Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: myths

  • Ten Myths About Nuclear Weapons

    Nuclear weapons were needed to defeat Japan in World War II.

    It is widely believed, particularly in the United States, that the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to defeat Japan in World War II.  This is not, however, the opinion of the leading US military figures in the war, including General Dwight Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, General Hap Arnold and Admiral William Leahy.  General Eisenhower, for example, who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II and later US president, wrote, “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced [to Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.  It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’….”  Not only was the use of nuclear force unnecessary, its destructive force was excessive, resulting in 220,000 deaths by the end of 1945.

    Nuclear weapons prevented a war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

    Many people believe that the nuclear standoff during the Cold War prevented the two superpowers from going to war with each other, for fear of mutually assured destruction.  While it is true that the superpowers did not engage in nuclear warfare during the Cold War, there were many confrontations between them that came uncomfortably close to nuclear war, the most prominent being the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  There were also many deadly conflicts and “proxy” wars carried out by the superpowers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Vietnam War, which took several million Vietnamese lives and the lives of more than 58,000 Americans, is an egregious example.  These wars made the supposed nuclear peace very bloody and deadly.  Lurking in the background was the constant danger of a nuclear exchange. The Cold War was an exceedingly dangerous time with a massive nuclear arms race, and the human race was extremely fortunate to have survived it without suffering a nuclear war.

    Nuclear threats have gone away since the end of the Cold War.

    In light of the Cold War’s end, many people believed that nuclear threats had gone away.  While the nature of nuclear threats has changed since the end of the Cold War, these threats are far from having disappeared or even significantly diminished.  During the Cold War, the greatest threat was that of a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union.  In the aftermath of the Cold War, a variety of new nuclear threats have emerged.  Among these are the following dangers:

    • Increased possibilities of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists who would not hesitate to use them;
    • Nuclear war between India and Pakistan;
    • Policies of the US government to make nuclear weapons smaller and more usable;
    • Use of nuclear weapons by accident, particularly by Russia, which has a substantially weakened early warning system; and
    • Spread of nuclear weapons to other states, which may perceive them to be an “equalizer” against a more powerful state.

    The United States needs nuclear weapons for its national security.

    There is widespread belief in the United States that nuclear weapons are necessary for the US to defend against aggressor states.  US national security, however, would be far improved if the US took a leadership role in seeking to eliminate nuclear weapons throughout the world.  Nuclear weapons are the only weapons that could actually destroy the United States, and their existence and proliferation threaten US security.  Continued high-alert deployment of nuclear weapons and research on smaller and more usable nuclear weapons by the US, combined with a more aggressive foreign policy, makes many weaker nations feel threatened.  Weaker states may think of nuclear weapons as an equalizer, giving them the ability to effectively neutralize the forces of a threatening nuclear weapons state.  Thus, as in the case of North Korea, the US threat may be instigating nuclear weapons proliferation.  Continued reliance on nuclear weapons by the United States is setting the wrong example for the world, and is further endangering the country rather than protecting it.  The United States has strong conventional military forces and would be far more secure in a world in which no country had nuclear arms.

    Nuclear weapons make a country safer.

    It is a common belief that nuclear weapons protect a country by deterring potential aggressors from attacking.  By threatening massive nuclear retaliation, the argument goes, nuclear weapons prevent an attacker from starting a war.  To the contrary, nuclear weapons are actually undermining the safety of the countries that possess them by providing a false sense of security.  While nuclear deterrence can provide some psychological sense of security, there are no guarantees that the threat of retaliation will succeed in preventing an attack.  There are many ways in which deterrence could fail, including misunderstandings, faulty communications, irrational leaders, miscalculations and accidents. In addition, the possession of nuclear weapons enhances the risks of terrorism, proliferation and ultimately nuclear annihilation.

    No leader would be crazy enough to actually use nuclear weapons.

    Many people believe that the threat of using nuclear weapons can go on indefinitely as a means of deterring attacks because no leader would be crazy enough to actually use them.  Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have been used, and it is likely that most, if not all, leaders possessing these weapons would, in fact, use them.  US leaders, considered by many to be highly rational, are the only ones who have ever used nuclear weapons in war, against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In addition to these two actual US bombings, leaders of other nuclear weapons states have repeatedly come close to using their nuclear arsenals.  Nuclear deterrence is based upon a believable threat of nuclear retaliation, and the threat of nuclear weapons use has been constant during the post World War II period.  US policy currently provides that the US will not threaten or use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in compliance with their non-proliferation obligations.  Importantly, this leaves out other nuclear weapons states, as well as states not parties to the NPT and states the US determines not to be in compliance with their non-proliferation obligations.  US leaders have regularly refused to take any option off the table in relation to potential conflicts.  Threats of nuclear attack by India and Pakistan provide another example of nuclear brinksmanship that could turn into a nuclear war.  Historically, leaders of nuclear-armed countries have done their best to prove that they would use nuclear weapons.  Assuming that they would not do so would be extremely foolhardy.

    Nuclear weapons are a cost-effective method of national defense.

    Some have argued that nuclear weapons, with their high yield of explosive power, offer the benefit of an effective defense for minimum investment.  This is one reason behind ongoing research into lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons, which would be perceived as more usable.  The cost of research, development, testing, deployment and maintenance of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, however, exceeds $7.5 trillion (in 2005 dollars) for the US alone.  The US is planning to spend another $1 trillion over the next three decades modernizing and upgrading every aspect of its nuclear arsenal.  The nine nuclear-armed countries are spending over $100 billion annually on their nuclear arsenals.  With advances in nuclear technology and power, the costs and consequences of a nuclear war would be immeasurable.

    Nuclear weapons are well protected and there is little chance that terrorists could get their hands on one. 

    Many people believe that nuclear weapons are well protected and that the likelihood of terrorists obtaining these weapons is low.  In the aftermath of the Cold War, however, the ability of the Russians to protect their nuclear forces has declined precipitously.  In addition, a coup in a country with nuclear weapons, such as Pakistan, could lead to a government coming to power that would be willing to provide nuclear weapons to terrorists.  In general, the more nuclear weapons there are in the world and the more nuclear weapons proliferate to additional countries, the greater the possibility that nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of terrorists.  The best remedy for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is to drastically reduce their numbers and institute strict international inspections and controls on all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials in all countries, until these weapons and the materials for making them can be eliminated.  The 2016 Nuclear Security Summit had a narrow focus on protecting civilian stores of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which accounts for only a very small percentage of the world’s weapons-grade material.

    The United States is working to fulfill its nuclear disarmament obligations.

    Most US citizens believe that the United States is working to fulfill its nuclear disarmament obligations.  In fact, the United States has failed for nearly five decades to fulfill its obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date and for nuclear disarmament.  The US is currently being sued in US federal court by the Republic of the Marshall Islands for failing to fulfill its nuclear disarmament obligations under the NPT.  Rather than negotiating to end the nuclear arms race, the US is planning to upgrade and modernize all aspects of its nuclear arsenal, delivery vehicles and nuclear infrastructure.  The United States has also failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Further, it has unilaterally withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and thereby abrogated this important treaty.  The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the US and Russia, which was signed in April 2010 and entered into force in February 2011, will reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads on each side to 1,550 by the year 2018.  This is not, however, a fulfillment of the US treaty obligations under the NPT.

    Nuclear weapons are needed to combat threats from terrorists and “rogue states.”

    It has been argued that nuclear weapons are needed to protect against terrorists and “rogue states.”  Yet nuclear weapons, whether used for deterrence or as offensive weaponry, are not effective for this purpose. The threat of nuclear force cannot act as a deterrent against terrorists because they do not have a territory to retaliate against. Thus, terrorists would not be prevented from attacking a country for fear of nuclear retaliation.  Nuclear weapons also cannot be relied on as a deterrent against “rogue states” because their responses to a nuclear threat may be irrational and deterrence relies on rationality.  If the leaders of a rogue state do not use the same calculus regarding their losses from retaliation, deterrence can fail.  As offensive weaponry, nuclear force only promises tremendous destruction to troops, civilians and the environment.  It might work to annihilate a rogue state, but the force entailed in using nuclear weaponry would be indiscriminate, cause unnecessary suffering, and be disproportionate to a prior attack, as well as highly immoral.  It would not be useful against terrorists because strategists could not be certain of locating an appropriate target for retaliation.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). Angela McCracken, the 2003 Ruth Floyd intern in human rights and international law at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, was co-author of an earlier version of this article.

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    7/03/08
    7/07/03

  • Nuclear Myths Could Result in Catastrophe, Historian Warns

    Several ideas about nuclear weapons germinated in America after World War II, continued to sprout roots during the Cold War, and by now have taken full flower. The public rarely questions them, and neither do many scientists, military leaders, politicians or diplomats.

    One: We need these weapons because, should all-out war break out, we’ll need them to overwhelm our enemy and lay waste to its cities. That could win the war for us. Another: Nuclear weapons keep the world stable because they help prevent war in the first place. They have been around for almost 68 years. World War III has failed to ignite in that time. The bombs, it is concluded, have helped keep us safe.

    Or maybe that’s all wrong.  In his new book, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, historian Ward Wilson mines historical case studies – some ancient, some recent – to deflate the assumption that enemy leaders will capitulate if we wipe out a horribly large percentage of their urban populations. Reducing a rival country’s cities to smoking rubble on a massive scale, he writes, actually boosts its morale and determination to prevail.

    Wilson’s favorite proof is the behavior of Japan at the end of World War II. Americans generally think the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki spurred Japan to hastily end its fight. Using first-hand accounts of Japanese leaders’ meetings after the bombings and comments in their diaries and memoirs, Wilson concludes the A-bombs weren’t at all decisive. The Japanese had been tolerating the destruction of their cities for months, including the decimation of Tokyo by Allied firebombing. (Wilson argues persuasively that it was the abrupt entry of the Soviet Union into the battle against Japan, which occurred at the same time as Hiroshima, that caused Japanese political and military leaders to lose hope.)

    As for the mission of nuclear bombs to be peacekeepers rather than tools of war, Wilson all but dismisses deterrence theory as a straw man that’s never been proven to frighten a crow. Such theories, he maintains, amount to wishful thinking that is “doubtful from the word go.”

    What about familiar deterrence success stories, such as President John F. Kennedy’s willingness to bring the world to war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — a strategy of keeping the peace by acting tough? Wilson sees that event, and many others during the Cold War and afterward, as actually a failure of deterrence. Kennedy, he writes, “saw the nuclear deterrence stop sign, saw the horrifying image of nuclear war painted on it, and gunned through the intersection anyway.” We’ve avoided wars mostly out of luck, in spite of ourselves.

    Wilson, 56, attended American University and is a senior fellow with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies. This is his first book, and it’s gained attention rapidly inside nuclear policy circles. The author says he wants to write another one, focusing solely on the weaknesses of deterrence theory, in the year ahead.

    NAPF spoke to Wilson about his belief that accepting old, unchallenged nuclear lessons will surely lead to eventual disaster. The following is an edited version of the conversation.

    KAZEL: You’ve written that after college in 1981 you were hired as a fellow at the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, and the director, David Hackett — who’d been Bobby Kennedy’s best friend — persuaded you that you had the power to change the world. How did he do that?

    WILSON: He was Kennedy’s friend so he had great authority in my eyes. He took me for a walk by the Martin Luther King Public Library. I can remember children playing all around. He said, [affects a Boston accent], “Wahd, Wahd, what do you care about?” I said, “Nuclear weapons.” He never said, “I want you to do this, or I want you to do that.” Somehow, wordlessly, in the way he framed it, it seemed so clear to me that he expected that I had to do something about this problem – that I was interested in it, and therefore I had the capacity tochange it. I was young and credulous, so I believed him.

    KAZEL: After that you had a conversation with the scientist Freeman Dyson, who gave you a “fundamental insight” into whether nuclear weapons actually are useful or not. What happened there?

    WISLON: I got to know Dyson because I went to a conference on nuclear weapons that encouraged me to do more. Helen Caldicott spoke and [nuclear freeze advocate] Randall Forsberg spoke. Dyson spoke.…

    [Later Dyson] gave me, to look at, a book review that he was writing. In it he talked about the [1982] Falklands War. He said that Great Britain could have nuked Buenos Aires. But even had they done that, they still would have had to send conventional forces to reconquer the Falkland Islands. It hit me really hard that blowing up cities doesn’t occupy territory. It doesn’t put soldiers on the ground who can enforce boundaries, or inspect people walking by, or check papers.

    It suddenly became clear to me, at some intuitive level, that the weapons were limited in the way that they were useful. Yeah, you can blow stuff up, but that doesn’t necessarily get you what you want. After all, the United States and Great Britain blew up Hamburg [in World War II] and they destroyed Dresden, and they bombed Berlin. But that didn’t force Germany to its knees.

    KAZEL: You also read Herman Kahn, and you felt he was incorrect in saying that nuclear weapons were so new and unprecedented that we can’t make predictions about them.  You now say it’s possible to go back to previous wars, even back to the Siege of Carthage [in 152 BC], and conclude that attacking cities doesn’t help to win a war. Why do you think we can look at history that old and think it’s still relevant?

    WILSON: I read this passage from Herman Kahn, and he said, we have so little experience with nuclear weapons – which is true – therefore, everything we think must be theoretical. He [was] essentially making a case for game theory and this logic-based scenario work that was done in the 1950s and ’60s. I said to myself, that can’t be right. War is not fundamentally technological. War is fundamentally a human activity.

    The tools we use to wage war may be different. We ourselves are still the same, largely. I believe human nature changes only very slowly over thousands of years. So if it’s true human beings react to the destruction of a city relatively the same across history, and I can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t, it should be possible to look at Carthage. It ought to be possible to study the sacking and burning of Liège [in 1468] by Charles the Bold. It ought to be possible to look at the destruction of Magdeburg in 1631 by [Johann Tserclaes count von] Tilly, when he burned the city and 30,000 people died…

    That ought to give you real experiential information. We can imagine what a nuclear war would be like, but essentially it’s all speculation. It’s theory. Maybe it’s right, but maybe it’s wrong. Fundamentally, I’m a pragmatist. I believe in facts. So, this insight [is] that even though the weapons are new, the soldier, the combatants are essentially the same.

    That is why I was not surprised to discover that Hiroshima had not forced the Japanese to surrender at the end of World War II: because I had spent seven years studying history where cities had been truly destroyed. In no case did it ever cause a war to be won.

    KAZEL: Is it your conclusion, after conferring with military people, that our military is still focused on destroying enemy cities if a nuclear war ever happens?

    WILSON: Well, I’ll tell you what I know. At least as late as the Clinton administration, I had a chance to sit down with Lee Butler [retired Air Force general and commander of Strategic Air Command] in his kitchen. He told me what it was like every month…to have someone rush into the room unexpectedly. You don’t have any warning. Some guy runs in and says, “Sir, you’re needed in the War Room.” You go downstairs, and there’s an incoming attack. It’s an exercise – you know it’s an exercise. But even so, all the circumstances are as they would be.

    Then you have this conversation with whomever is playing the President at the White House. You go through your checklist. And you have four options, MAO 1 through 4. Major attack options 1 through 4: 1 is leadership, 2 is leadership plus military, 3 is leadership plus military plus economy, and 4 is leadership plus military plus economy plus civilian population. He said to me that every practice scenario was designed in such a way that you had to recommend MAO 4 – the one in which you target civilians.

    Has the targeting changed since the Clinton administration? I don’t know. I’ve had some conversations with [military] people who very strongly assert that the U.S. doesn’t target civilian populations because that would be “illegal” and that they have lawyers who check the target list for “legality.”

    KAZEL: Under what law?

    WILSON: I don’t know whether it’s a military handbook of conduct or international humanitarian law. I don’t know. But at least as late as the Clinton administration, the [war plan] absolutely called for targeting civilians.

    KAZEL: About three weeks ago, you made a presentation at the Pentagon for the Air Force nuclear staff. Did they discuss if the Air Force still has targeting plans against cities?

    WILSON: No, they were very careful. We had very serious conversations. We didn’t agree. But they took what I had to say very seriously and listened closely, and I listened to them.

    KAZEL: What didn’t they agree about?

    WILSON: Well, at the end, a guy said, “Well, maybe nuclear weapons are the outmoded weapons of the past, but shouldn’t we then be thinking about what weapon we need in order to deter our opponents?”  Obviously that’s their mindset; they’ve been assigned that as their job. But the fact that they couldconsider the notion that nuclear weapons are outmoded, are blundering, clumsy weapons of the past – that seemed to me to be remarkable.

