital punishment for the losers is morally regressive. Both the Obama visit to Hiroshima, as significant as it was, and the Kerrey relationship to the Fulbright Vietnam University, show that American society, even at its best, is far from prepared to take part in the necessary moral revolution.

  • Courage in Words, But Not in Action

    President ObamaIt takes courage, in the cynical world of U.S. politics, to visit Hiroshima. Nearly 71 years after the United States used a nuclear weapon on that city, killing at least 140,000 people, President Obama has become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima.

    The White House vociferously proclaimed that this was not going to be an apology for President Truman’s decision in 1945 to use a nuclear weapon against a largely civilian population. That decision aside, President Obama has plenty of his own actions that he could have apologized for.

    President Obama had the opportunity to actually do something about eliminating nuclear weapons. He not only did not take action, but he took us in the opposite direction. Under plans designed and implemented by his administration, the U.S. is creating new nuclear weapons and delivery systems that – if the Obama administration gets its way – will still be in use in the 2080s.

    This “modernization” program is projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years. The cost will likely be much higher in the end, as so many weapons programs go wildly over budget. More concerning to me, though, is the message that this sends to the rest of the world and the all-but-inevitable new nuclear arms race that will follow.

    The Obama administration’s “modernization” program proposes a full overhaul of every nuclear warhead in the stockpile. In many cases, the new warheads will have new military capabilities, in direct violation of U.S. official policy. The B61-12 Life Extension Program, for example, will endow the B61 nuclear gravity bomb with a variable explosive yield and will include a guided tailfin kit, making it the world’s first “smart” nuclear gravity bomb.

    The Obama administration is pursuing a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, new nuclear bomber aircraft and new land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. John McCain, the Republican Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently questioned the need for the U.S. to continue with this nuclear triad. He said that it is “very, very, very expensive.” That’s three “verys” from a person who for decades has been at the center of the political machine that feeds the insatiable appetite of the military-industrial complex. So, we have the Republican defense hawk and Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee questioning the need for the nuclear triad, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President fully on board with the trillion dollar trainwreck.

    This administration is also fully funding construction of a Uranium Processing Facility in Tennessee, which will produce the highly-enriched uranium secondaries that put the “H” in h-bomb. They also continue to seek ways to fund a plan to produce up to 80 plutonium pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. At this time, there is no demonstrated need (even under the wildly over-ambitious “modernization” programs) for either of these capabilities. The nation’s two premier nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos as well as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, are run by for-profit entities that seek to maximize shareholder profit.

    This is the reality of U.S. nuclear weapons policy under President Obama.

    The U.S. Department of Justice is actively seeking to maneuver its way out of a lawsuit filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which seeks to enforce Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Article VI calls for parties to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

    It is plain to see that the U.S. (and the world’s other eight nuclear-armed nations, for that matter) is in breach of these obligations. Instead of arguing the case on the merits, the U.S. is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit on technicalities. Because the U.S. does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, U.S. courts were the only option available for the Marshall Islands to hold the U.S. accountable for its broken promises.

    It is tragic that President Obama squandered his visit to Hiroshima, and his entire two terms as President, by failing to take any meaningful action to eliminate nuclear weapons. There are significant efforts happening around the world led by courageous non-nuclear nations and civil society organizations that will undoubtedly bring the world closer to nuclear zero. The President had an opportunity to create a legacy unlike any other in history. Instead, he has continued the legacy like all the others.

    Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and Co-Chair of the “Amplify: Generation of Change” network.

    Twitter: @rickwayman

  • Did Hiroshima Awaken the President?

    This article was originally published by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.

    There was a lot of talk leading up to President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, much of it speculating on what he would or should or would not or should not say. I was interviewed by print and television reporters, and that seemed to be the first question out of the box, usually in the context of “Apologize for the bomb?” My answer to that was easy. Having been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and having hosted hibakusha— survivors of the bombings—half a dozen times or more, I quickly noted that I never heard any request for an apology. For those who were there, and who lived to reflect on that horrific moment, it was never about the past, except insofar as the past informs the present and future. Their request was not for regret, but for commitment; they asked that we join them in making “Never again!” a guarantee by abolishing nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

    Now the Presidential visit is history. He made a pretty good speech, though Senator Edward Markey’s op-ed about preaching temperance from a barstool warrants even more attention.

