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hibakusha
A Hiroshima Survivor Reminds the World Why History Must Not Repeat Itself
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has.
Aug 21, 2025
Michiko Kodama was only seven years old when the world’s first nuclear weapon was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. Since then, she has dedicated her life to ensuring that her generation remains the only victims of a nuclear holocaust.
“When you witness something like this, you think how can I live? Am I allowed to live? But, I’m glad I’m alive,” Kodama said. “I’m glad I had the life I wanted, and I think it’s because I can tell the stories of those who have passed away.”
Kodama is the assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization composed of Hibakusha, the Japanese word that refers to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In 2024, Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their advocacy work on nuclear nonproliferation.
“To fight against nuclear weapons is to preserve life because it is the weapon that is capable of completely destroying the entire Earth. It’s the weapon that’s capable of stopping time,” Kodama, 87, said.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has. And she’s determined to continue reminding the world of the terrors of nuclear weapons.
She remembers being under her desk as the bomb hit. She saw a flash of light followed by an extreme wave of heat. Somehow she survived along with her classmates. She recalled the horrific sight of people who had come to her families’ suburb to try and get relief from the epicenter. People who had been so badly burnt that their skin was coming off their flesh.
“These sorts of images show the differences between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. It’s just a weapon that is so inhumane, so indiscriminate that we just should not have it,” Kodama said.
The Doomsday Clock, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created in 1947 to measure how close the world is to man-made catastrophe, signals that the world has moved closer to nuclear catastrophe than it ever has been. In January 2025, the clock was moved one second closer to midnight, sending a stark signal to the global community that we are moving closer toward the brink of nuclear holocaust. The clock currently looms at a mere 89 seconds to midnight.
“I fear that World War III will turn into a nuclear war,” she said.
Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons, and many more are seeking to get it as a deterrent.
“I think it’s a huge mistake,” Kodama said. “Nuclear weapons and humans, and of course the Earth, cannot coexist. I know this from personal experience.”
In June 2025, the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites out of fear they were getting closer and closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Experts said that Iran’s aspirations will not stop and that other countries could follow its example
“In the span of two weeks, Iran was bombed by two nuclear powers, the US and Israel. That could lead to a perverted logic in which developing the nuclear bomb is seen as their only way to be safe from further attacks,” said Thomas Countryman, president of the board at the Arms Control Association.
Kodama warned that more countries with nuclear weapons would only increase the likelihood that a nuclear holocaust would take place.
Kodama described apocalyptic scenes from when the bomb first hit in the center of Hiroshima. People riding on Hiroshima’s famous tram instantly turned to charcoal; those that didn’t die instantly had their skin stripped off from the heat of the ground, and many ended up jumping in the river for relief where they also died.
Although she was one of the fortunate ones to survive the bombing, the consequences of the bomb continued well after August 6 for Kodama.
“I’ll be a victim of the atomic bomb until I die. Yes, I can’t escape the fact that I was a victim of the atomic bomb” Kodama said.
For example, Kodama recalled how she faced discrimination within Japan as a survivor and was told that would have to live alone without getting married because people at the time did not want their future generations “mixed” with those that survived an atomic bomb. Moreover, even after she married and had kids, her daughter suddenly died at 45 after contracting cancer, which Kodama believes was passed down from herself.
Her mother, father, and two brothers, one of whom was born after the bombing Hiroshima, also died of cancer which she attributed to the effects of radiation exposure.
However, even with the devastating effects of Hiroshima, Kodama warned that the bomb dropped 80 years ago would only cause a fraction of the damage that today’s weapons could inflict.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
In fact, just 20 days before the bomb exploded she moved from the center of Hiroshima to a suburb. Everyone in her former school was killed. Kodama noted that in some ways she was lucky because the Hiroshima bomb didn’t completely destroy life.
“When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, it was said that no plants would grow for 80 years, but the following year, those trees in the garden sprouted young shoots,” Kodama said. “If something like that were to happen again, no plants would really grow. They wouldn’t grow for 80 years, or even a hundred years. It would be impossible to survive.”
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Testimony of the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: No More Nuclear Weapons
They have been telling their stories for nearly 80 years. It’s about time more of us listen.
Aug 09, 2025
CONTENT WARNING: This article contains descriptions of nuclear weapons effects, including disturbing accounts of the victims.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, on August 9, the second was dropped on Nagasaki. Both cities were totally destroyed by the bombs, a new type of weapon developed by the United States, infamously through the Manhattan Project. In Hiroshima, over 140,000 were killed. In Nagasaki, over 70,000. In the blink of an eye, humanity witnessed two of the darkest days in history.
This year marks the 80th commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each year, scores of Japanese peace organizations, and those from other nations, hold events in the two cities to remember the tragedies and renew passions for continuing the fight for peace.
This year, I had the privilege of being invited to attend one such event: the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, organized by Gensuikyo. It has been a tremendous honor to join as part of a delegation from the United States and as a representative of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, an organization whose board I sit on.
What I have experienced has moved me powerfully. I learned from testimony from nuclear bomb survivors (Hibakusha), technical descriptions of the events of those days, diplomatic arguments from around the world, and demonstrations of peace movements from Japan and beyond. In the aftermath of such powerful testimony, the natural conclusion is inescapable: Nuclear weapons should be made illegal, never used again, and dismantled. The wealth of resources going toward their production should instead be dedicated to programs that actually create security like education, diplomacy, material security, and cooperative institutions.
I’d like to report back what I experienced and learned for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the details of nuclear weapons control—especially those in the United States. As someone who grew up through U.S. public schools and engages with students in higher education, I can say that we are woefully ignorant of the truth. Let this correct the record and help open more eyes to the truth.
The Reality of the Bombings and their Aftermath
I want to share both the technical details of what happened during nuclear bomb detonation as well as testimony from those who survived the blasts, the Hibakusha. Both are difficult to read. I urge readers to open their minds and hearts and imagine to their greatest ability what those who experienced the bombings felt like as horror unfolded before their very eyes.
At the World Conference, Professor Oya Masato of the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science shared a scientific account of the bombing of Nagasaki. This second bomb exploded at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, 503 meters above the town of Matsuyama, about three kilometers north of Nagasaki city center. Instantly, the bomb turned into a fireball of tens of millions of degrees. The surface of the fireball cooled to approximately 7,000°C in 0.1 seconds. The ground temperature at the hypocenter (point of detonation) rose as high as 3,000-4,000°C, and humans in the area were instantly carbonized. The bomb generated a shock wave and blast which traveled at 440 meters per second at the hypocenter and 60 meters per second two kilometers away from the hypocenter. Those shock waves destroyed most of the city, an area of 405 square kilometers, within 10 seconds. Fires emerged and burned an area of 6.7 square kilometers. Thousands were instantly killed, and by the end of 1945, the death toll rose to 74,000.
This scientific description begins to describe the horrors of the bomb. But it can be hard to imagine. What stands out is the sheer power and devastation: a whole city leveled and engulfed in flames within seconds. Devastation on a scale never before seen. Callous destruction, indiscriminate murder.
What truly rends the heart is the testimony of Hibakusha, those who survived the bomb and tell their stories. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum depicts many such stories. It’s nearly unbearable to take in and try to imagine even a sliver of what these horrors would feel like. The stories make clear that the atomic bombs created a literal hell on Earth.
A device that can cause this amount of suffering has no place in human society.
One story, shared by a Hibakusha of Hiroshima, Park Jung-soon, 11 years old at the time, describes her experience. On the morning of the bombing, she and her six family members living together were surprised by a flash like lightning and thunder. The sky lit up. Suddenly, a blast and tremendous sound shook the whole house, lifting the entire structure upward. The house fell back down, collapsed, and crushed the family beneath it. It all happened in seconds. They could not move their bodies and thought they would die.
Imagine the sheer terror of suddenly being launched into the air only to plummet down and be crushed by your home. Imagine your home, something that we hold deep attachment to and a place of safety, comfort, and love, collapsing down on you and your whole family. In moments your safe haven becomes the source of incredible pain. Imagine those you love looking at you with the fear of death in their eyes for a split second before having your gaze ripped away by the force of crushing weight.
Jung-soon opened her eyes and found herself trapped under a thick beam. Her mother desperately pulled her out and helped her crawl out of the collapsed walls. Her head was bleeding heavily, but she rose to her feet and looked around: The house next door had fallen down as well, people were running away, crying, shouting. The village as she knew it was falling apart.
While the family fled, they saw people dead on the ground, or alive but in agony crying or shouting. People were pulling carts carrying wounded or dead neighbors. People were covered in burns and suffering in pain. She describes it as like the hell of a cartoon but in reality.
At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, there were many such stories and testimonies, as well as photographs and artwork created by Hibakusha attempting to visually depict what they experienced. Details like those in Jung-soon’s story were common. People burned beyond recognition. Structures flattened. The dead littering the city. People walking around with flesh peeling from their bodies, literally melting off, begging and screaming for water. It was, indeed, hell on Earth.
It may be difficult, but I implore you to try to deeply imagine what these words convey. In a world where many of us are constantly exposed to language of indiscriminate violence through news media, it may be easy to simply read this and register it as fact. But try to register it as feeling. What would it feel like to feel your own broken body throb with pain while simultaneously witnessing mass death all around you? Can you imagine a human being burnt beyond recognition? Someone with their flesh melting off? The sounds of screams, crying, wailing, and pure fear were profoundly traumatizing.
