As we approach the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we mark the event by noting that the world currently spends $105 billion to build nuclear weapons.
The entire United Nations budget for nuclear disarmament is $12 million.
Earlier this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned that we are closer to an outbreak of nuclear war than at any time since the onset of the Cold War in 1945. Our national government is currently spending $7 billion to develop a fully automated warning system for nuclear attack.
In April, Michael Klare of the Arms Control Association pointed out that it’s wide open to hacking and false alarms. In that connection, remember Hawaii, January 2018.
Over the years, we have ignored the warnings of scientists. We brushed aside their warnings about pandemics. President Trump called them a hoax. Now we have COVID-19, with scores of thousands dead in our own country.
We brushed aside their warnings about global warming. Now we have climate change, and desperate people migrating north to escape it.
We brush aside warnings about nuclear weapons. Now we have a renewed arms race and the collapse of an arms control framework, which took two generations to build.
The hibakusha who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also keep warning us.
Wada Masako, assistant secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A and H Bomb Sufferers Organizations, was 22 months old when the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. She lived almost three kilometers from the blast and was lucky enough to escape without burns. She was too young to remember the event, so her mother told her the story when she was old enough to understand.
To her, and to the rest of the hibakusha working to abolish nuclear weapons, the argument of nuclear deterrence is a pretext, and the continued existence of 14,500 nuclear weapons “unpardonable.”
Tanaka Herumi of Nagasaki, who leads the Japan Confederation, lived closer to the blast and was not so lucky. He was 13 when the bomb dropped and blew his home to bits. His colleague, Hiroshi Taka, representative director of the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, points out that 65.9% of Japan’s public support a ban on nuclear weapons, and points to current bans on cluster bombs and chemical weapons as precedents.
Barring complications from COVID-19, they and their fellow survivors will host a world conference on nuclear disarmament Aug. 6-9, 2021. Because the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now few, and growing fewer, we’re at a turning point.
If memory dims and we grow too used to nuclear weapons, as we are doing now, we risk a permanent nuclear arms race.
Here’s the choice, one way or another: We can either continue the nuclear arms race as is, and quite likely blunder into nuclear war, or we can rid ourselves of those weapons and use our resources to meet human needs.
Across the generations, the world is crying out for a nuclear weapons ban. Three years ago, six local governments in the United States called for it, reinforced by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2017 and 2019. New London was one of those local governments.
In 2017, the United Nations drafted a nuclear weapons ban treaty, which 122 nations supported in spite of opposition from the nuclear armed nations. Last September, the Japan Confederation presented the United Nations a petition with over 10 million signatures on it from people worldwide. That petition is still circulating, and we ourselves can add our signatures to it by going to hibakusha-appeal.net.
Shall we act on these warnings and appeals, or are we going to dismiss them as we have done to date? As the hibakusha continue to remind us, all of us need to act. It’s up to us, now. We can do it, if we will. As we must.
(John Raby lives in New London.)