    The one thing I feel certain of is that the speech Obama delivered in Hiroshima is among the least important things he did there. At least I hope that is so. If I had been asked to advise the president on his priorities, my top three would have been: Look, Listen, and Feel.

    Look. The visual power of Hiroshima, the physical presence of the dome, the before and after diorama and artifacts in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the charred schoolgirl’s lunch tin with carbonized rice cannot be fully realized from pictures or descriptions. Like standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, one can only completely comprehend the scope in person. In the case of Hiroshima, the scene is the opposite of grandeur. But it should be faced.

    Listen. The stories of the hibakusha, told on video and in person, are compelling. They remind everyone who listens that the atomic bomb was not simply an amazing technological achievement or a powerful military weapon; it was a monstrous destroyer of lives and histories and families and pets and culture and hope. It’s use ushered in the nuclear age, when humankind not only stepped into a new technological era, but into a new moral era. Now we are inescapably aware of what we are capable of, and with that knowledge comes a moral imperative—one we have yet to fully, appropriately, and morally meet.

    Feel. The enormity of Hiroshima and the devastating power of the stories can be numbing. Facing Hiroshima means facing something deeply dark in our souls—not just our national soul, but our human souls. I want the weight of Hiroshima to bear down on President Obama; I want him to feel it when he gets back to Washington, DC and sits down to look at his daughters across the breakfast table. I want, at least one morning, for him to notice his watch 8:15, and to think, “It was just this time of day…”

    I am hopeful that the President has done all of these things. He did stand in Hiroshima and acknowledge that he saw it firsthand. He listened. He met with hibakusha, two gentlemen, and spoke privately with them, hugged one of them. And if the catch in his voice when he spoke of children was any indication, he felt the truth of the Bomb. I believe he will look at Sasha and Malia and see in their eyes the hope of the future.

    And it is what he does then, not what he did in Hiroshima, that will be the most important thing.

    If he himself experiences the moral awakening he called for in Hiroshima, he can set in motion the eventual disarmament he so fondly speaks of. He can declare it is not okay anymore to say “maybe not in my lifetime.” He can announce he is abandoning plans for a new $15 billion thermonuclear bomb manufacturing plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (yes, it’s true—$3 billion has already been spent on the design). He can tell the weaponeers at Lawrence Livermore Lab to stop working on a new warhead for the Long Range Stand-Off cruise missile, and he can tell the pentagon to shut down the LSRO program.

    These first steps would be the first significant actions of this president toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Everything else has been to “reduce the danger,” or to discourage nuclear proliferation, all the while embracing nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of defense policy for the US. The new bomb plant, and the ongoing upgrades and modifications of US warheads, have launched a new global nuclear arms race. Undoing that will take action, not words.

    Taking these bold steps would send a powerful message to the rest of the world, one we promised more than 40 years ago in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Simply put: we are not just talking about a world free of nuclear weapons, not just determined to have one some day—we are going there now. Other nations would follow, because nuclear weapons are as irrational to them as they are to us.

    Who would oppose the President? Some right-wing hawks, no doubt, who think the best foreign policy for the United States is to bully the world into doing things our way. But not all of them—Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, William Perry, almost every living former National Security Adviser, hundreds of Generals and Admirals around the globe, including the former head of NATO’s Strategic Forces, General Lee Butler, and General James “Hoss” Cartwright, four star Marine general who served as Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Charles Horner, four star Air Force general. All of these men have called for the United States to take concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament. They are not Pollyannas. They understand the risks and rewards of nuclear weapons more than most people on the planet; their careers have required them to contemplate policy and use in practice, and not just in theory.

    So, what I want from my President now is this: take some time to let Hiroshima sink in. And then use your new knowledge as the platform from which you step out to walk the walk, leading us toward a world free of nuclear weapons, the world of Never Again.