Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Nagasaki

  • Original Child Bomb: A Meditation on the Nuclear Age

    Original Child Bomb: A Meditation on the Nuclear Age

    In January 2020 I resolved to re-issue the documentary, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

    Produced in 2004, prior to contemporary streaming norms, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB has been recently digitized and technologically renewed.  It is now available for viewing on YouTube at this link.

    The reason for the timing of this new release goes beyond the historic significance of the 75th anniversary of the two bombings.  January 22, 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock* to 100 seconds to midnight.  The scientists warned that the world was at the highest level of risk since 1945 that nuclear weapons would be used. This grave assessment was the response to the scientists’ observation that there was worldwide governmental dysfunction in dealing with global threats. And that was before the global pandemic of Covid-19, the health care crisis in every country on Earth, and the economic chaos that ensued. The Doomsday Clock gives a chilling, macro view of the possibility and peril of nuclear weapons today.

    In contrast ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB reveals the human scale of the use of nuclear weapons. The film shows what actually happened to people when nuclear weapons targeted and bombed their cities. Using seldom seen 16mm archive film from Hiroshima and Nagasaki before and after the bombings, the viewer comes face to face with the complete destruction caused by these weapons of mass destruction. The film challenges the viewer’s naivete’ about the ‘history’ of the bombings. The film asks questions about present day nuclear arsenals. What time is it? What is going to happen? The film asks the viewer: How will you decide how to respond at this time to the gravest threat ever that nuclear weapons could be used to destroy human life on Earth?

    ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB is not a conventional historical documentary. It is inspired by and based on a poem by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and has a meditative tone. It features, in addition to footage from Japan, a Japanese rapper and American high school students. A young girl tries to explain to herself the logic of mutually assured destruction. She cannot. Who can?

    While assembling the pieces to reissue the film, Black Lives Matter protests happened in countries around the world. I wondered – how can we take the time to focus on the possible use of nuclear weapons when millions of humans actually suffer threats and harm today?

    And then I saw the connection.

    When the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a real sense the people of those two cities were simply collateral damage.  It was too bad that they died horrible deaths, but geopolitical power had to be maintained. The refusal to acknowledge that crime against Japanese men, women and children is a very deep shadow in the US psyche.

    Just so, when African men and women were brought to the US colonies to labor as slaves in plantations, they were collateral damage.  It was too bad that they were subjugated and seen as less than human. But the young nation needed goods and products in order for the economy to grow, and the bondage laborers assured that growth. The refusal to acknowledge and atone for the enslavement of Black Africans is a long-standing shadow in the US psyche.

    There is another connection in the hundreds of thousands of homeless men, women and children in the US today. Too bad that they have to live on the streets, but they are only collateral damage to our consumer culture that worships high tech, high-rises, and high living, if only for a small percentage of our citizens. That is a very current shadow in the US psyche.

    Shadows will not leave until we face them. It is way past time to face the shadow of racism. It is time now to face the shadow of homelessness, before it grows worse. And for the sake of human life on Earth, it is time to face the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    I invite you to watch ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB on YouTube at https://youtu.be/vKD6vAm0JJk

    If your heart is touched please share your concerns with others – in your family, workplace, church, temple, mosque or on social media. The more we talk to each other about what matters most – surviving and flourishing – the more courageous we will be about taking action. And, tell your government representatives that you don’t want any of your tax money spent on nuclear weapons. Period.

     

    *The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making.  It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on planet Earth.                                                                                                                                                                                          Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • 2019 Sadako Peace Day

    2019 Sadako Peace Day

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2019 Sadako Peace Day took place on August 6, 2019.

    Click here for images from the event.

    Click here for audio of the event.

  • With Nukes Back as a Global Danger, Time to Remember Hiroshima

    With Nukes Back as a Global Danger, Time to Remember Hiroshima

    Saikoji, a small temple of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism to which a majority of Hiroshima’s citizens belong, stands just across the street from the Atomic Bomb Dome. It often displays selected words of wisdom at the entrance—this month, to mark the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945, the plaque simply read “There is no border in life. There is no difference in race. ‘Gassho’ (prayer) for all the victims.”

    So much truth about nuclear weapons, in just three short sentences.

    Cascading bad news such as the unravelling of the Iran nuclear deal, and the collapse of the checks and balances painstakingly put in place over decades to manage the nuclear Damocles Sword over our collective necks, seemed on everyone’s mind this August 6 in Hiroshima—a palpable sense if not of outright despair, then certainly of gloom. As a pelting rain swept across the Peace Memorial Park where 50,000 people had gathered, the usually calm and restrained Governor of Hiroshima, Hidehiko Yuzaki, voicing the sentiments of many, poignantly asked, ‘Why are some countries allowed to possess nuclear weapons that can inflict a trauma that remains incurable for 74 years or more? Why are they allowed to threaten other countries to use their nuclear arsenals?’ Is it really permissible to cause such a catastrophe?’

    The nuclear genie, brought out of the bottle at Alamogordo in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, has been devouring in recent years and one by one most of our collective defenses against it. As Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn write chillingly in this month’s Foreign Affairs, there is a ‘deliberate and accelerating breakdown of the arms control architecture that for decades provided restraint, transparency, and predictability for each side’s conventional and nuclear forces.’ They convincingly argue that decaying agreements and mind sets, with ever more sophisticated weapons, cyber technologies and AI make our era one of the more dangerous in the planet’s history. Other global crisis, especially climate change, can but exacerbate the fragile balance.

    The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has estimated that even a small-scale limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan for example, one that would involve only 0.03% of the world’s nuclear weapon capacity, could risk the starvation of almost two billion people, notably in the Indian subcontinent and China. For her part the essayist Elaine Scarry, in a lecture at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation earlier this year, raised the mortifying thought of how just a small handful of people—to be really stark, maybe just nine—have their finger on the nuclear button, and therefore on our collective destiny. No parent can sleep peacefully after reading this.

    Time is not on our side. The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, championed by the International Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and supported by a few enlightened states and the United Nations, is steadily building momentum, but is still only half way to entry into force—24 of the required 50 states have ratified. Unlike most other global issues, nuclear weapons remain the quasi monopoly of states (for now). This is true not just in countries with little democratic checks and balances like China, Russia or North Korea, but even in democracies like the US, UK, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. If so, then surely the case must be taken more urgently to the seemingly distracted but potentially powerful global citizenry?

    The UN, ICAN and others groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are trying. The ICRC has produced one of the shortest and most effective videos to date on the impact of a nuclear war —in just 1:51 minutes the film does more for the anti-nuclear cause than many pious declarations. More, much more is needed however. We must cease to be distracted by trivia, and refocus laser-like on humanity’s most urgent threat, mobilizing the talents of the best and the brightest—the most creative film makers and artists, scholars, inventors and business leaders around the world, from whichever ‘side’ they may be—to make the case for a nuclear-free world. We must find ways to do so as meaningfully in Beijing as in Moscow, in Washington, New Delhi or Islamabad.

    ICAN has done well too, by mobilizing the young, and by going for the jugular—i.e. tracing the money. In 2012 it had estimated that worldwide nuclear weapons cost a hefty US $300 million a day (considering how opaque most nuclear-weapon budgets are, this is most likely below the real cost). Meanwhile ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb campaign is picking momentum, pressuring corporations, banks, pension funds and the like to drop out of the bomb business. In democratic countries it is also easier to identify and expose companies benefitting from the macabre nuclear trade.The lion’s share of nuclear weapon development contracts in the United States for example is held by just a handful of corporations. Aggressive divestment campaigns, and strategies to expose and shame non-ethical companies, could put them on the defensive.