The effects of nuclear weapons, the scenes described by the Hibakusha, are things that should never be visited upon this Earth. A device that can cause this amount of suffering has no place in human society.
This does not even describe the effects of the bombing that persisted long after the initial devastation. Hibakusha faced severe effects from radiation poisoning and the physical damage—burns, breakages, disfigurations—they sustained. They were also subject to discrimination for decades, as people feared contamination if they came in contact with Hibakusha. Many kept their stories secret.
These are tragic tales that the Japanese peace movement describes and uplifts for all to learn from. They have been telling their stories for nearly 80 years. It’s about time more of us listen.
Telling the Truth in the United States
In the United States, there is a profound culture of ignorance surrounding nuclear weapons. I experienced this firsthand growing up in U.S. public schools and then in collegiate engineering studies.
When I was in high school, I elected to take the upper-level U.S. history class—one which gives college credit if you do well enough. The course is infamous in American high schools: AP U.S. History, or APUSH for short. Our teacher taught out of a book used in many classrooms across the country, titled The American Pageant: A History of the Republic by Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey. This book, like many others used in the U.S., describes the atomic bombing as the key to ending the second World War, a tough but necessary decision by President Harry Truman. The argument goes that dropping the bombs eliminated the need for a U.S. ground invasion, which would have cost half a million lives (which Howard Zinn notes in A People’s History of the United States seemed to have “been pulled out of the air to justify the bombings”). It becomes a trolly problem of sorts: Would you end 200,000 lives to save half a million?
That’s as far as we typically get in U.S. depictions of the bombings. We are stuck thinking at a high school level about nuclear weapons—in a country whose high schools are not known for their rigor or nuanced teaching of U.S. history. Now, when I teach at universities and talk with students in engineering, their understanding of the bombings is the same: an unfortunate necessity or political blunder. Even the faculty teaching the course, presumably sharp thinkers with PhDs, repeat the same lines.
Students should not be indoctrinated into a version of the story favorable to the U.S. perspective.
In popular media, the story is no different. 2023’s blockbuster Oppenheimer—which broke box office expectations and was given seven awards at the Oscars—was a shallow depiction of the events. As it told a dramatized version of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work on the Manhattan Project, it attempted to depict his inner turmoil as he grappled with visions of what must have become of victims. However, the screen time dedicated to his haunting visions does not exceed five minutes in a three-hour film.
Accurate depictions of the horrors of nuclear bombings are nowhere to be found in dominant U.S. education and media. Textbooks do not describe the detailed suffering of victims, the social discrimination they experienced afterward, or the stories of their deeply difficult lives. Films choose not to center the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather the perpetrators. It is tragic and laughable to consider the fact that a film like Oppenheimer is praised for its critique of nuclear weapons while it entirely centers the life of the man who was instrumental in their creation rather than the lives of his victims.
Peace organizations across the U.S. are pushing against these narratives, trying to spread the truth, and fighting for nonproliferation. But without countering the widespread ignorance of our own population, we will not get far. In a world increasingly plagued by misinformation and falsehood, we have our work cut out when it comes to effectively spreading the truth about nuclear weapons. We need to dispel the veil of ignorance covering our communities if we are to build a large enough movement to push the U.S. to disarm, re-engage in treaties, and work toward peace under cooperation rather than precarious stability based on fear and threats.
One of the first steps can be to simply tell the truth. Stories matter, and how we tell the history of our own nation matters. Students should not be indoctrinated into a version of the story favorable to the U.S. perspective. Media should accurately describe the horrors. The stories of the Hibakusha should be known by everyone.
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80 Years After US Attack on Hiroshima, Rising Threat Fuels Calls to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
The hibakusha, or survivors, "deserve to see their work vindicated and to witness the end of these inhumane, indiscriminate weapons of total destruction in their lifetime," said ICAN's leader.
Aug 06, 2025
Survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and other nuclear abolitionists renewed calls for ridding the world of nukes on Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the American attack on the Japanese city.
During the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony in Japan, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui pointed to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which have contributed to the narrative that nuclear weapons are necessary for national defense and elevated global fears of their use.
"These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history," he said. Russia and the United States—which is arming Ukraine and Israel—have the largest nuclear arsenals. The other nuclear-armed nations are China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.
"Despite the current turmoil at the nation-state level, we, the people, must never give up," Matsui added. "Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world."
Silent prayers were held in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, marking 80 years since the atomic bombing of the city by the US on August 6, 1945.
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— Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) August 6, 2025 at 6:35 AM
The mayor also urged the Japanese government to respect the wishes of hibakusha, or survivors, and join the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was adopted in 2017 and took effect in 2021.
