Hiroshima & Nagasaki - 75 Years After the Atomic Bomb
/Foreword
By Chiho Kaneko, Member, Board of Directors Fairewinds Energy Education
I experienced the horrors of the Atomic bombs when I was a first-grader in Japan. I saw a book about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- I happened to pick it up in an older cousin’s room. The shock and fright that I felt were almost physical. That book forever etched a feeling in my heart: This kind of atrocity must never happen again to any humans. And as a child, I assumed that humans had learned a painful lesson from this horrible history.
The catastrophic disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Stations occurred in March 2011. This catastrophe woke me up to the reality that learning a lesson requires real on-going efforts to educate ourselves as well as the future generations of our world.
After many years of living in the United States (U.S.), I began translating for individuals and at events where translators were needed. In April 2015, I was able to work as a volunteer interpreter on behalf of the survivors of the Atomic bomb during the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NTP) at the United Nations (U.N.). Here, my childhood fear of A-bombs and the recent trauma of the triple meltdowns in Fukushima all came together.
Today’s world seems to be far from the stated global goal of reducing nuclear weapons. In fact, after working together to disarm, many nations are now vying for opportunities to increase their military’s nuclear capabilities. The 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was held in the shadow of Russia’s recent threat to use nuclear weapons during the Crimea conflict along with renewed interests in modern nuclear weapons in the U.S. Unfortunately, it failed to achieve any workable solution, to the disappointment of the aging A-Bomb survivors, who came to New York to give their personal testimonials. This year’s NPT was postponed due to the 2020 COVID Pandemic, and a new schedule is yet to be announced. For some of the survivors of A-bomb, this means they may never have the opportunity to return to the U.N. to tell what they experienced in August 1945 and thereafter.
Some of the survivors have dedicated their entire lives to retelling their experiences of pain, horrors, and on-going suffering because they physically know that the atrocity they endured must never happen again to any human beings. As I was interpreting their personal stories, I sometimes cried with them. But, we also shared moments of easy-going jokes and fun. The stamina and the strength with which they have worked for their entire lives is remarkable — they are forces of nature, and their work is quite life-affirming.
“Please listen to what happened to me, to my family and friends.”
Please listen and feel their pain in your own heart and body.
Because it is your pain. Our pain.
And from there, we start the work of healing.
By The Fairewinds Crew
Today, Fairewinds is talking about history –– world history and herstory about the choices governments make when waging war and not planning for peace. On August 6, 1945, during World War II, the United States was the only nation in the world to unleash the horror of the Atomic Bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki just three days later.
Hibakusha. Have you heard the term? Simply put, the Hibakusha are people in Japan who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II (WWII). Many in the United States military saw the Japanese civilians as mere collateral damage, and those lives as a price to pay for trying to end a war that was already over. The facts are more nuanced. Although Hibakusha are people who survived the bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, they were traumatized by seeing their families, friends, and homes destroyed within seconds, and many Hibakusha also suffered the lifelong aftermath of radiation poisoning. Since the meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi, the term Hibakusha is applied to victims of Japan’s triple meltdown, who are also similarly facing radiation-induced illnesses and discrimination, because they too have been exposed to radiation. When Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds chief engineer, traveled to Japan, he visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was there that Arnie learned that many victims of the Fukushima catastrophe were and still are receiving emotional support from the victims of the U.S. atomic bombs in WWII.
The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as referenced above, were the civilian-laden targets, not military targets, of the U.S. 1945 atomic bombings of Japan. In July 2020, Fairewinds wrote about the testing of the first atomic bomb at a site in New Mexico that was aptly named: Trinity. More than 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project were opposed to this new atomic weapon technology being utilized against innocent civilians. Actually, on July 17, 1945, they wrote and signed a letter to President Truman pleading to prevent the bombing. The bombings of Hiroshima on August 6th and then Nagasaki on August 9th did not have to happen. At the time, negotiations were already occurring between Japan and the U.S. to end the war, and it was believed by many that Japan would surrender any day.
Regrettably, there were those in the U.S. government allegedly hell-bent on forcing the surrender of the Japanese at any cost and at the top was then-Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. In 1947 Stimson wrote to Harper’s Magazine with his justification for ordering the unwarranted attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that article, Stimson falsely claimed that millions of American troops would have been lost if the bombs had not been dropped and that the war effort would have been extended. Many war-mongers claimed the atomic attacks were necessary (at least according to Stimson) to scare the Japanese into thinking the American forces had unlimited bombs at their disposal. Papers recently released from the WWII sequestered archives show that the real reason the U.S. government officials dropped the American bombs on innocent Japanese citizens and then lied about it to the world is that they wanted to show Russia that the U.S. had the bomb and was not afraid to use it. It was a power-play show against Russia, not a necessity to end WWII with Japan. And, so many civilians died instantly.
Former two-term President Eisenhower, then a five-star general during WWII, was firmly against the use of the bombs on Japanese civilians and would later remorsefully write about it in his presidential memoirs:
“I voiced to [Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’”
In the seconds after the bomb fell, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians lost their lives, and millions more suffered and still suffer from radiation-borne illnesses. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are terrorizing incidents that the world should never forget or repeat.
Following the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee, a civilian organization created to make recommendations on the use of the atomic bomb, wrote a letter to Stimson to reflect upon the use of the atomic bombs and the future of war:
“The development, in the years to come, of more effective atomic weapons, would appear to be a most natural element in any national policy of maintaining our military forces at great strength; nevertheless, we have grave doubts that this further development can contribute essentially or permanently to the prevention of war. We believe that the safety of this nation - as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power - cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible.”
Setsuko Thurlow
Setsuko Thurlow.
For many of us, our heroes and heroines from the worldwide stage began their lives before or during the horrors of WWII, whether that was during the Holocaust in Europe or the Pacific front with the war against Japan. One of the truest of those heroines is Setsuko Thurlow, who was 13-years-old when she witnessed and subsequently survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Inspired by the pain and terror of her experiences, Setsuko Thurlow, now a hibakusha, dedicated her life to pacifism by working for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons around the world.
In 2017, Setsuko Thurlow was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the risks she took to take the Hibakusha truths to anyone who would listen. It is worth noting that in 2007 (just 10 years prior) she helped to form the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). It is the work of activists like Setsuko Thurlow that continue to inspire Fairewinds Energy Education to keep speaking about the connection between atomic power reactors and nuclear weapons. As former President Eisenhower warned upon his retirement:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
75th Hiroshima & Nagasaki Commemoration Event:
August 09, 2020 at 12am - August 10, 2020
"The Vow From Hiroshima" 24-Hour Screening
View the film for FREE on August 9th here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thevowfromhiroshima/
More information for this event can be found via ICAN.
Recommended For Your Viewing
Hear the Voices of the Survivors: Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years on - Ms. Setsuko Thurlow
This event was filmed on July 7th, 2020. We hope you take the time to enjoy the inspiring words of Ms. Setsuko Thurlow. You can view the video below:
