Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Nagasaki

  • Hiroshima Cover-Up Exposed

    In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

    The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. The full story of this atomic cover-up is told fully for the first time today at E&P Online, as the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings approaches later this week.

    Six weeks ago, E&P broke the story that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. This drew national attention, but suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world.

    As editor of Nuclear Times magazine in the 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew, and Erik Barnouw, the famed documentarian who first showed some of the Japanese footage on American TV in 1970. In fact, that newsreel footage might have disappeared forever if the Japanese filmmakers had not hidden one print from the Americans in a ceiling.

    The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF.

    When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

    “I always had the sense,” McGovern told me, “that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force — it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child….They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done — at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn’t want the material out because…we were sorry for our sins.”

    Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.

    More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. “The main reason it was classified was…because of the horror, the devastation,” he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

    The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.

    Ten years ago, I co-authored (with Robert Jay Lifton) the book ” Hiroshima in America,” and new material has emerged since. On August 6, the Sundance cable channel will air “Original Child Bomb,” a prize-winning documentary that I worked on. The film includes some of the once-censored footage — along with home movies filmed by McGovern in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The Japanese Newsreel Footage

    On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country — and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.

    But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, and as the American occupation began, director Sueo Ito set off for Nagasaki. There his crew filmed the utter destruction near ground zero and scenes in hospitals of the badly burned and those suffering from the lingering effects of radiation.

    On Sept. 15, another crew headed for Hiroshima. When the first rushes came back to Toyko, Akira Iwasaki, the chief producer, felt “every frame burned into my brain,” he later said.

    At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years “the world…knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction.”

    Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.

    Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated by the U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ). An order soon arrived banning all further filming. It was at this point that Lt. Daniel McGovern took charge.

    Shooting the US Military Footage

    In early September, 1945, less than a month after the two bombs fell, Lt. McGovern — who as a member of Hollywood’s famed First Motion Picture Unit shot some of the footage for William Wyler’s “Memphis Belle” — had become one of the first Americans to arrive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a director with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, organized by the Army the previous November to study the effects of the air campaign against Germany, and now Japan.

    As he made plans to shoot the official American record, McGovern learned about the seizure of the Japanese footage. He felt it would be a waste to not take advantage of the newsreel footage, noting in a letter to his superiors that “the conditions under which it was taken will not be duplicated, until another atomic bomb is released under combat conditions.”

    McGovern proposed hiring some of the Japanese crew to edit and “caption” the material, so it would have “scientific value.” He took charge of this effort in early January 1946, even as the Japanese feared that, when they were done, they would never see even a scrap of their film again.

    At the same time, McGovern was ordered by General Douglas MacArthur on January 1, 1946 to document the results of the U.S. air campaign in more than 20 Japanese cities. His crew would shoot exclusively on color film, Kodachrome and Technicolor, rarely used at the time even in Hollywood. McGovern assembled a crew of eleven, including two civilians. Third in command was a young lieutenant from New York named Herbert Sussan.

    The unit left Tokyo in a specially outfitted train, and made it to Nagasaki. “Nothing and no one had prepared me for the devastation I met there,” Sussan later told me. “We were the only people with adequate ability and equipment to make a record of this holocaust….I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened. At that time people back home had not seen anything but black and white pictures of blasted buildings or a mushroom cloud.”

    Along with the rest of McGovern’s crew, Sussan documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls; and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world.

    At the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, a Japanese physician traced the hideous, bright red scars that covered several of the patients — and then took off his white doctor’s shirt and displayed his own burns and cuts.

    After sticking a camera on a rail car and building their own tracks through the ruins, the Americans filmed hair-raising tracking shots that could have been lifted right from a Hollywood movie. Their chief cameramen was a Japanese man, Harry Mimura, who in 1943 had shot “Sanshiro Sugata,” the first feature film by a then-unknown Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.

    The Suppression Begins

    While all this was going on, the Japanese newsreel team was completing its work of editing and labeling all their black & white footage into a rough cut of just under three hours. At this point, several members of Japanese team took the courageous step of ordering from the lab a duplicate of the footage they had shot before the Americans took over the project.

    Director Ito later said: “The four of us agreed to be ready for 10 years of hard labor in the case of being discovered.” One incomplete, silent print would reside in a ceiling until the Occupation ended.

    The negative of the finished Japanese film, nearly 15,000 feet of footage on 19 reels, was sent off to the U.S. in early May 1946. The Japanese were also ordered to include in this shipment all photographs and related material. The footage would be labeled SECRET and not emerge from the shadows for more than 20 years.

    The following month, McGovern was abruptly ordered to return to the U.S. He hauled the 90,000 feet of color footage, on dozens of reels in huge footlockers, to the Pentagon and turned it over to General Orvil Anderson. Locked up and declared top secret, it did not see the light of day for more than 30 years.

    McGovern would be charged with watching over it. Sussan would become obsessed with finding it and getting it aired.

    Fearful that his film might get “buried,” McGovern stayed on at the Pentagon as an aide to Gen. Anderson, who was fascinated by the footage and had no qualms about showing it to the American people. “He was that kind of man, he didn’t give a damn what people thought,” McGovern told me. “He just wanted the story told.”

    In an article in his hometown Buffalo Evening News, McGovern said that he hoped that “this epic will be made available to the American public.” He planned to call the edited movie “Japan in Defeat.”

    Once they eyeballed the footage, however, most of the top brass didn’t want it widely shown and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was also opposed, according to McGovern. It nixed a Warner Brothers feature film project based on the footage that Anderson had negotiated, while paying another studio about $80,000 to help make four training films.

    In a March 3, 1947 memo, Francis E. Rundell, a major in the Air Corps, explained that the film would be classified “secret.” This was determined “after study of subject material, especially concerning footage taken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is believed that the information contained in the films should be safeguarded until cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission.” After the training films were completed, the status would be raised to “Top Secret” pending final classification by the AEC.

    The color footage was shipped to the Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. McGovern went along after being told to put an I.D. number on the film “and not let anyone touch it — and that’s the way it stayed,” as he put it. After cataloging it, he placed it in a vault in the top secret area.

    “Dan McGovern stayed with the film all the time,” Sussan later said. “He told me they could not release the film [because] what it showed was too horrible.”

    Sussan wrote a letter to President Truman, suggesting that a film based on the footage “would vividly and clearly reveal the implications and effects of the weapons that confront us at this serious moment in our history.” A reply from a Truman aide threw cold water on that idea, saying such a film would lack “wide public appeal.”

    McGovern, meanwhile, continued to “babysit” the film, now at Norton Air Force base in California. “It was never out of my control,” he said later, but he couldn’t make a film out of it any more than Sussan could (but unlike Herb, he at least knew where it was).

    The Japanese Footage Emerges

    At the same time, McGovern was looking after the Japanese footage. Fearful that it might get lost forever in the military/government bureaucracy, he secretly made a 16 mm print and deposited it in the U.S. Air Force Central Film Depository at Wright-Patterson. There it remained out of sight, and generally out of mind. (The original negative and production materials remain missing, according to Abe Mark Nornes, who teaches at the University of Michigan and has researched the Japanese footage more than anyone.)

    The Japanese government repeatedly asked the U.S. for the full footage of what was known in that country as “the film of illusion,” to no avail. A rare article about what it called this “sensitive” dispute appeared in The New York Times on May 18, 1967, declaring right in its headline that the film had been “Suppressed by U.S. for 22 Years.” Surprisingly, it revealed that while some of the footage was already in Japan (likely a reference to the film hidden in the ceiling), the U.S. had put a “hold” on the Japanese using it–even though the American control of that country had ceased many years earlier.

    Despite rising nuclear fears in the 1960s, before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, few in the U.S. challenged the consensus view that dropping the bomb on two Japanese cities was necessary. The United States maintained its “first-use” nuclear policy: Under certain circumstances it would strike first with the bomb and ask questions later. In other words, there was no real taboo against using the bomb. This notion of acceptability had started with Hiroshima. A firm line against using nuclear weapons had been drawn–in the sand. The U.S., in fact, had threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.

    On Sept. 12, 1967, the Air Force transferred the Japanese footage to the National Archives Audio Visual Branch in Washington, with the film “not to be released without approval of DOD (Department of Defense).”

    Then, one morning in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, opened his mail to discover a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend. It indicated that the U.S. had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black & white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return.

    From the Pentagon, Barnouw learned in 1968 that the original nitrate film had been quietly turned over to the National Archives, so he went to take a look. Soon Barnouw realized that, despite its marginal film quality, “enough of the footage was unforgettable in its implications, and historic in its importance, to warrant duplicating all of it,” he later wrote.