    I think that the whole trend in warfare [emerging today] is away from pointless destruction, which is essentially what nuclear weapons do best, and toward drones and targeted, small [missiles]. Obviously, drone missiles create a whole series of very serious problems in terms of accountability. Even smaller missiles like that have terrible consequences for civilians. However, killing a leader of Al-Qaeda with a Hellfire missile and killing 13 other people who are innocent is considerably different from using a nuclear weapon to kill a leader of Al-Qaeda and killing 130,000 people who are innocent.

    I think the whole trend in warfare is away from “big” weapons, like nuclear weapons, and toward [accuracy]. What terrifies you [as a leader] is the thought that you may die, you may lose control of your regime, not that somebody else you don’t know will die.

    KAZEL:  But even by that reasoning, does that necessarily lead to nuclear disarmament? One could argue that tactical nuclear weapons — anything from artillery shells to antisubmarine nuclear torpedoes — could be developed instead of nuclear arms for use against cities. But that still isn’t nuclear abolition.

    WILSON: Right. But these arguments I’m making by themselves might not be sufficient. Organizations like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and others have been making powerful moral arguments against nuclear weapons for 20, 30, 40 years. That nuclear weapons are so clearly immoral and not very useful makes a powerful combination. By themselves, either argument might or might not be sufficient. In combination, you have an irresistible argument, it seems to me.

    KAZEL: Do you think that the use of any nuclear weapon is immoral?

    WILSON: If you use a nuclear weapon to destroy an asteroid coming towards the world, well, that’s fine. That’s moral. Using a nuclear weapon in almost any setting, anywhere on the globe, probably you’ll kill innocent civilians…By and large, nuclear weapons are so clumsy, so messy, that they almost inevitably kill innocents.

    KAZEL: Why did you decide for your book to veer almost completely away from the moral arguments against nuclear arms and stress the practical, military arguments?

    WILSON: I knew that there have already been so many well-argued, strong moral arguments made over the last 60 years that I can’t do any better than that. This is an area where I thought something new could be said.

    KAZEL: Should antinuclear groups be making more of an effort to emphasize strategic, military arguments, instead of what you call arguments based on “moral outrage”?

    WILSON: Antinuclear groups should do what works. You have to imagine, I’ve been sitting in a room for 30 years thinking about nuclear weapons. I don’t know what motivates people or how to organize a political [movement].

    You know, one of the crucial ingredients to getting the [1997 international landmine ban treaty] was that, at some point, military guys stepped forward and said, “In some circumstances landmines can help, but they’re fundamentally not that useful in a war.” When you combine that with the clear moral cost, and humanitarian impact, it became clear what needed to be done.

    KAZEL: Some analysts argue that emerging nuclear nations view the weapons as a sign of national power and prestige – but that they don’t actually expect to use the weapons. How do we persuade nations such as Iran not to want a nuclear weapon?

    WILSON: The problem is we’ve over-inflated their value. It seemed like a good idea when we were using that over-inflated value to create deterrence, to deter others. The difficulty is now others take that over-inflated value, and they think, “Oh, nuclear weapons are magic. They can keep my country safe no matter what I do, and I can behave in any way that I want to behind this shield. And I need to eat grass in order to be able to get them.”

    The first step in doing something about nuclear weapons is to devalue them, to show they’re not magic, to get people to rethink deterrence. If you go through almost any document about deterrence, and cross it out and put “voodoo” in its place, the document will read essentially the same.

    Another thing about the utility question is a two-part evaluation: the usefulness and the danger. They’re dangerous and they’re not useful in hardly any circumstances, and we just need to do something as fast as we possibly can. If you wait a hundred years, you will ensure that someone is going to use nuclear weapons. Either there will be a fight over resources because of global warming, or there will be so many nations with nuclear weapons that someone will sell a nuclear weapon out the backdoor to a terrorist.

    KAZEL: You recommend that “extraordinary efforts” should be taken to prevent more nations from getting nuclear weapons. Would you support military action against Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons?

    WILSON: I wouldn’t support military action against Iran. I think that’s silly. I think it’s absolutely true that every nation that gets nuclear weapons increases the danger, but I don’t think it’s true that the increase in danger means that nation is more powerful.