    The sheer number and power of nuclear weapons today can make the bombs that plunged Hiroshima and Nagasaki into nuclear hell 74 years ago seem almost benign. But as the Governor said even here we glimpse merely the outward expressions of grief—we will never know the reality of nuclear horror and the suffering behind the dignified exteriors of survivors. Many hibakusha dedicated their lives to remembering the calamity of that day and its aftermath, so that we may not forget. Now they watch the crumbling of all they worked for, their dreams for a non-nuclear world.

    My friend the Hiroshima architect Akio Nishikiori often describes his childhood memories of the pre-WWII Hiroshima, something of a small Venice with its many rivers and taxi-gondolas. On summer nights his family would eat at cafés along the river and stroll the bustling streets of Nakajima district, then the central shopping and entertainment center. All that vanished with the bomb when Akio was eight. His sister Hisako, who was 14, was killed and Hiroshima almost disappeared into the dark side. The erudite and humanist Akio has dedicated his life to rebuilding his city, and now almost 82, continues to fight for peace every day. But Akio and other citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone cannot save us from nuclear annihilation. We must step up, all of us, now—this is by far our most urgent mission.

  • 2018 Sadako Peace Day: Reflection and Renewal

    2018 Sadako Peace Day: Reflection and Renewal

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    Our 24th annual Sadako Peace Day took place on August 6, 2018. It was the first public event at La Casa de Maria since the catastrophic mudslides that devastated the retreat center and many other places in Montecito in January 2018. Twenty-three lives were lost in the disaster. This year, we reflected on our local situation in addition to remembering the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all innocent victims of war.

    Sadako Sasaki was a two-year-old girl living in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the morning the atomic bomb was dropped. Ten years later, she was diagnosed with radiation-induced leukemia. Japanese legend holds that one’s wish will be granted upon folding 1,000 paper cranes. Sadako folded those 1,000 cranes, saying, “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.” Sadly, Sadako never recovered from her illness. Students in Japan were so moved by her story, they began folding paper cranes, too. Today the paper crane is a symbol of peace and a statue of Sadako stands in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

    Click here to download the full audio of the event.

    All photos on this page are by Rick Carter.

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    Event Photos

    A selection of photos from our 2018 Sadako Peace Day event are on our Flickr page. All photos by Rick Carter.

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    Kissing Joy as it Flies

    Bob Nyosui Sedivy on the shakuhacki, the ancient Japanese bamboo flute. Audio file.

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    Welcome

    Rick Wayman is NAPF’s Deputy Director. Audio file. Transcript.

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    Original Poems by David Krieger

    NAPF President David Krieger read two original poems: “In Our Hubris” and “Another Hiroshima Day Has Arrived.” Audio file.

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    Sadako’s Cranes Return

    Original poem by Perie Longo, Chair of the NAPF Poetry Committee and Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate from 2007-09. Audio file. Transcript.

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    Peace Beneath Our Wings

    Original dance interpretation of the peace crane by NAPF intern Maranda Jory-Geiger, with Bob Sedivy on the shakuhachi. Video coming soon.

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    Peace in the Ethers

    Original poem by Enid Osborn, Santa Barbara’s current Poet Laureate. Audio file. Transcript.

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    Walking on Water, Pyramid Lake

    Original poem by Paul Willis, Professor of English at Westmont College and a former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. Audio file. Transcript.

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    God was Sleeping and Tractor for a Cab

    Original songs by Hal Maynard and NAPF Director of Communications Sandy Jones. Audio file.

    [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_3″ layout=”1_3″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_imageframe image_id=”13395″ max_width=”” style_type=”none” stylecolor=”” hover_type=”none” bordersize=”” bordercolor=”” borderradius=”” align=”center” lightbox=”no” gallery_id=”” lightbox_image=”” alt=”” link=”” linktarget=”_self” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/sarah_witmer-300×200.jpg[/fusion_imageframe][fusion_separator style_type=”default” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” sep_color=”” top_margin=”30px” bottom_margin=”” border_size=”0″ icon=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” width=”” alignment=”center” /][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” class=”” id=””]

    Nana korobi ya oki

    Sarah Witmer, NAPF Director of Development, spoke about this Japanese proverb, which translates “fall down seven times, get up eight.” Audio file. Transcript.

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    La Casa de Maria

    Stephanie Glatt, Director Emerita of La Casa de Maria, spoke about the meaning of holding Sadako Peace Day in the garden this year. Audio file.

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    Impermanence

    Bob Nyosui Sedivy on the shakuhachi. Audio file.

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  • Sadako Peace Day 2018: Welcome

    Sadako Peace Day 2018: Welcome

    Good evening. My name is Rick Wayman. I’m the Deputy Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 24th annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration.

    It is good to be back here today. Thank you so much to the staff of La Casa de Maria for your outstanding efforts to make this year’s event possible. Thank you to the staff, volunteers, and donors who are giving everything they can to rebuild this special place.

    As humans, we face two clear existential threats: nuclear weapons and climate change. For the first 23 Sadako Peace Days, we remembered the victims of nuclear weapons: the hundreds of thousands who were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the countless people around the world who have been impacted by nuclear weapons development and testing. We also remember all innocent victims of war.

    This year, we find ourselves standing in Sadako Peace Garden at an unexpected ground zero of climate change. So today, we also remember those who lost their lives in the debris flow back in January.

    In our community, we have been living through radical uncertainty from forces of nature amplified by manmade climate change. NAPF President David Krieger wrote about this in The Hill.

    He wrote, “Death and destruction did not discriminate. Nature only did what nature does. It was mostly beyond our control.”

    He continued, “But we also live daily with the radical uncertainty of nuclear survival, which is not a force of nature, but rather a man-made threat. It is a threat entirely of our own making, and it can be remedied by facing it and doing something about it.”

    It is inspiring to see the determination and resilience here at La Casa de Maria and throughout Montecito to recover from an inconceivable tragedy.

    A friend and role model, Setsuko Thurlow, was 13 years old when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on her city of Hiroshima. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons so that no one would ever again have to experience what she did. In December 2017, Setsuko was on the stage in Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She, like so many hibakusha, refuse to accept the idea that nuclear weapons and humanity can co-exist. She is determined, she is resilient, and it is inevitable that her goal – our goal – of a nuclear weapons-free world will be achieved.

    With both climate change and nuclear weapons, we have individual and collective responsibilities to change our behavior. At NAPF, we offer many ways for you to stand up, speak out, and join in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons. Please visit our information table after this evening’s program to find out what you can do, including adding your voice in support of a forthcoming Santa Barbara City Council resolution to make Santa Barbara a nuclear-free zone.

    Thank you for being here this evening. And thank you for demonstrating the determination and resilience of our community.

  • 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

  • 2016 Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    Nuclear weapons are cruel weapons that destroy human beings.

    Mayor Tomihisa TaueThe instant that the single nuclear bomb dropped by a U.S. military aircraft on Nagasaki City at 11:02 AM on August 9, 1945, exploded in the air, it struck the city with a furious blast and heat wave. Nagasaki City was transformed into a hell on earth; a hell of black-charred corpses, people covered in blistering burns, people with their internal organs spilling out, and people cut and studded by the countless fragments of flying glass that had penetrated their bodies.

    The radiation released by the bomb pierced people’s bodies, resulting in illnesses and disabilities that still afflict those who narrowly managed to survive the bombing.

    Nuclear weapons are cruel weapons that continue to destroy human beings.

    In May this year, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima, a city which was bombed with a nuclear weapon. In doing so, the President showed the rest of the world the importance of seeing, listening and feeling things for oneself.

    I appeal to the leaders of states which possess nuclear weapons and other countries, and to the people of the world: please come and visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Find out for yourselves what happened to human beings beneath the mushroom cloud. Knowing the facts becomes the starting point for thinking about a future free of nuclear weapons.

    This year at the United Nations Office at Geneva, sessions are being held to deliberate a legal framework that will take forward nuclear disarmament negotiations. The creation of a forum for legal discussions is a huge step forward. However, countries in possession of nuclear weapons have not attended these meetings, the results of which will be compiled shortly. Moreover, conflict continues between the nations that are dependent on nuclear deterrence and those that are urging for a start of negotiations to prohibit nuclear weapons. If this situation continues, then the meetings will end without the creation of a roadmap for nuclear weapons abolition.

    Leaders of countries possessing nuclear weapons, it is not yet too late. Please attend the meetings and participate in the debate.

    I appeal to the United Nations, governments and national assemblies, and the civil society including NGOs. We must not allow the eradication of these forums where we can discuss legal frameworks for the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the United Nations General Assembly this fall, please provide a forum for discussing and negotiating a legal framework aimed at the realization of a world without nuclear weapons. And as members of human society, I ask you all to continue to make every effort to seek out a viable solution.

    Countries which possess nuclear weapons are currently carrying out plans to make their nuclear weapons even more sophisticated. If this situation continues, the realization of a world without nuclear weapons will become even more unlikely.

    Now is the time for all of you to bring together as much of your collective wisdom as you possibly can, and act so that we do not destroy the future of mankind.

    The Government of Japan, while advocating nuclear weapons abolition, still relies on nuclear deterrence. As a method to overcome this contradictory state of affairs, please enshrine the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in law, and create a “Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone” (NEA-NWFZ) as a framework for security that does not rely on nuclear deterrence. As the only nation in the world to have suffered a nuclear bombing during wartime, and as a nation that understands only too well the inhumanity of these weapons, I ask the Government of Japan to display leadership in taking concrete action regarding the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone, a concept that embodies mankind’s wisdom.

    The history of nuclear weapons is also the history of distrust.

    In the midst of this distrust between nations, countries with nuclear weapons have developed evermore destructive weapons with increasingly distant target ranges. There are still over 15,000 nuclear warheads in existence, and there is the ever-present danger that they may be used in war, by accident, or as an act of terrorism.

    One way of stemming this flow and turning the cycle of distrust into a cycle of trust is to continue with persistent efforts to create trust.

    In line with the peaceful ethos of the Constitution of Japan, we have endeavored to spread trust throughout the world by contributing to global society through efforts such as humanitarian aid. In order that we never again descend into war, Japan must continue to follow this path as a peaceful nation.

    There is also something that each and every one of us can do as members of civil society. This is to mutually understand the differences in each other’s languages, cultures and ways of thinking, and to create trust on a familiar level by taking part in exchange with people regardless of their nationality. The warm reception given to President Obama by the people of Hiroshima is one example of this. The conduct of civil society may appear small on an individual basis, but it is in fact a powerful and irreplaceable tool for building up relationships of trust between nations.

    Seventy-one years after the atomic bombings, the average age of the hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, exceeds 80. The world is steadily edging towards “an era without any hibakusha.” The question we face now is how to hand down to future generations the experiences of war and the atomic bombing that was the result of that war.

    You who are the young generation, all the daily things that you take for granted – your mother’s gentle hands, your father’s kind look, chatting with your friends, the smiling face of the person you like – war takes these from you, forever.

    Please take the time to listen to war experiences, and the experiences of the hibakusha. Talking about such terrible experiences is not easy. I want you all to realize that the reason these people still talk about what they went through is because they want to protect the people of the future.

    Nagasaki has started activities in which the children and grandchildren of the hibakusha are conveying the experiences of their elders. We are also pursuing activities to have the bombed schoolhouse at Shiroyama Elementary School, and other sites, registered as Historic Sites of Japan, so that they can be left for future generations.

    Young people, for the sake of the future, will you face up to the past and thereby take a step forward?

    It is now over five years since the nuclear reactor accident in Fukushima. As a place that has suffered from radiation exposure, Nagasaki will continue to support Fukushima.

    As for the Government of Japan, we strongly demand that wide-ranging improvements are made to the support provided to the hibakusha, who still to this day suffer from the aftereffects of the bombing, and that swift aid is given to all those who experienced the bombing, including the expansion of the area designated as having been affected by the atomic bomb.

    We, the citizens of Nagasaki, offer our most heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives to the atomic bomb. We hereby declare that together with the people of the world, we will continue to use all our strength to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, and to realize everlasting peace.

    Tomihisa Taue
    Mayor of Nagasaki
    August 9, 2016

  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki: What Now?

    This article was originally published by the Santa Fe New Mexican.

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago marked a turning point in U.S. history from which this country never recovered.

    Many wartime leaders had warned against using the bomb, and after the war the Air Force Strategic Bombing Survey found it was of no material aid in ending the war.

    But despite or because of the horror and repressed guilt, we clung to it. We embraced a policy of threatened annihilation as a core principle of policy. Had we rejected the bomb, as many prestigious voices argued, postwar U.S. development would have been quite different. With the bomb in our pocket, we did not become a people of justice and equality, or a social democracy.

    Chris Hedges quotes D.H. Lawrence: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.”

    I would like to tell Hiroshima survivors that we have changed, but we have not. America is as brutal and violent as ever, at home and abroad. Recently, President Barack Obama bragged about bombing seven countries.

    E.L. Doctorow described our postwar devolution: “The bomb first was our weapon. Then it became our diplomacy. Next it became our economy.
    Now it’s become our culture. We’ve become the people of the bomb.”

    When Ivan quit we became even more of an empire. There was nothing holding us back — or so it seemed. We became the Unipower, the Indispensable Nation. Just ask us.

    In 1945 as today, we sought and still seek to control as much of the world’s resources as possible, not just to feed our grotesque consumerism but also to satisfy our controlling oligarchs, while denying those declining resources to others.

    The 1992 Wolfowitz doctrine spells it out: “Our first objective is to … prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would … be sufficient to generate global power.” Since the Russian Federation is such a region all by itself, this is a formula for destabilization and war, both of which are ongoing projects. They are not going well.

    Despite, or because of, all our material and moral sacrifices, the only “victory” in 70 years for America’s vast, self-serving nuclear-military complex has been the destruction of our own democracy. As a result, our children’s prospects are nothing short of abysmal.

    Obama has budgeted a trillion dollars to operate and upgrade each and every warhead, bomb and delivery system we have, a vast expense that is itself dwarfed by the rest of our gargantuan military. But there is no plan to wean the U.S. from oil and gas, no plan to address inequality and poverty, no serious plan to forestall climate change.

    And no disarmament. Seventy years on from Hiroshima, there are far more nuclear weapons in the world than when the peace movement started in earnest in the aftermath of the disastrous 1954 Castle Bravo test in the Marshall Islands.

    Today’s U.S. stockpile of 7,100 warheads range in yield up to 80 times the Hiroshima bomb, with most in a middle range of 100 to 400 kilotons, sufficient to incinerate a large city. Peer-reviewed studies have concluded that detonation of just 2 percent of U.S. warheads alone over cities would result in global nuclear darkness and famine, civilizational collapse and the extinction of many higher life-forms and quite possibly humanity itself.

    Movements for nuclear disarmament have not been successful. Why?
    Generally citizens, on every issue, want to believe they can change history with a few hours of activist entertainment. We need instead the opposite: full-time committed organizers and revolutionaries, supported by local communities. We are well past the point where mere reform can save the country, the climate or the planet. This is the path of maturity and fulfillment today. Accept no substitutes.

    Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit policy think-tank and lobbying organization. His formal education is in engineering, environmental sciences and regional planning.

  • 2015 Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    At 11:02am, on the 9th August 1945, a single atomic bomb instantly reduced Nagasaki to a ruin.

    A vast amount of radiation passed through people’s bodies, and the city was struck by heat rays and a blast that defy imagination. 74,000 of the city’s population of 240,000 people were killed. A further 75,000 individuals sustained injuries. It was said that vegetation would not grow for at least 70 years. However, today, 70 years on, this hill in Urakami, which was once a ruin, is now enveloped in greenery. Nevertheless, those hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, whose bodies were eaten away by radiation, and who continue to suffer from the aftereffects, can never forget that day.

    The atomic bomb was born of war, and was used in war. The conviction that nuclear weapons must not exist, and that we must never go to war again, was deeply and powerfully engraved upon the hearts of the hibakusha, who know firsthand the fearsome destructive force of atomic bombs. The peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan was born from these painful and harsh experiences, and from reflection upon the war. Since the war, our country has walked the path of a peaceful nation. For the sake of Nagasaki, and for the sake of all of Japan, we must never change the peaceful principle that we renounce war.

    Most of our population is now made up of the post-war generation. The memories of war are fast fading from our society. We must not forget the atomic bomb experiences of those in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Neither should we forget the air raids which destroyed Tokyo and many other cities, the Battle of Okinawa, nor the many people of Asia who suffered because of this tragic war. Now, 70 years on, it is vital that we continue to pass on those memories.

    I ask that those of you who experienced the atomic bomb and the war in Japan and across the globe speak of your experiences, and not allow those memories to fade.

    To the young generation, I ask that you do not push wartime experiences aside saying that they are stories of the past. Understand that the wartime generation tell you their stories because what they speak of could, in the future, happen to you as well. Therefore, please inherit their wish for peace. Please imagine what you would do in such circumstances, and ask yourself “What can I do for the sake of peace?” You, the young generation, have the power to transcend national borders and create new relationships.

    The greatest power to realize a world without war and without nuclear weapons lies inside each and every one of us. Listen to stories of the war, sign petitions for nuclear abolition, and visit atomic bomb exhibitions. Together, these individual actions can create a much larger power. In Nagasaki, the younger generation, which includes second and third generation hibakusha, are inheriting the wish for peace and are taking action. Our individual strengths are the greatest power in realizing a world without war and without nuclear weapons. The power of civil society is the power to move governments, and to move the world.

    In May of this year, the “Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)” ended without the adoption of a Final Document. However, the efforts of those countries which are attempting to ban nuclear weapons made possible a draft Final Document which incorporated steps towards nuclear disarmament.

    I ask the following of the heads of the NPT member states. Please do not let this Review Conference have been a waste. Please continue your efforts to debate a legal framework, such as a “Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC)”, at every opportunity, including at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

    Many countries at the Review Conference were in agreement that it is important to visit the atomic-bombed cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Once again, I make a call from Nagasaki. I address President Obama, heads of state, including the heads of the nuclear weapon states, and all the people of the world. Please come to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and see for yourself exactly what happened under those mushroom clouds 70 years ago. Please understand and accept the message of the hibakusha, who are still doing their best to pass on their experiences, not simply as “victims”, but as “members of the human race”.

    I appeal to the Government of Japan. Please explore national security measures which do not rely on nuclear deterrence. The establishment of a “Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ)”, as advocated by researchers in America, Japan, Korea, China, and many other countries, would make this possible. Fix your sights on the future, and please consider a conversion from a “nuclear umbrella” to a “non-nuclear umbrella”.

    This summer, Nagasaki held the “International Youth Peace Forum”, where young people from 128 different countries and regions considered and discussed peace.

    In November, Nagasaki will host the “Pugwash International Conference” for the first time. At this Conference, which was inspired by Albert Einstein, who understood the terror of nuclear weapons, scientists from all over the world will gather, discuss the problem of nuclear weapons, and convey a message of peace from Nagasaki to the world.

    “Peace from Nagasaki”. We shall continue to sow the seeds of peace as we treasure these words.

    Furthermore, 4 years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake, Nagasaki continues to support the people of Fukushima who are suffering due to the accident at the nuclear power plant.

    The Diet is currently deliberating a bill which will determine how our country guarantees its security. There is widespread unease and concern that the oath which was engraved onto our hearts 70 years ago and the peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan are now wavering. I urge the Government and the Diet to listen to these voices of unease and concern, concentrate their wisdom, and conduct careful and sincere deliberations.

    This year, the average age of the hibakusha has now passed 80. I strongly request that the Government of Japan fulfill its responsibility of providing substantial care that conforms to the actual needs of the hibakusha, and increase the extent of the area acknowledged as being exposed to the atomic bomb while those who were there are still alive.

    We, the people of Nagasaki, offer our most heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives to the atomic bomb. We hereby declare that together with the citizens of Hiroshima, we shall continue to use all our strength to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, and the realization of peace.

    Tomihisa Taue
    Mayor of Nagasaki
    August 9, 2015

  • Our Nuclear World at Seventy

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgeThis week the world remembers events of 70 years ago. Events that killed instantly over 100 thousand human beings as the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 6th and 9th respectively. In the days and weeks that followed tens of thousands would also die from injuries suffered by the bomb and “A bomb disease”. From 4:15 pm PST August 5th, the exact moment the bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, there will be planetary vigils remembering the events of those days. If we forget these events we run the risk of repeating them and so must educate those among us who are unaware or uniformed.

    Over the years, the aging Hibakusha survivors of the atomic bombs are a constant reminder as they speak of the horrors they experienced those August days and in the aftermath.

    Unfortunately in the seven decades that have followed, the world has done little to move away from the subsequent use of these weapons and instead moved closer to the brink of destroying civilization and possibly the extinction of our species.

    Witnessing the horrific potential of these weapons mankind had two options that remain with us to this day. The first option was to rid the planet of these weapons and the second was to build more. The world chose the latter. The insane doctrine throughout the Cold War, appropriately called MAD for Mutually Assured Destruction, guaranteed the annihilation of an adversary in the event of any use a nuclear weapon. This resulted in a mythological notion of nuclear deterrence that persists to this day, providing a false sense of security and being the major driver of the arms race resulting in 15,685 nuclear weapons on the planet!

    Following the bombings of Japan and with continued testing we have seen how destructive these weapons were. However, recently we have learned that they are much more dangerous than we had ever imagined. We now know that even a unilateral attack using the weapons of either the U.S. or Russia without retaliation would ultimately result in such catastrophic global climate change that billions would die from starvation and disease including the attacking nation. In effect the MAD doctrine of the Cold War has become the SAD doctrine of Self Assured Destruction ultimately turning any nation that would unleash its nuclear arsenals into suicide bombers and the destroyers of civilization.

    Even a limited regional nuclear war using only 100 Hiroshima size bombs possibly between India and Pakistan, felt by many defense experts to be a vulnerable nuclear hot spot on the planet, would cause death and destruction never imagined. It would kill 20 million people outright but the after effects resulting from global climate change in the days that follow would be catastrophic killing over 2 billion people around the world. These effects would last for over 10 years. Even more remarkably this scenario uses less than ½ of 1% of the global arsenals!

    On this 70th Anniversary of the nuclear age we have an opportunity and responsibility to act. Knowing what we now know, we cannot do nothing. Ultimately our luck will run out with the potential of nuclear war either by accident or intent. We must work together with the majority of nations now numbering 113 who have signed the “Humanitarian Pledge” to ban nuclear weapons by convention just as every other weapon of mass destruction has been banned. All attempts at nonproliferation and diplomacy must be supported including the nuclear deal with Iran. We must demand that our nation join the non-nuclear nations of the world whom we hold hostage and work together to abolish these weapons. We owe this to the Hibakusha, to our children and to future generations.