    Attempting to create a subtle, quiet, even poetic, black and white film, he and his associates cut it from 160 to 16 minutes, with a montage of human effects clustered near the end for impact. Barnouw arranged a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and invited the press. A throng turned out and sat in respectful silence at its finish. (One can only imagine what impact the color footage with many more human effects would have had.) “Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945” proved to be a sketchy but quite moving document of the aftermath of the bombing, captured in grainy but often startling black and white images: shadows of objects or people burned into walls, ruins of schools, miles of razed landscape viewed from the roof of a building.

    In the weeks ahead, however, none of the (then) three TV networks expressed interest in airing it. “Only NBC thought it might use the film,” Barnouw later wrote, “if it could find a ‘news hook.’ We dared not speculate what kind of event this might call for.” But then an article appeared in Parade magazine, and an editorial in the Boston Globe blasted the networks, saying that everyone in the country should see this film: “Television has brought the sight of war into America’s sitting rooms from Vietnam. Surely it can find 16 minutes of prime time to show Americans what the first A-bombs, puny by today’s weapons, did to people and property 25 years ago.”

    This at last pushed public television into the void. What was then called National Educational Television (NET) agreed to show the documentary on August 3, 1970, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of dropping the bomb.

    “I feel that classifying all of this filmed material was a misuse of the secrecy system since none of it had any military or national security aspect at all,” Barnouw told me. “The reason must have been–that if the public had seen it and Congressmen had seen it–it would have been much harder to appropriate money for more bombs.”

    The American Footage Comes Out

    About a decade later, by pure chance, Herb Sussan would spark the emergence of the American footage, ending its decades in the dark.

    In the mid-1970s, Japanese antinuclear activists, led by a Tokyo teacher named Tsutomu Iwakura, discovered that few pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings existed in their country. Many had been seized by the U.S. military after the war, they learned, and taken out of Japan. The Japanese had as little visual exposure to the true effects of the bomb as most Americans. Activists managed to track down hundreds of pictures in archives and private collections and published them in a popular book. In 1979 they mounted an exhibit at the United Nations in New York.

    There, by chance, Iwakura met Sussan, who told him about the U.S. military footage.

    Iwakura made a few calls and found that the color footage, recently declassified, might be at the National Archives. A trip to Washington, D.C. verified this. He found eighty reels of film, labeled #342 USAF, with the reels numbered 11000 to 11079. About one-fifth of the footage covered the atomic cities. According to a shot list, reel #11010 included, for example: “School, deaf and dumb, blast effect, damagedCommercial school demolishedSchool, engineering, demolished.School, Shirayama elementary, demolished, blast effectTenements, demolished.”

    The film had been quietly declassified a few years earlier, but no one in the outside world knew it. An archivist there told me at the time, “If no one knows about the film to ask forit, it’s as closed as when it was classified.”

    Eventually 200,000 Japanese citizens contributed half a million dollars and Iwakura was able to buy the film. He then traveled around Japan filming survivors who had posed for Sussan and McGovern in 1946. Iwakura quickly completed a documentary called “Prophecy” and in late spring 1982 arranged for a New York premiere.

    That fall a small part of the McGovern/Sussan footage turned up for the first time in an American film, one of the sensations of the New York Film Festival, called “Dark Circle.” It’s co-director, Chris Beaver, told me, “No wonder the government didn’t want us to see it. I think they didn’t want Americans to see themselves in that picture. It’s one thing to know about that and another thing to see it.”

    Despite this exposure, not a single story had yet appeared in an American newspaper about the shooting of the footage, its suppression or release. And Sussan was now ill with a form of lymphoma doctors had found in soldiers exposed to radiation in atomic tests during the 1950s–or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    In late 1982, editing Nuclear Times, I met Sussan and Erik Barnouw—and talked on several occasions with Daniel McGovern, out in Northridge, California. “It would make a fine documentary even today,” McGovern said of the color footage. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a movie of the burning of Atlanta?”

    After he hauled the footage back to the Pentagon, McGovern said, he was told that under no circumstances would the footage be released for outside use. “They were fearful of it being circulated,” McGovern said. He confirmed that the color footage, like the black and white, had been declassified over time, taking it from top secret to “for public release” (but only if the public knew about it and asked for it).

    Still, the question of precisely why the footage remained secret for so long lingered. Here McGovern added his considerable voice. “The main reason it was classified wasbecause of the horror, the devastation,” he said. “The medical effects were pretty goryThe attitude was: do not show any medical effects. Don’t make people sick.”

    But who was behind this? “I always had the sense,” McGovern answered, “that people in the AEC were sorry they had dropped the bomb. The Air Force–it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. But the AEC, they were the ones that stopped it from coming out. They had power of God over everybody,” he declared. “If it had anything to do with nukes, they had to see it. They were the ones who destroyed a lot of film and pictures of the first U.S. nuclear tests after the war.”

    Even so, McGovern believed, his footage might have surfaced “if someone had grabbed the ball and run with it but the AEC did not want it released.”

    As ” Dark Circle” director Chris Beaver had said, “With the government trying to sell the public on a new civil defense program and Reagan arguing that a nuclear war is survivable, this footage could be awfully bad publicity.”

    Today

    In the summer of 1984, I made my own pilgrimage to the atomic cities, to walk in the footsteps of Dan McGovern and Herb Sussan, and meet some of the people they filmed in 1946. By then, the McGovern/ Sussan footage had turned up in several new documentaries. On September 2, 1985, however, Herb Sussan passed away. His final request to his children: Would they scatter his ashes at ground zero in Hiroshima?

    In the mid-1990s, researching “Hiroshima in America,” a book I would write with Robert Jay Lifton, I discovered the deeper context for suppression of the U.S. Army film: it was part of a broad effort to suppress a wide range of material related to the atomic bombings, including photographs, newspaper reports on radiation effects, information about the decision to drop the bomb, even a Hollywood movie.

    The 50th anniversary of the bombing drew extensive print and television coverage–and wide use of excerpts from the McGovern/Sussan footage–but no strong shift in American attitudes on the use of the bomb.

    Then, in 2003, as adviser to a documentary film, “Original Child Bomb,” I urged director Carey Schonegevel to draw on the atomic footage as much as possible. She not only did so but also obtained from McGovern’s son copies of home movies he had shot in Japan while shooting the official film.

    “Original Child Bomb” went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win a major documentary award, and this week, on August 6 and 7, it will debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage will finally reach part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended. Only then will the Americans who see it be able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race–and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.

    Greg Mitchell is the editor of E&P and former editor of Nuclear Times. He co-authored (with Robert Jay Lifton) the book Hiroshima in America and served as adviser to the award-winning film “Original Child Bomb.”

  • The Hibakusha Voice and the Future of the Anti-Nuclear Movement

    Mr. Tsuboi Sunao would appear to be an ordinary healthy elderly Japanese man except for the large patch of white skin that medical specialists call leucoderma on his forehead. He is a cheerful 79 year old, but over the past 60 years he has been critically ill four times, each time being told that he would not survive. He first fell ill immediately after the bombing of Hiroshima when he was unconscious for 40 days. He is presently suffering from prostate cancer. Despite his illness he has been and still is an active campaigner against nuclear arms and one of the best known hibakusha, or victims of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In December 2003 he went to Washington D.C., to protest against the permanent display of the “Enola Gay” in the new wing of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. He was not against the actual display of the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people by the end of 1945. Rather he was against the exhibition of this plane without any explanation of the consequences caused as a result of the attack that took so many civilian lives and left tens of thousands of others to suffer throughout their lives.

    Mr. Tsuboi does not expect to be alive when Hiroshima City commemorates the 70th anniversary of the atomic attack in 2015. Indeed, it is almost certain that not only Mr. Tsuboi, but also most hibakusha will have passed away by then, as approximately 5000 hibakusha have died every year over the past ten years. Due to the rapidly diminishing number of hibakusha the “weathering of the Hiroshima experience” as it is called in Japan has become a serious concern for many citizens of this city in recent years. The number of children from various parts of Japan who visit the Atomic Bomb Museum in Peace Park on school excursions has also decreased sharply in recent years so that “oblivion to the Hiroshima memory” is becoming a nation wide phenomenon.

    In one corner of the Hiroshima Peace Park stands the statue of a young girl, Sadako, stretching her arms towards the sky. Sadako’s story is well known throughout the world, as books in many languages have been published about this girl who died of leukemia at the age of 12 in 1955, ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima. While ill in hospital Sadako attempted to make one thousand folded paper cranes, working on these until shortly before her death, in the belief that she would survive if she could achieve her goal. As a result of her efforts, the paper crane became a symbol of peace in Japan. Since her death visiting school groups from all over Japan have placed thousands of strings of paper cranes around her statute in memory of her lost youth and the Hiroshima tragedy. Sadly, over the past few years, these paper cranes have been set on fire a number of times, probably by young people, “just for fun.” To prevent such juvenile crime the city council built a small glass enclosure behind the statue in which to protect the paper cranes. Security cameras were also installed. Yet again, a few days before August 6, Hiroshima Day, in 2003, a university student from Kobe broke the glass and set fire to the cranes. When arrested he confessed that he did it out of frustration over the grim employment situation facing new university graduates. The incidents suggest that Sadako’s sorrowful tale, and the plight of the living as well as dead atomic victims, has become irrelevant to many young people in Japan.

    Today, Japan’s experience as the only nation to encounter a nuclear holocaust also appears irrelevant to Japan’s leading politicians including Prime Minister Koizumi. Until Mr. Koizumi became prime minister five years ago, it was an annual tradition for the prime minister to meet representatives of the hibakusha for about half an hour immediately after attending the commemoration ceremony in Peace Park on August 6. It was, of course, merely a token gesture for previous successive prime ministers to make a show of government concern for the health of hibakusha. Yet even this publicity gesture was cancelled, although Mr. Koizumi still reluctantly attends the ceremony. Some of his colleagues in the Liberal Democratic Party, including former Party Secretary General Abe Shinzo, think that Japan should develop nuclear arms for defense purposes against so-called “rogue nations” such as North Korea. Until a decade or so ago, there were still a few prominent conservative politicians who tenaciously objected to the nuclearization of Japan and to the dispatch of Japan’s Self Defense Forces to overseas war zones. Today, such statesmen no longer exist within the LDP. Article 9 of Japan’s post-war Constitution forbidding engagement in any form of armed conflict has so far been widely supported by the Japanese people, partly because of a strong desire not to repeat the nuclear holocaust. Recently, however, powerful voices both within the LDP as well as opposition parties have called for elimination of the pacifist clauses of the Constitution.

    For many months now major Japanese anti-nuclear organizations and other grass-roots peace movement groups have been planning their own events scheduled for August 2005 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet these planned events seem to offer few new ideas of how to tackle the problem of “oblivion to the Hiroshima memory” that pervades both the younger generation as well as the politicians. It is almost certain that events to commemorate the 60th anniversary will be the last chance for surviving hibakusha to appeal to the world to oppose the idea of genocide by weapons of mass destruction. I am sure that, in August 2005, they will receive much media attention from all over the world. However, the real question that the Japanese people should ask themselves is what they will do after the 60th anniversary in order to keep alive the Hiroshima memory and to utilize it to construct a peaceful world without the living voices of the hibakusha.

    A Hiroshima A-Bomb victim, Ms. Kurihara Sadako, once wrote the following passage in one of her poems:

    It was night in the basement of a broken building Victims of the atomic bomb Crowded into the candleless darkness

    Filling the room to overflowing The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death The stuffiness of human sweat, the writhing moans When, out of the darkness, came a wondrous voice “Oh! The baby’s coming!” it said ………. And so, a new life was born In the darkness of that living hell ………. We shall give forth new life! We shall bring forth new life! Even to our death

    What is urgently required for Japan’s peace movement now is a powerful cry for new life to its own ideas of peace with new perspectives in order to confront the present world of military violence and terrorism.

    Yuki Tanaka is a Research Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute and a coordinator of Japan Focus. He is the author of Japan’s Comfort Women. Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II.

    This article originally appeared on ZNet

  • Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer

    Governments lie.
    —     I. F. Stone, Journalist

    At the dawn of the nuclear age, an independent Australian journalist named Wilfred Burchett traveled to Japan to cover the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The only problem was that General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. The world’s media obediently crowded onto the USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese.

    Wilfred Burchett decided to strike out on his own. He was determined to see for himself what this nuclear bomb had done, to understand what this vaunted new weapon was all about. So he boarded a train and traveled for thirty hours to the city of Hiroshima in defiance of General MacArthur’s orders.

    Burchett emerged from the train into a nightmare world. The devastation that confronted him was unlike any he had ever seen during the war. The city of Hiroshima, with a population of 350,000, had been razed. Multistory buildings were reduced to charred posts. He saw people’s shadows seared into walls and sidewalks. He met people with their skin melting off. In the hospital, he saw patients with purple skin hemorrhages, gangrene, fever, and rapid hair loss. Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness.

    Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: “In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.”

    He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.”

    Burchett’s article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was published on September 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation. Burchett’s candid reaction to the horror shocked readers. “In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

    “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.”

    Burchett’s searing independent reportage was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. General MacArthur had gone to pains to restrict journalists’ access to the bombed cities, and his military censors were sanitizing and even killing dispatches that described the horror. The official narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation. Reporters whose dispatches convicted with this version of events found themselves silenced: George Weller of the Chicago Daily News slipped into Nagasaki and wrote a 25,000-word story on the nightmare that he found there. Then he made a crucial error: He submitted the piece to military censors. His newspaper never even received his story. As Weller later summarized his experience with MacArthur’s censors, “They won.”

    U.S. authorities responded in time-honored fashion to Burchett’s revelations: They attacked the messenger. General MacArthur ordered him expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in the hospital. U.S. officials accused Burchett of being influenced by Japanese propaganda. They scoffed at the notion of an atomic sickness. The U.S. military issued a press release right after the Hiroshima bombing that downplayed human casualties, instead emphasizing that the bombed area was the site of valuable industrial and military targets.

    Four days after Burchett’s story splashed across front pages around the world, Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, invited a select group of thirty reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among this group was William L. Laurence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times. Groves took the reporters to the site of the first atomic test. His intent was to demonstrate that no atomic radiation lingered at the site. Groves trusted Laurence to convey the military’s line; the general was not disappointed.

    Laurence’s front-page story, U.S. ATOM BOMB SITE BELIES TOKYO TALES: TESTS ON NEW MEXICO RANGE CONFIRM THAT BLAST, AND NOT RADIATION, TOOK TOLL, ran on September 12, 1945, following a three-day delay to clear military censors. “This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations [sic] were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity,” the article began.3 Laurence said unapologetically that the Army tour was intended “to give the lie to these claims.”

    Laurence quoted General Groves: “The Japanese claim that people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was very small.”

    Laurence then went on to offer his own remarkable editorial on what happened: “The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms . . . Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.”

    But Laurence knew better. He had observed the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, and he withheld what he knew about radioactive fallout across the southwestern desert that poisoned local residents and livestock. He kept mum about the spiking Geiger counters all around the test site.

    William L. Laurence went on to write a series of ten articles for the Times that served as a glowing tribute to the ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear program. Throughout these and other reports, he downplayed and denied the human impact of the bombing. Laurence won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

    It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

    Laurence eagerly accepted the offer, “his scientific curiosity and patriotic zeal perhaps blinding him to the notion that he was at the same time compromising his journalistic independence,” as essayist Harold Evans wrote in a history of war reporting. Evans recounted: “After the bombing, the brilliant but bullying Groves continually suppressed or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports of Japanese deaths as ‘hoax or propaganda.’ The Times’ Laurence weighed in, too, after Burchett’s reports, and parroted the government line.” Indeed, numerous press releases issued by the military after the Hiroshima bombing-which in the absence of eyewitness accounts were often reproduced verbatim by U.S. newspapers-were written by none other than Laurence.

    “Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release for worldwide distribution,” boasted Laurence in his memoirs, Dawn Over Zero. “No greater honor could have come to any newspaperman, or anyone else for that matter.”

    “Atomic Bill” Laurence revered atomic weapons. He had been crusading for an American nuclear program in articles as far back as 1929. His dual status as government agent and reporter earned him an unprecedented level of access to American military officials-he even flew in the squadron of planes that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. His reports on the atomic bomb and its use had a hagiographic tone, laced with descriptions that conveyed almost religious awe.

    In Laurence’s article about the bombing of Nagasaki (it was withheld by military censors until a month after the bombing), he described the detonation over Nagasaki that incinerated 100,000 people. Laurence waxed: “Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. . . . It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.”

    Laurence later recounted his impressions of the atomic bomb: “Being close to it and watching it as it was being fashioned into a living thing, so exquisitely shaped that any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one . . . felt oneself in the presence of the supranatural.”

    Laurence was good at keeping his master’s secrets-from suppressing the reports of deadly radioactivity in New Mexico to denying them in Japan. The Times was also good at keeping secrets, only revealing Laurence’s dual status as government spokesman and reporter on August 7, the day after the Hiroshima bombing-and four months after Laurence began working for the Pentagon. As Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell wrote in their excellent book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, “Here was the nation’s leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time.”

    Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

    A curious twist to this story concerns another New York Times journalist who reported on Hiroshima; his name, believe it or not, was William Lawrence (his byline was W.H. Lawrence). He has long been confused with William L. Laurence. (Even Wilfred Burchett confuses the two men in his memoirs and his 1983 book, Shadows of Hiroshima.) Unlike the War Department’s Pulitzer Prize winner, W.H. Lawrence visited and reported on Hiroshima on the same day as Burchett. (William L. Laurence, after flying in the squadron of planes that bombed Nagasaki, was subsequently called back to the United States by the Times and did not visit the bombed cities.)

    W.H. Lawrence’s original dispatch from Hiroshima was published on September 5, 1945. He reported matter-of-factly about the deadly effects of radiation, and wrote that Japanese doctors worried that “all who had been in Hiroshima that day would die as a result of the bomb’s lingering effects.” He described how “persons who had been only slightly injured on the day of the blast lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles, developed temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, their hair began to drop out, they lost their appetites, vomited blood and finally died.”

    Oddly enough, W.H. Lawrence contradicted himself one week later in an article headlined NO RADIOACTIVITY IN HIROSHIMA RUIN. For this article, the Pentagon’s spin machine had swung into high gear in response to Burchett’s horrifying account of “atomic plague.” W.H. Lawrence reported that Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, chief of the War Department’s atomic bomb mission to Hiroshima, “denied categorically that [the bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” Lawrence’s dispatch quotes only Farrell; the reporter never mentions his eyewitness account of people dying from radiation sickness that he wrote the previous week.

    The conflicting accounts of Wilfred Burchett and William L. Laurence might be ancient history were it not for a modern twist. On October 23, 2003, The New York Times published an article about a controversy over a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to Times reporter Walter Duranty. A former correspondent in the Soviet Union, Duranty had denied the existence of a famine that had killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. The Pulitzer Board had launched two inquiries to consider stripping Duranty of his prize. The Times “regretted the lapses” of its reporter and had published a signed editorial saying that Duranty’s work was “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” Current Times executive editor Bill Keller decried Duranty’s “credulous, uncritical parroting of propaganda.”

    On November 21, 2003, the Pulitzer Board decided against rescinding Duranty’s award, concluding that there was “no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in the articles that won the prize.

    As an apologist for Joseph Stalin, Duranty is easy pickings. What about the “deliberate deception” of William L. Laurence in denying the lethal effects of radioactivity? And what of the fact that the Pulitzer Board knowingly awarded the top journalism prize to the Pentagon’s paid publicist, who denied the suffering of millions of Japanese? Do the Pulitzer Board and the Times approve of “uncritical parroting of propaganda”-as long as it is from the United States?

    It is long overdue that the prize for Hiroshima’s apologist be stripped.

    Amy Goodman is host of the national radio and TV show “Democracy Now!.” This is an excerpt from her new national bestselling book The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them , written with her brother journalist David, exposes the reporting of Times correspondent William L. Laurence

    Democracy Now! is a national radio and TV program, broadcast on more than 240 stations.

    Originally published by CommonDreams.org

  • Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    How many people in the world now remember that fateful day? At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, fifty-nine years ago, the city of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins by a single atomic bomb dropped from an American warplane, killing some 74,000 people and wounding 75,000. Today, Nagasaki ‘s verdant cityscape attracts visitors from around the world, and its residents maintain a distinctive set of traditions and culture. Nevertheless, the city’s increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to suffer from the after-effects of the bombing as well as from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We the citizens of Nagasaki call upon the world with a renewed sense of urgency, even as we reflect upon the intense suffering of those who have already perished.

    We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago. The International Court of Justice has clearly stated in an advisory opinion that the threat of nuclear weapons or their use is generally contrary to international law. Notwithstanding, the US government continues to possess and maintain approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, and is conducting an ongoing program of subcritical nuclear testing. In addition, the so-called mini nuclear weapons that are the subject of new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of force. In terms of the radioactivity that such weapons would release, there would be no difference compared to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki . So long as the world’s leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed. People of America : The path leading to the eventual survival of the human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The time has come to join hands and embark upon this path.

    We call upon the peoples of the world to recognize how scant is the value repeatedly being placed on human life, evidenced by events such as the war in Iraq and outbreaks of terrorism. Wisdom must prevail, and we must join together in enhancing and reinforcing the functions of the United Nations in order to resolve international conflicts, not by military force, but through concerted diplomatic efforts. Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, coinciding with the 2005 NPT Review Conference to be held at UN headquarters. With the approach of the coming year, let there be a convergence among the citizens of the world, NGOs, and all concerned parties who desire peace, so that the way may be opened for the elimination of those symbols of inhumanity known as nuclear weapons.

    We call upon the government of Japan to safeguard the peaceful underpinnings of its constitution, and, as the only nation ever to have experienced nuclear attack, to enact into law the threefold non-nuclear principle. The combination of the threefold non-nuclear principle with nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula will pave the road towards the creation of a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone. At the same time, the specifics of the Pyongyang Declaration must be agreed upon, while Japan itself must also pursue an independent security stance that does not rely on nuclear arms.

    We call upon the world’s youth to study the reality of the atomic bombings and to internalize a sense of respect for life, as our young people are doing in Nagasaki . The enthusiasm and hope manifested by youth who have considered the requirements of peace and are acting accordingly will serve to enlighten an increasingly confused world. Individuals who arise to take action close at hand can and will foster the realization of world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    We in Nagasaki will continue to share our experiences of the atomic bombing of our city, and will work to make Nagasaki a center for peace studies and peace promotion. It is our hope that we will thus be able to form bonds of friendship and solidarity with people throughout the world.

    Today, on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we pray for the repose of those who died and recall to mind their suffering, we the citizens of Nagasaki pledge our commitment to the realization of true peace in the world, free from nuclear weapons.

  • US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament

    US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament

    “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil,
    but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

    – Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was one of the wisest and most far-seeing men who has walked the Earth. He looked further into the mysteries of the universe than any scientist of his time or any time. Tragically, it was the vision of this humane man that opened the door to atomic weapons. Even more tragically, it was Einstein, concerned about the possibility of a German atomic weapon, who encouraged President Roosevelt to establish the US atomic bomb project, leading to the creation of nuclear weapons and their use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the United States has been the world’s leading nuclear weapons power, a role it has strived diligently to maintain. The US created the world’s first nuclear weapons during World War II in its top-secret Manhattan Project, ostensibly for the purpose of deterring a German atomic bomb should the Germans have succeeded in developing one. In late 1944, when he understood that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic weapon, Joseph Rotblat, a Polish émigré working on the Manhattan Project, resigned out of deep concern for the implications of the project. In 1995, he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his continuing efforts for nuclear disarmament.

    At the time that the atomic bomb was first tested on July 16, 1945 , the war in Europe had already ended with the surrender of Germany in May of that year, so there was no longer a need to deter the Germans. The war in the Pacific continued, however, and the US chose to use its new weapons within a matter of weeks on the Japan ese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . It chose these two cities, which had been largely spared until that point the US carpet bombing of other Japan ese cities, to test the destructive power of first an enriched uranium bomb, Little Boy , and then a plutonium bomb, Fat Man.

    In using nuclear weapons, the US ignored the heroic efforts of Leo Szilard, a Hungarian émigré and atomic scientist who had earlier played a key role in the development of the first atomic weapons. It was Szilard who actually first conceptualized the possibility of a controlled fission reaction that could lead to the creation of a nuclear weapon. In 1939, worried about the possibility of the Germans developing an atomic weapon, Szilard went to Einstein and convinced him to send a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, urging that the US develop a nuclear weapons program to deter a possible German bomb. Szilard then worked in the Manhattan Project with Enrico Fermi on the first experimental test of a controlled fission reaction, proving the bomb was possible.

    When it became clear in spring 1945 that the US would succeed in making an atomic weapon and that the Germans would not, Szilard applied his abundant energy to trying to stop the US from using the bombs on Japan ese cities. Szilard believed that using the bombs on Japan would lead to a nuclear arms race that could result in a terrible destructive force being unleashed on civilization. Through Eleanor Roosevelt he arranged to meet with President Roosevelt, but Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 , just prior to their scheduled meeting. Szilard then sought to arrange a meeting with President Truman, but was sent to see Jimmy Byrnes, a Truman mentor in the Senate who would soon be appointed Secretary of State. Byrnes essentially dismissed Szilard as a foreigner. Finally, Szilard organized a petition among Manhattan Project scientists, urging that the bomb be demonstrated to the Japan ese rather than used on cities. The petition, signed by some 70 scientists, was stalled by General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Truman before the bomb was used, although it is unlikely that it would have made a difference to Truman had it reached him.

    Byrnes, who accompanied Truman to Potsdam , is believed to have encouraged the use of the bomb for partisan political reasons. He is said to have advised Truman that if Americans discovered how much had been spent on creating the first atomic bombs and was thus diverted from the war effort (approximately $2 billion), they would vote against the Democrats if the bomb were not used as soon as it was ready. Others have argued that the bomb was used on Japan to send a warning to the Soviet Union .

    The official justification for the use of the atomic bombs on Japan was to end the war quickly and save American lives that would otherwise be lost in an invasion of Japan planned for November 1945. Since Japan was already largely defeated and elements of the Japan ese cabinet were seeking favorable terms of surrender, there is now considerable debate among historians about whether the use of the bombs was actually necessary to end the war. The picture is certainly much more complex than the prevalent American mythology, which suggests that the US dropped the bombs and as a result won the war. This mythology paints nuclear weapons as war-winning weapons and therefore useful and positive.

    Perspectives on the Bombings

    It is instructive to look at how the bombing of Hiroshima , the first use of a nuclear weapon on a city, was viewed in its immediate aftermath. Here are the views of four prominent individuals on August 8 and 9, 1945:

    French writer Albert Camus: “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.”

    Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt: “The only safe counter weapon to this new power is the firm decision of mankind that it shall be used for constructive purposes only. This discovery must spell the end of war. We have been paying an ever-increasing price for indulging ourselves in this uncivilized way of settling our difficulties. We can no longer indulge in the slaughter of our young men. The price will be too high and will be paid not just by young men, but by whole populations. In the past we have given lip service to the desire for peace. Now we must meet the test of really working to achieve something basically new in the world.”

    Former President Herbert Hoover: “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

    A day later, on August 9 th , President Truman invoked God with regard to the use of the bomb: “We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force – to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” (Since the two bombs used on Japan ese cities caused the immediate deaths of some 135,000 people by blast, fire and incineration, and the deaths of over 200,000 people by the end of 1945, God must at the very least have been rather surprised by Mr. Truman’s prayer to use nuclear weapons “in His ways for His purposes.”)

    Reflecting a few years later on the use of the atomic weapons by the US , the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi said, “What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner.” Gandhi’s insight is unusually profound. What effect has the bomb had on the soul of America ? Perhaps we are learning about this as we watch the great dream of America becoming increasingly stuck in the tar of militarism and warfare on distant shores.

    US Nuclear Policy

    Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , the US began an arms race with itself, testing and developing its nuclear arsenal. From 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, until 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, the US had a partner in the nuclear arms race and a justification to continue to develop its nuclear arsenal.

    The US has always sought to maintain a devastating nuclear deterrent force, a force that would provide it with political advantage. In order to make its deterrent force credible, the US has sought to demonstrate its willingness to use its nuclear arsenal should it be attacked. Certainly its use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has contributed to a general belief that the US would not be inhibited by the costs in human lives from a retaliatory nuclear response.

    The US has also been willing to share nuclear technology with its close allies. This applies particularly to the UK, but also to other NATO allies on whose territories the US has maintained nuclear weapons, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and, until recently, Greece. The US has also extended its nuclear “umbrella” to its allies in Europe , Asia and the Pacific.

    With some notable exceptions, such as Israel , the US has always sought to prevent the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, but has felt free to engage in vertical proliferation by increasing the size and improving the quality of its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems for the arsenal. In doing so, the US has consistently demonstrated a double standard in asking other countries to abstain from doing what it was not willing to abstain from itself.

    In its policies toward arms control and disarmament, the US has always sought measures that benefited its security, while not reducing US nuclear superiority. In recent years, however, under the Bush administration, the US has shown far less regard than in the past for nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties.

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union partnered on occasion in an attempt to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries. This resulted in the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This Treaty divided the countries of the world into nuclear weapons states (US, UK , USSR , France and China ) and non-nuclear weapons states (all the rest). The non-nuclear weapons states agreed not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states agreed in Article IV of the Treaty to provide technical assistance to the non-nuclear weapons states in the peaceful uses of the atom, going so far as to call the peaceful uses of atomic energy “an inalienable right.” The nuclear weapons states also promised, in Article VI of the Treaty, to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and to hold good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. When the Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995, the nuclear weapons states agreed to “determined pursuit.of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons..” In 1996, the International Court of Justice interpreted Article VI of the NPT to mean: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    At the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties to the treaty agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

    The Greatest Danger Confronting Humanity

    Let us fast forward to today. Countering terrorism is high on the agendas of the world’s most industrialized countries, especially the US . But in the eyes of most of the world, the nuclear weapons states are employing the greatest of terrorist threats, which are embedded in the concept of nuclear deterrence. If terrorism is the threat to injure or kill innocent people for political ends, then the reliance on nuclear deterrence is itself a terrorist act.

    I would argue, in the company of Einstein, Rotblat and Szilard, that there is no greater danger confronting humanity than that of nuclear weapons. These weapons place all cities in jeopardy of annihilation. They place civilization in danger of massive destruction. And they place humanity and most of life on the endangered species list. For nearly sixty years humankind has lived with the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and has grown far too comfortable with these instruments of annihilation.

    The US remains the most powerful country in the world, militarily and economically. It is the country that holds the key to nuclear disarmament. Without the active leadership of the US , nuclear disarmament will not be possible, and the world will continue to drift toward the use of these weapons once again. No other country has the capacity to bring the other nuclear weapons states to the table to negotiate the elimination of nuclear arms.

    Nuclear dangers have not disappeared. Should terrorist groups, in the more traditional sense of the term, obtain nuclear weapons, they cannot be effectively deterred from using them. Protecting populations from nuclear attack will require a high level of international cooperation and US leadership. Current US leadership, however, is alienating the international community and its double standards are viewed as nuclear hypocrisy. Without a radical change of course in US nuclear policy, the likelihood of terrorist groups obtaining and using nuclear weapons is an increasingly likely possibility.

    The US Nuclear Posture Review

    Current US nuclear weapons policy is set forth in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), submitted to Congress on December 31, 2001 . This document calls for a “New Triad.” During the Cold War, the US referred to a triad of strategic delivery vehicles for its nuclear forces: inter-continental ballistic missiles; submarine launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. The New Triad is composed of offensive strike systems, nuclear and non-nuclear (including the three delivery systems of the old triad); defenses, active and passive (including missile defense systems); and a revitalized defense infrastructure to meet emerging threats. One interesting aspect of the New Triad is that it will supplement nuclear strike forces with conventional strike forces delivered anywhere in the world in 30 minutes by intercontinental missiles.

    Despite calling for powerful non-nuclear forces to be added to the US arsenal, the Nuclear Posture Review boldly announces, in what may be considered a taunt to the rest of the world in terms of US obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that nuclear weapons provide the US with “credible military options”: “Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies and friends. They provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and large-scale conventional force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives.” In other words, the Nuclear Posture Review informs the world that nuclear weapons are useful to the United States both strategically and politically. Nearly 60 years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and some 15 years after the breakup of the former Soviet Union , the US still finds that nuclear weapons serve strategic and political goals. To further these goals, the US has been developing earth penetrating nuclear weapons (“bunker busters”) and low-yield nuclear weapons (mini-nukes”), one-third the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. While announcing to the world its intent to continue to rely upon its nuclear arsenal, the US has been unabashed in demanding that other countries – including Iraq , Iran , North Korea , Libya and Syria – refrain from following its example.

    The Nuclear Posture Review recognizes the lack of an effective earth penetrating nuclear device as a shortcoming of the current US nuclear arsenal, citing the fact that “more than 70 countries use underground Facilities (UGFs) for military purposes.” The report states, “New capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply buried targets..” The Bush administration is seeking $28 million in 2005 and $485 million over five years to design this new weapon.

    The Nuclear Posture Review also states, “The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will: .be able, if directed, to design, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements; and maintain readiness to resume underground nuclear testing if required.” It further states that options exist “that might provide important advantages for enhancing the nation’s deterrence posture.” The NPR calls for creating “advanced warhead concepts teams” that “will provide unique opportunities to train our next generation of weapon designers and engineers.” Overall, the Bush administration is seeking $6.6 billion for nuclear weapons activities in 2005, fifty percent more than the average annual expenditure for these activities during the Cold War.