    Imagine three or four people in your neighborhood felt unsafe, and decided to carry a bottle of nitroglycerine around with them wherever they went. These three or four people, if you bump into them on the street and knock them over and the nitroglycerine explodes, you get killed. So they make your neighborhood more dangerous, but are they really safer? If you want to rob them, you get a gun and stand really close to them and say, “Give me the dough.” Their nitroglycerine doesn’t help because you’re standing right next to them.

    But then imagine over time, more and more people in the neighborhood say, “Hey, this is a great idea,I’ll get a bottle of nitroglycerine.” Each neighbor that gets a bottle of nitroglycerine makes your neighborhood less safe — but it doesn’t necessarily protect any of them or give them power. It doesn’t help, but it clearly hurts. That’s the way I see nuclear weapons. It’s bad that Iran seems to be building a nuclear weapon, but will that give them the power to dominate the Middle East once they have them? No, I don’t think so.

    KAZEL: So, when you say “extraordinary efforts,” would that mean efforts beyond what is being done now?

    WILSON: Yeah, you could take some risks – politically. You could be nice to the Iranians. Now, they are an ancient civilization, with a long tradition of scholarship, very strong religious views, and a unique perspective on religion. Ancient culture, sophisticated, subtle. Very much like France – once much more powerful, dominant culturally in the world.

    My assessment is Iran wants nuclear weapons so they will be treated with the respect they believe they deserve. There’s a lot you can do [diplomatically], and maybe that gets you in trouble on the Right in the United States.

    I really don’t think military action makes much sense. The Iranians close the Straits of Hormuz, and then we have an oil crisis and the world economy crashes. Moral issues aside, it’s just stupid policy.

    KAZEL: You recommend in your book a world study of the usefulness of nuclear weapons, and a “full stop” on the development of new nuclear systems. But you don’t recommend nuclear abolition in it. However, in a presentation you made at the UN three weeks ago, you seemed more resolute. You said abolition is not impossible if the worldview of pro-nuclear advocates is questioned. You said abolitionists “clearly have the more convincing case” than proponents of the weapons.

    WILSON: Part of the process of talking about this with a lot of people is that you listen and you find out what they think you’ve missed, or not. The reaction that I’m getting, so far at least, is that people don’t feel there is any serious mistake or flaw [in my arguments]. That’s reassuring, and that makes me feel I can push what I intuitively feel a little bit more.

    KAZEL: You did feel strongly enough about your evidence in the book to recommend that the U.S. and Russia decrease their nuclear weapons to the low hundreds. You also say it’s very dangerous to have nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

    WILSON: I got in a lot of trouble with the Pentagon for that. I sat at lunch with a squadron commander of one of the missile facilities in Montana. He was talking to me about what it’s like to work in the facility and how you go down underground. I think they have 72 hours on and 72 hours off. They want to have pride in what they do, and they believe that the thing about hair-trigger alert is wrong because they have all these careful rules in place. What they take pride in is making sure you could never have an accident…

    I had to explain to him that I think the problem with hair-trigger alert is not that the U.S. mechanism for maintaining its nuclear forces is prone to breakdown, not that they’re doing a bad job. But I thinkleaders need to have time to think [an urgent situation] over and double-check. Kennedy said if he had been forced to decide about the Cuban Missile Crisis on the first day, he’d have launched the air strikes instead of doing the less-militaristic blockade. The air strikes could have led to nuclear war, since we now know they had tactical nuclear weapons on Cuba.

    People go off half-cocked. They lose their heads. They get overwhelmed by emotion. They want retribution, and when leaders have the power to launch nuclear weapons without a chance for reflection, then that’s a danger.

    Something that causes leaders to be forced to think about it for at least 24 hours, and maybe longer, makes a lot of sense to me. You read history and people make rash decisions. It happens all the time.

    Robert Kazel is a Chicago-based freelance writer and was a participant in the 2012 NAPF Peace Leadership Workshop.

  • Nuclear Disarmament Education

    What is nuclear disarmament education?


    David KriegerThe short answer to this question is that it is education that either reports on or promotes nuclear disarmament.  Reporting on nuclear disarmament is journalistic.  It tells what has happened, is happening or is expected to happen in the nuclear disarmament field.  Reporting on nuclear disarmament is the way the subject might be handled in a college classroom or in a news article.  It provides historical perspective, but often a nationalistic one. 


    The promotion of nuclear disarmament is far more difficult and also far more important.  It involves attempting to shift mindsets and cultural frameworks.  There are many myths about nuclear weapons that must be overcome before one can effectively promote nuclear disarmament. 


    Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons
     
    1. The use of nuclear weapons ended World War II. (Their use coincided with the end of World War II, but did not cause it.  The Japanese surrendered because the Soviet Union entered the war against them.)


    2. Nuclear weapons have prevented war since their creation. (Again, causality is an issue.  Despite nuclear weapons, there have been many wars since their creation.)


    3. No country will actually use nuclear weapons. (Countries have come very close to using nuclear weapons, by accident or design, on many occasions.)


    4. Nuclear weapons make a country more secure. (Arguably, nuclear weapons make a country far less secure.  All countries with nuclear weapons are targeted by the nuclear weapons of other countries.)


    5. Nuclear weapons are effective for deterrence. (Nuclear deterrence is only a theory.  It is not proven, and it may fail catastrophically.)


    Before people will support nuclear disarmament, they must be educated to believe that nuclear disarmament is in their interest.  Some people must be moved from their support for nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence to support for nuclear disarmament. Other people, probably a far larger category, must be moved from complacency to support nuclear disarmament.  Education must be aimed at overcoming ignorance and apathy to awaken and engage people in action for nuclear disarmament.  In this sense, education must also be advocacy. 


    Much nuclear disarmament education comes from governments and political leaders, and it is quite limited in its vision.  It seeks incremental steps in arms control rather than disarmament or abolition.  Arms control can be viewed as a way to maintain nuclear arms at somewhat lower levels.  I prefer to talk and write about reasons to oppose or abolish nuclear weapons. 


    Ten Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Weapons


    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.   As such, they are instruments of dehumanization as well as annihilation.


    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.  Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk. 


    3. They threaten to foreclose the future, negating our common responsibility to future generations.


    4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor.  This was recognized by most of the leading US military leaders of World War II, including General Dwight Eisenhower, General Hap Arnold, and Admiral William Leahy. 


    5. They divide the world’s nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing false and unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them. 


    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.  


    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.  The International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal and any use that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal.  It is virtually impossible to imagine a threat or use of nuclear weapons that would not violate international humanitarian law (fail to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, cause unnecessary suffering or be disproportionate to a preceding attack). 


    8. They waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.  The United States alone has spent over $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age.


    9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.


    10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity. 


    These ten reasons to abolish nuclear weapons attempt to change a person’s mindset to become receptive to seeking the abolition of these weapons.


    How can we engage in nuclear disarmament education?


    Disarmament education generally takes place in the public arena, and thus is often dominated by the narrow and self-interested views of political leaders.  In a world of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” it is often the nuclear “haves” that dominate the debate.  But it is the nuclear “have-nots,” along with civil society that see the dangers of nuclear weapons most clearly and who promote nuclear disarmament. 


    Let me describe some of disarmament education activities of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an organization that I helped to found 28 years ago and where I have served as president since its founding.  Here are some of the educational activities we engage in to make the case for nuclear disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons:


    1. Appeals, Declarations and Petitions (our latest Declaration is the Santa Barbara Declaration – Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action)
    2. Newspaper opinion pieces and magazine articles
    3. Books, book chapters and briefing booklets
    4. Websites (WagingPeace.org and NuclearFiles.org)
    5. A monthly e-newsletter, The Sunflower
    6. Public lectures and other events
    7. Essay and video contests
    8. Poetry contests
    9. Peace leadership awards
    10. An Action Alert Network
    11. Peace leadership trainings


    You can find out more about these educational activities and sign up for them at www.wagingpeace.org.  


    The task of nuclear disarmament education is clearly not an easy one, but it is a necessary one.  Nuclear disarmament will require an informed public, and an informed public will require education to stir them from their ignorance and apathy.  To accomplish this will continue to require a great deal of creativity, as well as insistence and persistence to move both the public and political leaders to action.  Civil society organizations are in the vanguard in this critical educational effort.

  • Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Living with Myths

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

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

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

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

    Our Myths Help Shape Our Ethical Perspectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Making the Nuclear Weapons Threat Real

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Simple Proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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