"The treaty not only bans nuclear weapons and all activities related to their production, deployment, and use, but also mandates that countries that joined the treaty provide support for people harmed by nuclear weapons in the past and for the cleanup of areas that were used for nuclear testing," survivor Terumi Tanaka noted Wednesday in a New York Times opinion piece.
Tanaka was 13 years old at the time of the bombing—an experience he recounted last year, while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of a group he co-chairs: Nihon Hidankyo, also known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers.
"Our Nobel Peace Prize sends a message to younger people that they need to be aware that we are facing an emergency—and the need to see a larger movement of young activists working to address the nuclear threat," 93-year-old Tanaka wrote Wednesday. "Even here in Japan, not enough people see this as a pressing issue."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the Nobel Peace Prize after playing a significant role in building support for the TPNW in 2017—also used the anniversary to advocate for abolishing nuclear weapons.
ICAN executive Melissa Parke, who joined the ceremony in Japan, said in a statement that "it is not possible to come to Hiroshima and attend these solemn commemorations without being moved as well as convinced of the urgent need for nuclear weapons to be eliminated."
"The hibakusha, who were awarded last year's Nobel Peace Prize for their tenacious campaigning for the elimination of nuclear weapons, deserve to see their work vindicated and to witness the end of these inhumane, indiscriminate weapons of total destruction in their lifetime," Parke argued. "That means the nine nuclear-armed countries, most of which were represented here today, must heed their call to join the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and get rid of their arsenals."
As we mark 80 years since the atomic bombings of Japan, CND Vice-President Caroline Lucas writes from Hiroshima and asks why are nuclear powers ditching disarmament for a new nuclear arms race? Read more: www.independent.co.uk/voices/hiros...
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— Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (@cnduk.bsky.social) August 6, 2025 at 8:03 AM
In a Common Dreams opinion piece about the youth impacted by the 1945 bombings, ICAN treaty coordinator Tim Wright wrote: "The fact that children would suffer the greatest harm of all in the event of a nuclear attack against a city today should have profound implications for policymaking in nuclear-armed states and spur action for disarmament. Yet, all nine such states continue to act contrary to that objective. And the risk of a nuclear weapon being used again appears to be at an all-time high."
Common Dreams also published related opinions from Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of Veterans for Peace; Austin Headrick, public education and advocacy coordinator for Asia at American Friends Service Committee; and Ann Wright, a U.S. Army veteran who resigned from the U.S. State Department in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Speaking at the ongoing 2025 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, Wright noted that "there are a multitude of organizations in the United States and around the world that are working for the elimination of nuclear weapons."
"As we commemorate the lives lost and damaged by nuclear weapons 80 years ago," she said, "we commit ourselves to work harder for the elimination of these weapons, taking on our governments and the industries that make money from the construction and testing of these weapons of mass destruction."
ICAN in June released a report showing that the world's nine nuclear-armed nations spent more than $100 billion on their arsenals last year, up 11% from 2023. A few days later, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual yearbook warned that "a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened."
Those reports followed similar warnings from the experts behind the Doomsday Clock, who in January set the symbol of how close the world is to apocalypse at "89 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to catastrophe."
Fueling fears of such a catastrophe, U.S. President Donald Trump said last Friday that he "ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions" in response to "highly provocative statements" by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council.
During Trump's first term, he withdrew the United States from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia—after which the Kremlin declared a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of those missiles. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced Monday that it will no longer abide by its rules, citing recent moves by the U.S. and its allies.
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Can We Go Back from the Nuclear Brink? Time Will Tell
Simultaneously we face two interconnected existential threats. We must abolish nuclear weapons so that we can move forward and properly address our climate crisis.
Mar 10, 2025
Last week witnessed the Third Meeting of States Parties at the United Nations in New York to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force on January 22, 2021. This historic intergenerational meeting occurred 80 years into the nuclear age with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weeklong meeting was attended by survivors of the atomic bombings, Hibakusha, whose average age is currently 85. Additionally in attendance were their descendants and other victims of the nuclear legacy from testing to extraction and mining. Others engaged at the 3MSP included faith leaders, and Mayors of cities all around the globe, including Hanover in Germany, Chicago in Illinois, Rochester in New York and Easthampton in Massachusetts. Scientists, artists, scholars and many other diverse members of civil society were there led by ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, with representatives of its 650 partner organizations.
The focus of the meeting was to further universalize the Treaty and stigmatize nuclear weapons and the nation states that continue to possess them. Currently half the world’s population has endorsed the Treaty with ratification by 73 nation states and 94 signatory nation states.
Ultimately, we will see the end of these weapons, either by the verifiable elimination supported by the efforts this week, or by their use whether intentional or by miscalculation, accident or AI algorithm.
