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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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Survivor of US Atomic Bombing Makes Plea to World With Nobel Acceptance Speech
"Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war," said Terumi Tanaka.
Dec 11, 2024
Accepting the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the grassroots Japanese anti-nuclear group he co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka warned on Tuesday night that the world is moving in the opposite direction than the one hibakusha—survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—have demanded for nearly seven decades.
Tanaka is a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization founded in 1956 by survivors of the bombings that had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, with the death toll continuing to rise in later years as people succumbed to the effects of radiation.
The group accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, with the Nobel Committee honoring Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."
The organization aims to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons, which have only been used in combat by the U.S. in Japan in 1945.
Tanaka warned that there are currently 12,000 nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S., Russia, China, and six other countries, and 4,000 of those "could be launched immediately."
"This means that the damage that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be multiplied by hundreds or even thousands," said Tanaka, who is 92. "Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war."
"It is the heartfelt desire of the hibakusha that, rather than depending on the theory of nuclear deterrence, which assumes the possession and use of nuclear weapons, we must not allow the possession of a single nuclear weapon," he added.
"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments."
Tanaka said that "the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken," as evidenced by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu's recent comment that a nuclear attack on Gaza would be "one way" to defeat Hamas.
"I am infinitely saddened and angered" by such statements, said Tanaka.
He described his experience as a 13-year-old when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, just a couple of miles away from his family's house, which was crushed by the impact.
He said he later found the charred body of one of his aunts and saw his grandfather close to death from the burns that covered his body.
"The deaths I witnessed at that time could hardly be described as human deaths," Tanaka said. "There were hundreds of people suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention."
"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments," said Tanaka.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) applauded Nihon Hidankyo and the hibakusha "for their resilience and willingness to share their stories over and over again, so that the world may learn and come together to say 'never again.'"
"It was their courage that enabled the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons] to be adopted, which represents the first progress on nuclear disarmament in decades," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN, referring to the treaty that's been ratified by 73 countries.
"Listening to Mr. Tanaka describe the horrendous effects on his family and city when the Americans dropped their atomic bomb should convince world leaders they have to go beyond simply congratulating the hibakusha of Nihon Hidankyo for this award. They must honor them by doing what the hibakusha have long called for—urgently getting rid of nuclear weapons," said Parke. "That is the only way to ensure that what Mr. Tanaka and the other hibakusha have been through never happens to anyone ever again. As long as any nuclear weapons remain anywhere, they are bound one day to be used, whether by design or accident."
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Nobel Committee, condemned the nine nuclear powers for "modernizing and building up their nuclear arsenals."
"It is naive to believe our civilization can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons," Frydnes said. "The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation."
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The Timely Importance of Japanese A-Bomb Survivors Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
With humanity facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize wisely refocuses world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy.
Dec 09, 2024
The following is the text of a speech given in Oslo, Norway on the Eve of Nihon Hidankyo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thanks first to Ingeborg Brienes for organizing today’s event. It was an unexpected honor to be invited to join Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize delegation. I am glad to be here to celebrate the Peace Nobel Prize with dear and courageous Hibakusha friends and other dedicated activists, to represent the U.S. peace movement, and to add my voice to the Hibakusha’s profound warning that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
I first joined the World Conference Against A and H Bombs in Hiroshima in 1984. That was after we had launched the nuclear weapons freeze movement in the U.S. which played a role in ending the Cold War. It followed our successful campaigning to prevent three U.S. ports from being transformed into nuclear weapons bases. Visiting Hiroshima and engaging with Hibakusha (the A-bomb survivors) and opponents of the more than 100 U.S. military bases and installations across Japan was a life changing experience for me, as it has been for so many others.
As Wilfred Burchett, first Western journalist to witness the ruins and suffering in Hiroshima in 1945, later correctly reported that despite their excruciating physical and emotional suffering, the Hibakusha became the world’s most powerful and influential force for nuclear weapons abolition. With the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Hibakusha, their tortured testimonies, and their urgent appeal for a nuclear weapons free world now rings out more powerfully around the world.
Friends, there is no way that we can adequately thank Nihon Hidankyo and its Hibakusha members for their courage and steadfastness in warning the world about the existential danger we face in order to save humanity.
It has been my privilege to return to Hiroshima and Nagasaki many times in support of Japan’s nuclear weapons abolition movement. I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet, learn from, and to work with Hidankyo members and some of the organization’s most ravaged, wounded, and courageous founders, Watanabe Chieko, Yamaguchi Senji, and Taniguchi Sumiteru. Would that they had lived long enough to witness the Nobel Committee’s recognition of their sacrifices and to reinforce their existential warning.
Twenty-five years ago, amid a speaking tour, Tanaka Terumi—Hidankyo’s general secretary for 20 years—asked a heartfelt question: “Who will remember us when we (Hibakusha) are gone?”
Now we know. With the Nobel Peace Prize, a good part of the answer is that the world will remember. The question is whether humanity will heed the Hibakusha’s appeal.
Nihon Hidankyo was created in the wake of the 1954 U.S. Bravo H-Bomb test, a bomb which was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A bombs. Since then, Hidankyo’s core demands have been: Prevent nuclear war, eliminate nuclear weapons, and obtain essential medical care and services for A-bomb victims.
Recklessly, not only have the nuclear powers failed to respond to these life-affirming demands, but today U.S. nuclear terrorism in the form of its first strike doctrine is the cornerstone of both the United States’ and Japan’s national security doctrine. And preparations and threats of nuclear attacks are central to the military doctrines of the other eight nuclear weapons states. Tragically, for 60 years, despite Japan’s peace constitution, its military has insisted that it has the right to deploy and use tactical nuclear weapons, like those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan has facilitated the U.S. and other nuclear powers’ refusal to fulfill their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Like the nuclear powers, it has yet to even send an observer to the conference on the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at the U.N. And, many Hibakusha continue to be denied medical care as Tokyo continues to insist that all Japanese must bear the burden of its disastrous 15 Year War. We can hope that with Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize, popular pressure will lead the Japanese government and the nuclear powers to reverse course and join the TPNW.
I want to make four additional points:
Contrary to the myth propagated by former U.S. President Harry Truman, the A bombs were not necessary to defeat Japan. Senior U.S. military officials from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Curtis LeMay and William Leahy all advised that “it wasn’t necessary to hit Japan with that awful thing.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson told Truman that Japan’s surrender on terms acceptable to the U.S. could be negotiated. In 1942, General Leslie Groves, who led the Manhattan Project, told the incoming senior scientist and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient Joseph Rotblat, that since Germany would not be getting the bomb, the A bomb project was then directed against the Soviet Union. With the A bomb, Truman said, he would have “a hammer over those boys,” meaning Soviet leaders. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were thus sacrificed on the first altar of the Cold War.
Second, we need to correct a mistake in the Nobel Committee’s announcement of this year’s prize. Nuclear weapons have been used repeatedly since the 1945 A bombings. Daniel Ellsberg, a principle author of U.S. nuclear war planning in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, revealed that during numerous international crises and wars, the U.S. has used its nuclear arsenal in the same way that an armed robber uses his gun when pointed at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used. Such threats and preparations were made at least three times during European crises, 13 times to maintain U.S. Middle East hegemony, five times during the Korean War and subsequent Korean crises, three times against China, four times against Vietnam, and during the 1954 CIA Guatemala coup and the Cuban Missile Crisis. All other nuclear powers have made such nuclear preparations or threats at least once. Tragically, this is the playbook that the Kremlin is using with its Ukraine War nuclear threats. Add to these, there have been nuclear weapons accidents, false alerts, and miscalculations. The truth is that we are alive today more because of luck than because of wise policies.
Third, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns, we are 90 seconds to midnight, meaning apocalypse. All of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. The U.S. is spending $1.7 trillion to replace its nuclear arsenal and its triad of delivery systems. Russia has just lowered its doctrinal threshold for nuclear weapons use and underlined its nuclear threat by launching a nuclear-capable ballistic missile against Ukraine. With China expanding its nuclear arsenal, we are now three scorpions in a bottle. As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump returns to power, France and Britain are vying to provide Europe’s nuclear umbrella. North Korea is increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal and displayed its nuclear resolve with a commitment to nuclear weapons in its constitution. Many worry that Israel could use its nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear project. And India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers of South Asia, remain at loggerheads.
Finally, there is Trump, the would-be dictator. His former national security adviser wrote that Trump is driven by his instincts and that he brought the world closer to nuclear war with his 2017 Fire and Fury nuclear threats against North Korea than almost anyone knows. Trump and his coterie plan to purge the military to ensure its loyalty to Trump, not to our Constitution, and they are committed to dominating China militarily, economically, and technologically. As a result, in the coming years, in the U.S., to prevent nuclear war, we will need to do more than defuse the confrontations over Ukraine, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Korea. Our campaigning will require defense of constitutional democracy.
With humanity facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize wisely refocuses world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy. Let us celebrate the Hibakusha who have awakened the conscience of the world.
With their testimonies across the world, including at the U.N., they forged the powerful but still inadequate taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Their descriptions of the Hell that they witnessed and survived led most of the world’s governments to understand that for humanity to survive, priority must be given to addressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, not so-called “state security” interests. Thus we have the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which seeks to hold the nuclear weapons states accountable to their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good-faith negotiations for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
Numerous popular disarmament initiatives are being boosted by the Peace Prize award to Nihon Hidankyo. In the U.S., there will be webinars and meetings in many communities. Our Back from the Brink campaign, initiated by Physicians for Social Responsibility, is at the leading edge of our movement, supported by 43 members of Congress and city councils across the country. It calls for negotiation of a verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, renunciation of first-use policies, ending the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and cancelling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
Friends, there is no way that we can adequately thank Nihon Hidankyo and its Hibakusha members for their courage and steadfastness in warning the world about the existential danger we face in order to save humanity. Let the Nobel Peace Prize lead us to insist on No More Hiroshimas, No More Nagasakis. No More Hibakusha. No More War.
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