    Such goals and plans demonstrate little promise of US leadership for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The US cannot have it both ways, depending on nuclear weapons for security and planning to build more, on the one hand; and, on the other, providing leadership to the rest of the world for the elimination of these weapons.

    The overall sense of the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is that it is a long-term commitment to nuclear weapons at a time when the US is seeking to prevent these weapons from proliferating to other countries and terrorist organizations. Such a double standard cannot hold.

    Presidential Directive 17 and the National Security Strategy of the US

    In September 2002, one year after the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, President Bush signed Presidential Directive 17, a classified document, which states: “The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force – including potentially nuclear weapons-to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”

    Also in September 2002, the White House issued a document entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America .” In a letter accompanying this document, President Bush wrote, “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination.. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” This is a commitment to preventive war, the kind that the US would subsequently wage, under false pretenses, against Iraq in March 2003. The National Security Strategy document states, “While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country..” When combined with Presidential Directive 17, this raises the possibility of preemptive or preventive nuclear war.

    The National Security Strategy document reaffirms “the essential role of American military strength” by calling for building and maintaining “our defenses beyond challenge.” Expressing the understanding that “deterrence can fail,” the document stresses the need for US military dominance: “The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy – whether a state or non-state actor – to impose its will on the United States , or allies, or our friends.” The latter category of US friends has unfortunately become a diminishing species in response to the bellicose words and actions of the Bush administration.

    Finally, the National Security Strategy document supports a special status in the world for American leaders by freeing them from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, a court supported by nearly all US allies. The document states: “We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.” In other words, the US will not allow the same standards of international law to be applied to US leaders as were applied to the defeated Axis powers at Nuremberg and as are accepted by our allies today. 

    Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    In March 2004, the Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy issued a joint report, entitled “An Assessment of the Impact of Repeal of the Prohibition on Low Yield Warhead Development on the Ability of the United States to Achieve Its Nonproliferation Objectives.” After reviewing Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the article that calls for nuclear disarmament and an end to the nuclear arms race, the report found, “Nothing in the NPT, including Article VI, or any other Treaty, however, prohibits the United States from carrying out nuclear weapons exploratory research or, for that matter, from developing and fielding new or modified nuclear warheads. That said, we should, of course, expect that several countries, in particular, those from the non-aligned movement, perhaps citing inaccurate or misleading press reports, will call attention to certain U.S. nuclear weapons R&D efforts.in questioning the U.S. nuclear policies and will be disappointed that more progress has not been achieved toward nuclear disarmament.”

    The report then continues with a flourish of rhetoric about the US commitment to its Article VI nuclear disarmament commitments, leaving the impression that its “strong record of actions and policies.demonstrate unambiguously U.S. compliance with Article VI..” Unfortunately, most analysts not in the pay of the US government reject this rosy, some would say hypocritical, view of US commitment to its NPT Article VI obligations. They point to the failure of the US to comply with nearly all of the obligations set forth in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. The US , for example, has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and has made no provisions for the irreversibility of reductions in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) that it pressed upon Russia .

    When Undersecretary of State for International Security John Bolton spoke to the delegates of the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, he described the “central bargain” of the NPT as the renunciation of nuclear weapons in exchange for assistance in developing civilian nuclear power. He left out of the equation the expectation of the non-nuclear weapons states that the nuclear weapons states would fulfill their Article VI obligations for nuclear disarmament. While pointing a finger at Iran and North Korea , he dismissed the possibility of US Article VI obligations, stating, “We cannot divert attention from the violations we face by focusing on Article VI issues that do not exist.”

    Positions of Bush and Kerry

    Under the Bush administration, the US has projected its reliance on nuclear weapons far into the future, and there has been virtually no willingness on the part of the US to comply with obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or other major international arms control and disarmament treaties. Would a Kerry presidency be substantially different? In a major policy speech on nuclear terrorism on June1, 2004, Kerry pledged to make the fight against nuclear terrorism his top security priority. While Bush has also taken steps to prevent nuclear proliferation and keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, Kerry distinguished his position from Bush’s by pledging to end the double standard of calling on others not to develop nuclear weapons while the US moves forward with research on new nuclear weapons, such as “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes.” Kerry also pledged to gain control of the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union at a far more rapid rate than that contemplated by the Bush Administration, and Kerry promised to appoint a Nuclear Terrorism Coordinator to work with him in the White House in overseeing this effort. Finally, Kerry called for taking prompt action on a verifiable ban on the creation of new fissile materials for nuclear weapons, a step long supported by the international community and nearly all US allies, but not acted upon by the US .

    Both Bush and Kerry have called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but only in relation to preventing nuclear materials from civilian nuclear reactors from being converted to nuclear weapons. Neither of them has set forth a plan to fulfill US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Treaty. Thus, both of them are prepared to commit to the Treaty to prevent others from obtaining nuclear weapons, but not to fulfilling the long-standing obligations of the US for nuclear disarmament. While Kerry’s positions on nuclear policy issues are certainly preferable to those of Bush, if only for Kerry’s support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and of international law in general, they are neither bold nor innovative; they simply are not as damaging as those of the Bush administration.

    We cannot count on US nuclear policies to change significantly on the basis of US political leadership. The only real hope to bring about needed changes in US nuclear policy is by pressure applied by US citizens and foreign governments. I will briefly discuss three efforts to influence US nuclear policy.

    Nuclear Disarmament Campaigns

    Turn the Tide. At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are initiating a campaign to chart a new course in US nuclear policy that we call Turn the Tide. It is an Internet-based campaign that seeks to awaken US citizens to the need to change US nuclear policy and spur them to communicate with their Congressional representatives and candidates, as well as the president and presidential candidates, and to cast their ballots based on positions on nuclear disarmament issues. The campaign is based on the following call to action:

    1. Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
    2. Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    3. Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
    4. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
    5. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
    6. Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems which would ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
    7. In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia , take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
    8. Together with Russia , implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
    9. Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
    10. To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
    11. Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
    12. Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services.

    Middle Powers Initiative . The Middle Powers Initiative is a coalition of eight international civil society organizations working in the area of nuclear disarmament that supports and encourages middle power governments, such as those middle power states calling for a New Agenda that have worked together in the United Nations for nuclear disarmament (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden). The New Agenda Coalition governments took a leadership role in achieving agreement of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. With support from the Middle Powers Initiative, the New Agenda states have continued to press the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Article VI obligations.

    Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons . This is an important new initiative that calls for beginning negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons by the year 2005, completing negotiations by the year 2010, and completing the process of eliminating nuclear weapons by the year 2020. Mayors for Peace is a global organization composed of some 600 mayors from cities throughout the world. The organization is led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , who played an active role in the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 NPT Review Conference. They are planning to have more than 100 mayors from around the world at the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    There is much that needs to be done, and many good people are engaged in these efforts. However, still more is needed, and considerably more effort must be put forward by the American people. It is not clear whether this can be achieved. Americans for the most part seem too complacent, too comfortable with the power of their government, and too deferent to their government. They have not acted to curb its abuses, either with respect to nuclear weapons or to illegal wars of aggression such as the Iraq War.

    Silence in the Face of Evil

    Gandhi mused about what would happen to the soul of the destroying power after the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima . His inquiry remains relevant. What has happened to the soul of America , a country that once held such great hope for the world? Its leaders have followed the path of illegal and aggressive warfare, killing far more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq than died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . Its young soldiers have become torturers, and their photographs with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib reflect no sense of shame or even self-consciousness about the degradation and torture of the prisoners whom they were to guard and interrogate. And US citizens have been remarkably silent in the face of leaders who have led by fear and instigated aggressive foreign wars.

    The American people have been docile and reticent to react to atrocities committed in their names. Their greatest sin may be silence in the face of the misuse and misdirection of US military might, and this may be a sin that has taken hold of the soul of America .

    The survivors of the atomic bombings are called hibakusha in Japan ese. They were nearly all innocent civilians. Many have lived sad and painful lives following the bombings. Their cry has been “Never again! We will not repeat the evil.” They have summoned the courage to speak out and convey their experiences in the hope that they can prevent future nuclear attacks and future hibakusha . I will conclude with a poem I wrote about hibakusha and silence. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen.

    Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen

    For every hibakusha
    there is a pilot

    for every hibakusha
    there is a planner

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bombardier

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bomb designer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missile maker

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missileer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a targeter

    for every hibakusha
    there is a commander

    for every hibakusha
    there is a button pusher

    for every hibakusha
    many must contribute

    for every hibakusha
    many must obey

    for every hibakusha
    many must be silent

    The use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations has been described appropriately by the former president of the International Court of Justice, Mohammed Bedjaoui, as “the ultimate evil.” General George Lee Butler, a former commander of the US Strategic Command, described nuclear weapons as “the enemy of humanity.” “Indeed,” he said, “they’re not weapons at all. They’re some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.”