The conference emphasized the humanitarian threats posed by any use of nuclear weapons and the ongoing threat posed by their very existence, even in the absence of use. Throughout the week long conference there were sidebar meetings on wide ranging topics including the myth of deterrence and its role as the principal driver in the arms race, the economics and morality of nuclear weapons, and how to bring old and young alike from where they are to an awareness of this existential threat through various media and expression.
It was clear throughout the week that the leaders of this next generation are indeed concerned about the threat of nuclear weapons to their future and are ready to act. Young high school students from Georgia to Detroit and students from Northwestern University to Morehouse College get it. It’s never been a case of them not being concerned, but rather an “awareness gap”. Once informed they are motivated and ready to share that knowledge and act for their future.
In the United States, a growing movement called “Back from the Brink” is bringing communities together to abolish nuclear weapons. Currently this movement is endorsed by 494 organizations, 77 municipalities and cities, 8 state legislative bodies, 429 municipal and state officials, and 44 members of Congress.
It calls on the United States to:
1.Take a leadership role and bring together the nuclear nations of the world in support of a verifiable, time bound agreement to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
2. Renounce the use of nuclear weapons first.
3. End sole authority for this president or any president to unilaterally launch a nuclear weapon.
4. End hair trigger alert.
5. Cancel enhanced nuclear weapon development replacing all of our current nuclear arsenal.
At this point in history, we are closer to nuclear war than at any point since the outset of the nuclear age. It’s “89 seconds to midnight,” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Simultaneously we face two interconnected existential threats. We must abolish nuclear weapons so that we can move forward and properly address our climate crisis. What is necessary is to build the political will among our elected officials for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Ultimately, we will see the end of these weapons, either by the verifiable elimination supported by the efforts this week, or by their use whether intentional or by miscalculation, accident or AI algorithm. The choice is ours. Let’s land on the right side of history.
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NATO Announces Nuclear Drills as Nobel Goes to Atomic Weapon Abolitionists
Disarmament advocate Beatrice Fihn stressed that the exercise is practice for "wiping out hundreds of thousands of civilians" with weapons that would also "flatten cities and poison survivors."
Oct 11, 2024
The NATO military block announced Friday that its annual nuclear exercise is set to begin next week—news that arrived just as Japanese atomic bomb survivors who advocate for disarmament received the Nobel Peace Prize.
"There is bad timing, there is dropping a brick... and then there is this. Nice work," the Geneva Nuclear Disarmament Initiative said in response to NATO Spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah on social media.
Dakhlallah shared a NATO statement explaining that "Steadfast Noon," the two-week military drills scheduled to start Monday, will include 2,000 soldiers from eight air bases and more than 60 "nuclear-capable jets, bombers, fighter escorts, refueling aircraft, and planes capable of reconnaissance and electronic warfare" flying over western Europe.
"Nuclear deterrence is the cornerstone of allied security," NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in the statement. "Steadfast Noon is an important test of the alliance's nuclear deterrent and sends a clear message to any adversary that NATO will protect and defend all allies."
Mary Wareham, deputy director of the crisis, conflict, and arms division at Human Rights Watch, also responded to the spokesperson on social media, asking, "Any comment from NATO on today's announcement that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese association of atomic bomb survivors organization Nihon Hidankyo?"
Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, survivors known as hibakusha have shared their experiences to promote peace. The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday honored the group Nihon Hidankyo, which "has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to the United Nations and a variety of peace conferences to remind the world of the pressing need for nuclear disarmament."
The committee highlighted that "the nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare. At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen."
The peace award and plans for NATO's exercise come as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, and provocations against Iran have heightened global fears of nuclear war. Russia and the United States have by far the largest arsenals, but China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom also have nuclear weapons.
Beatrice Fihn, director of Lex International and a senior fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, stressed on social media Friday that NATO exercise is practice for "wiping out hundreds of thousands of civilians" with weapons that would also "flatten cities and poison survivors."
Fihn previously directed the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which in 2017 won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. On Friday, she urged countries that haven't yet signed the treaty to "listen" to the Nobel committee and Nidon Hidankyo.
ICAN's current executive director, Melissa Parke, said in a Friday statement that the campaign "is honored to have been able to work alongside Nihon Hidankyo and the hibakusha to push for the total elimination of nuclear weapons."
"Their testimonies and tireless campaigning have been crucial to progress on nuclear disarmament in general and the adoption and entry into force of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons," she added. "We call on the nuclear-armed states and their allies which support the use of nuclear weapons, including of course Japan, to heed their call to abolish these inhumane weapons, to make sure what they have been through never happens again."
Gregory Kulacki, who has worked with disarmament advocates in Japan as East Asia project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, similarly said Friday that "the testimony of the Hibakusha demonstrates the grave risks we still run by the very existence of nuclear weapons, which have only become more destructive. It's time for the world to not only acknowledge the risks of nuclear weapons but take action to enact a permanent international ban against them."
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Head of Nuke Abolition Group Decries Gaza Suffering After Winning Nobel Peace Prize
Toshiyuki Mimaki said he had believed "the people working so hard in Gaza" would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to aid workers with UNRWA.
Oct 11, 2024
Calling for peace in war zones around the world and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a grassroots group organized by survivors of the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Nihon Hidankyo was established in 1956 after a number of local organizations of hibakusha, the Japanese name for "bomb-affected people," joined together.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the group's leader, was three years old when the U.S. killed 100,000 people in Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, and his message after learning Nihon Hidankyo was the 2024 Peace Prize winner was straightforward.
"I am not sure I will be alive next year," said Mimaki, 82. "Please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive. That is the wish of 114,000 hibakusha."
Mimaki focused not only on the plight of the estimated 650,000 Japanese people who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, but also people—particularly children—facing war now.
"It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists," said Mimaki. "For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won't end there. Politicians should know these things."
"In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]," he added. "It's like in Japan 80 years ago."
Mimaki said he had believed "the people working so hard in Gaza" would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was also nominated.
The U.N. agency has struggled to continue providing humanitarian services to Palestinians in Gaza this year after unverified claims by Israel that 12 UNRWA workers were involved in a Hamas-led attack last year prompted countries including the U.S. to suspend its funding. A majority of countries—but not the U.S., the agency's biggest donor—have restored funding after an independent probe found Israel had not provided evidence for its accusations.
Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, said that with the average age of hibakusha now 85, "there are fewer and fewer people able to testify to the meaninglessness of possessing atomic bombs and their absolute evil."
"People in coming generations must know that what happened is not just a tragedy for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but one that concerns all humanity that must not be repeated," said Matsui.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to ensure countries comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, applauded the Nobel Committee for recognizing Nihon Hidankyo's "lifelong work to bring the world's attention to what nuclear weapons actually do to people when they are used."
Several years after the nuclear bombings, rates of leukemia diagnoses rose considerably in Japan among survivors. After a decade, other cancers were also detected at higher-than-normal rates. Pregnant women who were exposed to radiation from the bombings also had higher rates of miscarriage and their infants were more likely to die.
Cancer rates have continued to increase among hibakusha throughout their lives.
"It is particularly significant that this award comes at this time when the risk that nuclear weapons will be used again is as high, if not higher, as it has ever been," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN.
As Nihon Hidankyo was honored "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again," the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced it would be holding its annual nuclear exercise, "Steadfast Noon," on October 14 over Western Europe.
On "Democracy Now!" on Friday, Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, said the award "could not come at a better time."
"What most people don't understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point," said Gerson. "Among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called 'modernizing' their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment."
"We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist," Gerson added, "and we have to work for their abolition."
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Hiroshima Survivors Warn Against Nuclear War 79 Years After US Bombing
"The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," said one hibakusha. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they?"
Aug 06, 2024
As the number of people who survived the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rapidly dwindles 79 years after the attacks, hibakusha—the Japanese word for the survivors—and others are imploring humanity to do everything possible to avert another nuclear war.
"People still don't get it. The atomic bomb isn't a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," Shigeaki Mori, who was an 8-year-old boy on his way to school on the morning of August 6, 1945,
told The New York Times. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that."
Keiko Aguro was also 8 years old and standing on a road near her home in Hiroshima when a U.S. B-29 Superfortress dropped one bomb over Hiroshima that exploded with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT. The explosion destroyed nearly everything and everyone within about a 1-mile (1.62 km) radius. As many as 90,000 people died from the heat, blast wave, and ensuing inferno. Tens of thousands of others were injured, many of them mortally. Tens of thousands more would perish from radiation over the following weeks, months, and years.
"As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story," Aguro said. "'For we shall not repeat the evil'—this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."
"Now what survivors worry about is to die and meet our family in heaven," Aguro added. "I heard many survivors say, 'What shall I do? On this planet there are still many many nuclear weapons, and then I'll meet my daughter I couldn't save. I'll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons?' There is no answer I can tell them."
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was obliterated in a 20-kiloton air burst that killed as many as 75,000 people that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.
The authors of the Times piece—Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen—wrote that "as another anniversary of August 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans—and the globe, really—to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again."
However, they note that "countries like the United States, China, and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles," while "many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening."
"The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history," the trio wrote. But they added that nearly eight decades later, many Americans still hail the bombings as "necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end."
But the prevailing U.S. historical narrative—which portrays the bombings as critical to ending the war—ignores the lack of consensus and grave misgivings among senior military commanders about dropping the bombs. Seven of the eight five-star generals and admirals at the time opposed its use. One of them, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said as president that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—marked this year's ignominious anniversary with a report focusing on how children are affected by nuclear war and the threat thereof.
The report contains graphic descriptions of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and of nuclear weapons testing on children around the world. It also explains how fear of thermonuclear annihilation affected children during the Cold War and how humanity can protect children by disarming.
"Today, several thousand nuclear weapons still exist in the arsenals of nine countries, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere, especially children. Many have vastly greater explosive yields than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," the ICAN report states.
"To protect humanity from the catastrophic harm that nuclear weapons are designed to inflict, governments must act with urgency to eliminate them completely—the only guarantee against their further use and testing," the publication continues. "This would be a great service to the current generation of children and to all future generations, who would grow up free from the threat of nuclear war."
"The alternative is to pass on to them a world still teetering on the brink of catastrophe," ICAN added. "Or, quite unthinkable, a world reeling from the horrors of another nuclear attack, perhaps with a death toll orders of magnitude greater than that of the atomic bombings of 1945."
Echoing ICAN, Hiroshima Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki said during the annual commemoration of the bombing at Hiroshima Peace Park that "as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely be used again someday."
"Nuclear weapons abolition is not an ideal to achieve far in the future," Yuzaki stressed. "Instead, it is a pressing and real issue that we should desperately engage in at this moment since nuclear problems involve an imminent risk to human survival."
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Nagasaki Mayor Withholds Israel's Invitation to Peace Ceremony
"Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a risk of unpredictable disruption occurring at the ceremony," Mayor Shiro Suzuki said.
Jun 04, 2024
The mayor of Nagasaki said Monday that he is withholding Israel's invitation to the annual peace ceremony commemorating the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on the Japanese city and will call on the country's far-right government to accept an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
"Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a risk of unpredictable disruption occurring at the ceremony," said Mayor Shirō Suzuki, according to The Asahi Shimbun.
"The situation is changing day by day, so we have put sending an invitation letter on hold," Suzuki explained. "We need to carefully monitor the situation as it develops."
The ceremony is held each year on August 9, when at 11:02 am local time in 1945 a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped a single nuclear bomb over the city, killing tens of thousands of people instantly and dooming many thousands more to slow death by radiation-induced ailments.
Suzuki said he would extend an invitation to Israel once it's clear that doing so won't cause any problems. Palestine's envoy is invited to attend, although Japan is one of a global minority of nations that do not formally recognize a Palestinian state.
Once again, Russia—whose forces have been invading Ukraine since February 2022—and Belarus, which supports the invasion, are not invited.
City officials in Hiroshima are also calling on Israel to stop attacking Gaza. However, Israel is invited to take part in the city's annual commemoration of its August 6, 1945 atomic annihilation by the United States. A group of hibakusha, the Japanese word for atomic bombing survivors, have petitioned city officials to invite all the world's nations to attend.
Israel's 242-day assault on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide investigation—has left more than 130,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to Palestinian and international agencies. Most of those killed are women and children. Around 2 million of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Widespread starvation caused by Israel's siege and blockage of aid has become what one top United Nations food official last month called "full-blown famine" in the northern Gaza Strip. Children are starving to death.
A cease-fire remains elusive. Responding to reports of a three-point Israeli proposal to end the war, Japan's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it "strongly supports" efforts by the United States—which has been accused of complicity in genocide for providing Israel with billions of dollars in military aid as well as diplomatic support—to broker a cease-fire deal.
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Hiroshima Survivors Decry US-Japan Agreement Equating Pearl Harbor With Atomic Bombing
"The historical backgrounds of the two parks will forever be different," said one survivor and peace activist.
Jun 30, 2023
Representatives of hibakusha—the Japanese community of survivors of the United States' bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945—are denouncing an agreement between the U.S. and Japan that equates the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians with with at a World War II attack on a key U.S. naval base.
The Biden administration last week signed an agreement with Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui establishing a "sister-park" relationship between the Japanese city's Peace Memorial Park and the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
At a signing ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel appeared to equate the events that the two parks memorialize.
"Nobody can go to Pearl Harbor, and nobody can go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and enter the front door, walk out the exit door and be the same person," Emanuel said.
Japan's surprise attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941 killed roughly 2,300 U.S. military personnel.
The Truman administration's decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945 immediately killed roughly 80,000 civilians, and a second bombing of Nagasaki killed about 70,000. Another 140,000 people died by the end of that year from the effects of the bombing.
The city of Hiroshima estimated that a total of 237,000 people were killed from radiation poisoning, cancer, and injuries in the five years after the attack.
Atsuko Yamamoto, a Japanese educator in Osaka, said the two attacks were "completely different" considering the scale and targets.
Several survivors wrote to Matsui ahead of the ceremony to question to purpose of the sister-park agreement, arguing that the two attacks "are historic lessons to learn from and to never repeat" but not "something that we should forgive each other for."
"The historical backgrounds of the two parks will forever be different," Haruko Moritaki, an A-bomb survivor and peace activist who advises the Hiroshima Association for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, told the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper.
In response to the pushback, Emanuel said people in Japan should not be "trapped" by the emotions of "anguish and angst" associated with the devastating bombings that took place nearly 80 years ago, and that the agreement between the U.S. and Japan "is the example of what I think this world desperately needs right now."
Kunihiko Sakuma, who chairs the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organization, said reconciliation cannot truly be reached between the two countries until the U.S. acknowledges that "The A-bomb did not end the war and save the lives of American soldiers as the U.S. side likes to say."
"It was clear that Japan was going to lose," he told Nikkei Asia, saying the attack was unnecessary and meant as a display of U.S. military power.
"Unless that fundamental issue is addressed, we cannot just focus on the future," said Sakuma.
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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Denounces G7 Failure to Deliver on Nuclear Disarmament in Hiroshima
"The G7 are trying to sell decades-old and insufficient initiatives as a new 'vision' when at the same time they themselves are complicit in the rising nuclear risks," said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
May 19, 2023
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on a landmark treaty banning nukes—and others including survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan on Friday criticized a Group of Seven joint statement on disarmament as "missing the moment to make the world safer" from the threat of thermonuclear annihilation.
As the G7 summit got underway in Hiroshima, leaders of Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, United States—the latter three of which have nuclear arsenals—reiterated their belief that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
While the statement acknowledges "the unprecedented devastation and immense human suffering the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced as a result of the atomic bombings" and reaffirms G7 members' "commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons," the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) lamented that "it fails to commit to concrete measures towards that goal and even emphasizes the importance of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons."
"The G7 are trying to sell decades-old and insufficient initiatives as a new 'vision' when at the same time they themselves are complicit in the rising nuclear risks and promoting mass murder of civilians as a legitimate form of national security policy," ICAN added.
ICAN said that "the G7's inaction is an insult to the hibakusha, and the memory of those who died in Hiroshima," referring to the Japanese word for survivors of the atomic bombings, which killed between 110,000 and 210,000 people.
G7 leaders spent less than half an hour visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero of the August 6, 1945 U.S. nuclear attack. They laid wreaths at the cenotaph memorializing the at least tens of thousands of people who died from the bombing and related illnesses and also met with a handful of hibakusha.
U.S. President Joe Biden drew fire for his refusal to apologize for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
"If the U.S. admitted that murdering noncombatants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was inexcusable, it might face questions about [the] legitimacy of maintaining [a] vastly more destructive stockpile now," writer and activist Jon Reinsch tweeted, referring to the approximately 5,400 nuclear warheads in the American arsenal—the world's second-largest after Russia, which has around 6,000 warheads, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Meanwhile, street protesters condemned nuclear weapons, the "imperialist summit," military aid to Ukraine, and Japan's complicity in U.S. militarism—especially toward China.
"Japan is saying it will send a peaceful message of abolishing nuclear weapons to the world through this summit, but at the same time it is seeking to rely on nuclear weapons to achieve 'national security.' This is contradictory," Ichiro Yuasa, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Peace Depot, told teleSUR.
Some hibakusha renewed criticism of leaders of nuclear-armed nations for failing to pursue meaningful disarmament, including their refusal to join scores of countries in signing the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
"This is not the genuine nuclear disarmament that hibakusha are calling for. This is an evasion of their responsibility," Satoshi Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing and secretary general of the Liaison Conference of Hiroshima Hibakusha Organizations, said of the G7 statement.
"Prime Minister [Fumio] Kishida has said that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the final passage for a nuclear weapons-free world," Tanaka added. "No, it is not a final passage. It is the entry point. Prime Minister Kishida and other G7 leaders should accept the TPNW and start the real process of eliminating nuclear weapons."
Derek Johnson, managing partner of the Global Zero movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons, said that "while the G7 statement embraces the goal of global zero and recites a familiar list of worthwhile ambitions, none acknowledge the fierce urgency of now."
"This is long on vision but short on strategy; Hiroshima deserves to be more than a symbolic setting, and the world deserves more than thoughts and prayers for disarmament," he added.
ICAN executive director Daniel Hogstra responded to the G7 statement by asserting that "this is more than a missed opportunity."
"With the world facing the acute risk that nuclear weapons could be used for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, this is a gross failure of global leadership," Hogstra contended, referring to rising fears since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
"Simply pointing fingers at Russia and China is insufficient," he added. "We need the G7 countries, which all either possess, host, or endorse the use of nuclear weapons, to step up and engage the other nuclear powers in disarmament talks if we are to reach their professed goal of a world without nuclear weapons."
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