Oge Young is a retired OB-GYN and past president of NH Medical Society.
Many of us are old enough to remember the infamous “duck-and-cover” drills during our grade school years, simulating what should be done in a case of an atomic attack. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device at a remote site in Kazakhstan, signaling a new and terrifying phase in the Cold War.
By the 1950s, as part of a domestic preparedness plan, schools across the United States trained students to dive under their desks and cover their heads.
Suddenly, we would hear an air-raid siren while sitting in our classrooms and duck under our desks in silence. These civil defense drills offered a simple strategy for surviving a nuclear weapons attack. By sixth grade, we learned to file out of the classroom, away from windows, and sit single file against a cinder block wall with our hands overhead, always in silence.
A girl close to me would grow tremulous and tears would fill her eyes. She would not appear in school the next day, having had a sleepless night.
A post-apocalyptic novel, On the Beach, was written by British author Nevil Shute in 1957. The story was about the only survivors of a nuclear war, who lived in Australia, awaiting their slow deaths from radiation fallout. The book was followed shortly by a movie. Watched by many, it escalated the terror we felt from the possibility of an atomic attack during these intense years of the Cold War.
Some families built bomb and fallout shelters in their homes. Schools designed libraries to serve as a refuge for schoolchildren who survived the initial nuclear bombing. Awareness of the risk of nuclear arms peaked with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Fortunately, the Cold War thawed, but no one in our generation has ever lost sight of what war between two nuclear powers or nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong country might bring.
Many of us joined Beyond War, a movement founded in 1984. It seeks to end war on the premise that in the broad view, the continued practice of war will ultimately lead to a global catastrophe. It is based on the observation credited to Albert Einstein, “With the unleashed power of the atom, everything has changed our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”
Thousands of physicians across the country are members of an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) which has been working for more than 50 years to create a healthy, just and peaceful world. Recognizing the social determinants of health, a primary goal of PSR has been to protect the public from the threats of nuclear proliferation. Remarkably, our country’s defense budget calls for trillions of dollars to build a new generation of nuclear arms, rather than feed and house those experiencing poverty.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine once seemed unthinkable. Now we are witnessing the destruction of war in Ukraine every day. The New York Times reported that President Putin has given orders for his country’s military to begin a series of drills involving its nuclear arsenal. These exercises include nuclear-capable bombers and warships from Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
According to the Arms Control Association, Russia possesses more than 6,000 nuclear warheads.
In Hiroshima, there sits a simple rectangular monument, a special memorial dedicated to Sankichi Toge (1917-1953) who survived the atomic blast that destroyed Hiroshima during World War II. Toge and his writings aimed to serve as a reminder of the true costs of nuclear war. He was a poet who became the voice of Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s atomic bomb survivors.
His poems never mention his American assailants by name. There is not a single mention of the United States of America to be found in his poetry. By holding back, Toge kept his poetry generalizable to the dangers of nuclear war, doing this in order to prevent future generations from looking at the bombings as an isolated incidence.
Vladimir Putin “knows not what he does.” We should be concerned. He is narcissistic and impulsive enough that he might use unthinkable means to save face. My wish is that he read and understand Toge’s poem engraved on the rectangular monument in Hiroshima, the memorial to Toge. It is titled “Give Back The Humane.” The English translation reads:
“Give back my father, give back my mother;
Give grandpa back, give grandma back;
Give my sons and daughters back.
Give me back myself.
Give back the human race.
As long as this life lasts, this life,
Give back peace
That will never end.”
There is hope in his words.