    It is silence in the face of evil that allows evil to flourish. I fear this is the case in America today. There is no widespread uprising in the US for nuclear sanity and the elimination of these weapons. As a result, the nuclear threat will likely continue and the result may well be the creation of more hibakusha. This time Americans may learn the deeply painful lesson of being under, rather than above, the bomb. It is my hope that Americans will use both their imaginations and their consciences, and awaken to the serious danger that nuclear weapons pose for all humanity, including themselves, before it is too late, and will lead the world in prevailing in the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity, that of ridding the world of this ultimate evil. It is a far more difficult task than putting a man on the moon, and the first and most important step is breaking the silence that has allowed this evil to go unchallenged. This is surely necessary not only for the future of humanity, but also for the soul of America.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org ). He is the co-author of Nuclear Weapons and the World Court and many other studies of peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • Peace Declarations From Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    Peace Declarations From Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the two most important places in the world where memory is preserved about what nuclear weapons do to people and to cities. Each year on August 6th and 9th respectively, the anniversaries of the bombings, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deliver the Peace Declarations for their cities. These statements provide a pulse of the status of efforts to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life.

    On the 57th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba lamented that the painful experience of those who survived the bombings “appears to be fading from the collective memory of humankind,” and that consequently “the probability that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing.”

    Mayor Akiba noted that the “path of reconciliation…has been abandoned.” He called for “conscientious exploration and understanding of the past.” To achieve this end, he called for establishing a “Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Course in colleges and universities around the world,” and indicated that plans for this are already in progress. He also urged President Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to “confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store for us all.” Thus far, no American president has visited either city.

    Mayor Akiba called upon the government of Japan “to reject nuclear weapons absolutely and to renounce war.” The Japanese government, he said, “has a responsibility to convey the memories, voices, and prayers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki throughout the world, especially to the United States, and for the sake of tomorrow’s children, to prevent war.”

    Mayor Iccho Itoh of Nagasaki condemned the United States for its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; its rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; and its plans to move forward with missile defenses, to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, and to use preemptive nuclear strikes. “We are appalled,” he said, “by this series of unilateral actions taken by the government of the United States, actions which are also being condemned by people of sound judgment throughout the world.”

    Mayor Itoh called for the government of Japan to confirm in law the three non-nuclear principles that have guided Japan (that it will not possess, manufacture or allow nuclear weapons into the country). He also called for the Japanese government to help create a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, to cease its reliance on the US “nuclear umbrella,” and “to enhance the welfare of aging atomic bomb survivors residing both within and outside Japan.”

    Mayor Itoh announced that the City of Nagasaki would be hosting in 2003 a second worldwide gathering of civil society organizations to add impetus to efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. The City of Nagasaki, he said, will also be reaching out to youth by promoting the Nagasaki Peace Education Program.

    “The abolition of nuclear arms through mutual understanding and dialogue,” said Mayor Itoh, “is an absolute precondition for the realization of a peaceful world. It is up to us, ordinary citizens, to rise up and lead the world to peace.”

    Ordinary citizens of the United States must soon come to understand the critical message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being conveyed by the mayors of these cities on behalf of those who perished and those who survived the atomic bombings. Without such understanding, and with such enormous power left in the hands of men like George W. Bush and many of his advisors shaping nuclear policy, the world moves closer to the day when more cities will share the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Message to the People of the United States

    We are deeply shocked and saddened by the horrible terrorist attacks that took place in your country on September 11. We send our deepest sympathy to all who have suffered and victimized and to their family members, by the unforgivable attacks.

    As citizens of Nagasaki who experienced the horror of WWII, especially the atomic bombing for the first time in human history, we have strongly rejected all kinds of violence, including terrorism, as a means to settling disputes. The terrorists’ use of commercial aircrafts boarded with innocent civilians as their weapons is the worst kind of act imaginable and has showed us how cruel violence can be. We believe that violence cannot be justified no matter what form it may take.

    Our heart is with you in your grief and we join you in your efforts for seeking a resolution through thorough and reasonable investigation on the matter, without hasty recourse to retaliatory military actions, which should draw world public support.

  • A Victory for All Humanity

    We are gathered for this Citizens’ Assembly to re-commit ourselves to assuring that no other city will ever again suffer the terrible nuclear devastation experienced by Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is time to build on the important work already done by the hibakusha, by Abolition 2000 and others, to create a full-fledged global campaign to eliminate all nuclear weapons from Earth.

    We are gathered here because the future matters.

    Nuclear weapons are powerful, but not as powerful as human beings. Nuclear weapons can only defeat us if we allow them to do so.

    Nuclear weapons have the power to create the final unalterable silence, but only if humanity is silent in the face of their threat.

    Nuclear weapons have the power to destroy us, but also to unite us.

    We must choose how we will use and control the technological possibilities we have created. We can choose to continue to place most of life, including the human species, at risk of annihilation, or we can choose the path of eliminating nuclear weapons and working for true human security. It is clear that nuclear weapons pose a species-wide threat to us that demands a species-wide response.

    Nuclear weapons are not really weapons. They are devices of unimaginable destruction that draw no boundaries between soldiers and civilians, men and women, the old and the young. The stories of the hibakusha attest to this. Nuclear weapons have no true military purpose since their use would cause utter devastation. We know the hell on Earth they created at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite this knowledge, some countries continue to rely upon these weapons for what they call national security.

    If terrorism is the threat to injure or kill the innocent, then nuclear weapons are the ultimate instruments of terrorism. They are held on constant alert, ready to destroy whole cities, whole populations. They are corrupting by their very presence in a society. They contribute to a culture of secrecy, while undermining democracy, respect for life, human dignity, and even our human spirits.

    Nuclear weapons should awaken our survival instincts and arouse our human spirits to resistance.

    The survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the hibakusha, have persistently reminded us that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist indefinitely. The relationship is bound to end in future tragedies, if for no other reason than that we humans are fallible creatures and cannot indefinitely maintain infallible systems.

    We must have a global movement that joins with the hibakusha and builds upon their efforts to save the world from future Nagasakis and Hiroshimas. In doing so, we will save our human spirits as well. Nuclear weapons should awaken our survival instincts and arouse the human spirit to resistance.

    As we approach our task of seeking to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the arsenals of all countries, we must remember that there is no legitimate authority vested in governments to place the future of humanity and other forms of life at risk of obliteration. The authority of governments comes only from their people. Governments lose their authority when they become destructive of basic rights, including the rights to life, liberty and security of person as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Peace is not the province of governments. It is the province of the people. It is a responsibility that rests upon our shoulders. If we turn over the responsibility for peace to the governments of the world, we will always have war. I am convinced that the people know far more about achieving and maintaining peace and human dignity than the so-called experts – political, military or academic – will ever know.

    As far back as 1968, when the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed by the US, UK and Soviet Union, these states promised good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Although this treaty entered into force in 1970, the nuclear weapons states made virtually no efforts to act on this obligation. Twenty-five years later at the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995, the nuclear weapons states again promised the “determined pursuit…of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons….” Five years later at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the nuclear weapons states again promised an “unequivocal undertaking … to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”

    So far, all they have done is play with words and promises. They have shown no sincerity in keeping their promises or fulfilling their obligations. If we wait for the governments of the nuclear weapons states to act in good faith, we may well experience future Nagasakis and Hiroshimas. The abolition of nuclear weapons cannot wait for governments to act in good faith. The people must act, and they must do so as if their very lives depend on it — because they do.

    We are not only citizens of the country where we reside; we are also citizens of the world. Citizenship implies responsibilities. We each have responsibilities to our families, our communities and to our world community.

    As we enter the 21st century, we must accept our responsibilities as citizens of the world. I offer you this Earth Citizen Pledge: “I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to its varied life forms; one world, indivisible, with liberty, justice and dignity for all.” This pledge moves national loyalty to a higher level – to the Earth – and incorporates the principle aim of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all persons deserve to be treated with dignity.

    The organization I lead, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, is committed to waging peace. We believe in a proactive approach to peace. Peace must be waged, that is, pursued vigorously. Peace does not just happen to us. We must make it happen. We must build effective global institutions of peace such as an International Criminal Court and we must strengthen existing institutions such as the United Nations and its International Court of Justice so that they can better fulfill their mandates. We cannot turn decisions on war and peace over to national governments. This is what led to World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and countless others. It is what led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The primary goal of our Foundation is the same goal that motivates the hibakusha of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is the goal of abolishing all nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. It is, in my opinion, the most important responsibility of our time. It is a responsibility that should dominate the human agenda until it is realized.

    Our Foundation is a founding member of the Abolition 2000 Global Network and has served in recent years as its international contact. The Network has now grown to more than 2000 organizations and municipalities in 95 countries. It is one of the world’s largest civil society networks. It connects abolitionists across the globe. Its principle aim is to achieve a treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Developing a strategy to achieve this goal is the Network’s most important task.

    The time is overdue for an effective global campaign aimed at dramatically changing the policies of the nuclear weapons states. In the words of Jonathan Schell, we have been given “The Gift of Time.” But time is running out. General Lee Butler has pointed out that we have been given a Second Chance by a gracious Creator, but there may not be a third chance.

    We need to focus our attention on a global campaign to awaken a dormant humanity. I would propose that this campaign must include the following elements:

    First, we need clear simple messages that can reach people’s hearts and move them to action. Examples might include: Destroy the bomb, not the children. End the nuclear threat to humanity. No security in weapons of mass murder. Sunflowers instead of missiles. A nuclear war can have no winners. Nuclear war, humanity loses.

    Second, these messages must be spread by word of mouth and by all forms of media, particularly the Internet. Basic information on the need for abolition and ideas for what a person can do may be found at wagingpeace.org.

    Third, we must have an easily recognizable symbol to accompany the messages. We already have this, the Sunflower. We must make better use of it. Sunflowers should be sent regularly to all leaders of nuclear weapons states, along with substantive messages calling for abolition.

    Fourth, we must enlist major public figures to help us spread the messages. We must use public service announcements as well as paid advertisements. We have already succeeded in having many leading world figures sign an Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. This Appeal states clearly that “nuclear weapons are morally and legally unjustifiable,” and calls for de-alerting all nuclear weapons and for “good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons….” Signers include Mayor Itoh of Nagasaki and Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima, former US President Jimmy Carter, Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Muhammad Ali, Barbra Streisand, and 36 Nobel Laureates, including 14 Nobel Peace Laureates.

    Fifth, we must target certain key groups in society: youth groups, women’s groups, and religious groups. We must work especially to motivate youth to become active in assuring their future; to inform women’s groups of the threat nuclear policies pose to their families; and to alert religious groups to the moral imperative of nuclear weapons abolition.

    Sixth, we must provide an action plan to these groups. Each group, for example, could select key decision makers at the local level (a member of Congress or parliamentarian) and at the national level or international level (President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, etc.). The group would be charged with sending monthly letters and sunflowers to their key decision makers, particularly US decision makers, trying to persuade that individual to take more effective action for nuclear abolition. This would, of course, be a worldwide effort.

    Seventh, best practices and successes can be shared by means of the Internet, including our web site www.wagingpeace.org.

    Eighth, we must not give up until we have achieved our goal, and we must not settle for the partial measures offered by the nuclear weapons states that continue a two-tier system of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”

    We must continue to speak out. We must find ways to compel large masses of our fellow humans to listen to the message of the hibakusha.

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

    Our dream is not an impossible dream. It is something that we can accomplish in our lifetimes. Slavery was abolished, the Berlin Wall fell, apartheid ended in South Africa. We need to bring the spirit of the hibakusha to bear on nuclear weapons. Our goal of a world free of nuclear weapons will be achieved by individual commitment and discipline, and by joining together in a great common effort. Achieving our goal will be a victory for all humanity, for all future generations.

    Each of us is a miracle, and every part of life is miraculous. In opposing nuclear weapons and warfare, we are not only fighting against something. We are fighting for the miracle of life.

    Our cause is right. It is just. It is timely. We will prevail because we must prevail.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This speech was a keynote address at the Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

  • Nagasaki Appeal: The Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

    Standing on the threshold of a new century, we concerned global citizens have gathered from throughout the world in Nagasaki, the last city of the departing century to suffer the devastation of a nuclear attack.

    Some half-century ago, humanity embarked on the development of nuclear weapons. These indescribably destructive instruments are capable not only of robbing millions of people of their lives at a single stroke, but also of inflicting lifelong physical and mental anguish on any survivors. The damage resulting from the use of nuclear weapons would extend far beyond the boundaries of the belligerents, having extremely serious consequences for the environment and all living things. Nevertheless, these criminal weapons are still being used by some states for political purposes.

    It is our duty to provide a worthy response to the voices of the hibakusha — the atomic bomb survivors; voices tinged with anxiety stemming from the knowledge that death from not yet fully explained causes may come at any time; voices that say, “Such a tragedy cannot be allowed to be repeated… Before the last of us leaves this world, nuclear weapons must be abolished forever.” It is the sincere desire of the citizens of Nagasaki, that Nagasaki should remain the last city to suffer the calamity of the dropping of an atomic bomb.

    Despite the fact that it has been over a decade since the collapse of the Cold War standoff, there are still over 30,000 nuclear warheads in existence on our fragile planet. The United States and the Russian Federation each continue to maintain several thousand nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

    The International Court of Justice, the world’s supreme legal authority, has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is a violation of international law. These weapons, which are even more inhumane than biological or chemical weapons, are nonetheless claimed by the few governments which possess them, and by the countries sheltered by the “nuclear umbrella,” as necessary for their security.

    Expectations were raised in May of this year at the 2000 NPT Review Conference when the nuclear weapon states agreed to an “an unequivocal undertaking… to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals…” However, the phrase, “undertake to engage in an accelerated process of negotiations,” had to be eliminated from the draft document in order to avoid the breakdown of the talks.

    The continued existence of nuclear weapons poses a threat to all of humanity, and their use would have catastrophic consequences. The only defense against nuclear catastrophe is the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

    During our conference, we have learned from the stories of many who have suffered from the nuclear age: the hibakusha and downwinders from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Semipalatinsk, Nevada, and Moruroa; Chernobyl and Tokaimura. The world’s citizens must now be mobilized to form a potent global movement, and it is this force that will compel governments to fulfill their promises. All sectors of the global community must be involved including women, youth, workers, religious communities and indigenous peoples.

    Having concluded four days of discussions in Nagasaki, the concerned global citizens who attended this historic Assembly call for the following actions:

    1. Let the citizens of the world cooperate with like-minded nations in calling for an international conference to negotiate a verifiable treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    2. The responsibility and the potential role of the Japanese government in the context of the elimination of nuclear weapons is extremely great. We strongly expect Japan to end its dependence on nuclear weapons for national security, and to maximize its contribution to nuclear abolition, for instance, by working towards the establishment of a Northeast Asia nuclear weapon-free zone. We ask the citizens of the world to provide support to the activities of the Japanese people in pressuring their government.

    3. The missile defense programs proposed by the United States for North America and East Asia is preventing nuclear disarmament, and threatening to ignite a new arms race. The current situation must be urgently improved. Let us join hands with US citizens who are calling for the cessation of all missile defense programs, and work for stronger international public opinion on this subject.

    4. All governments should inform their publics about the damage caused by nuclear activities. We call for the reallocation of the resources currently expended on nuclear arms to mitigate and compensate for the human suffering and environmental damage caused by the use of nuclear weapons and the entire process of nuclear development, including uranium mining, reprocessing, testing, and manufacture. Resources should also be provided for the elimination of nuclear weapons and its verification.

    5. We also call for efforts directed toward the stepwise and parallel implementation of various measures, such as the entry-into-force as soon as possible of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; a total ban on sub-critical and all other forms of nuclear weapons testing; the cut-off and international control of weapons-usable fissile materials; deep reductions of nuclear arsenals; de-alerting; the adoption of no-first-use policies among nuclear weapons states and non-use policies against non-nuclear weapons states; withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from foreign soil and international waters; the establishment of new nuclear weapon-free zones and the strengthening of existing zones; and official rejection of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Further, we urgently call for the cessation of nuclear weapons programs by India and Pakistan. Let us use every available opportunity to express the expectations and demands of the world’s citizens.

    Activities aimed at the elimination of nuclear weapons, led by the hibakusha, Abolition 2000 and others, have progressed to the point where “nuclear weapons abolition” has become part of the common vocabulary of international politics and diplomacy. So long as the efforts of the world’s citizens continue, there is bright hope that our objectives will be achieved. The myriad small steps taken by concerned citizens in every conceivable setting will no doubt lead to new and giant strides forward. Let us begin renewed and concerted action directed at the rapid realization of a 21st century free of war, in which the scourge of nuclear weapons is finally removed forever.

  • A Peace Message: On the fifty-fifth anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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

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

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

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

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