80 Years of Living and Writing in the Shadow of the Bomb

I was born on August 9, 1945, the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fear of nuclear war was widespread among children of my generation. There were air raid drills where we hid under our desks or crouched alongside the wall in the hall. There were debates about the construction of fallout shelters. Fallout from nuclear testing caused the radioactive element strontium 90 to appear in the milk supply, we were told. When I visited the Oceanside public library when I was 12 or so, I read the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Each issue included a picture of a nuclear clock showing how close political and military tension was pushing us to midnight and the risks of a nuclear war, which the scientists viewed as unthinkable.

For my 76th birthday, my older brother Ron gave me a puzzle of The New York Times front page on the day of my birth. The three-line banner headline for the day read: “Soviet Declares War on Japan; Attacks Manchuria, Tokyo Says; Atom Bomb Loosed on Japan.” The importance of the Soviet Union joining in their allies’ war against Japan was rightly emphasized by the Times. Unfortunately, the alliance came apart soon after the end of the war, and the Cold War between two nuclear-armed powers shaped global and domestic politics for over 40 years. Although several arms control agreements were reached between 1963 and 2010, in the last 15 years, the cancellation and suspension of these agreements and increasing political and military tension have put the Bulletin’s clock closer than ever to midnight.

We grew up with the fear that the Cold War could become a nuclear war, and each of us had to decide what attitude to take to both the Cold War and the nuclear danger. My parents shaped my attitudes, raised my brother and me to support unions, working people, and civil rights and to oppose the Cold War and McCarthyism. When playing touch football and other games with three other boys when I was about 12, we debated the U.S.-Soviet conflict. We usually played in a field near the Ocean Lea complex where the three of them lived. Touch football is a pretty easy, fun game to play when it’s two against two, at least when the four players are similar sizes, ages, and skill levels. We took breaks from throwing, running, and catching to debate politics, especially international affairs. In these discussions, I was critical of Cold War confrontation and favored negotiations to reduce the dangers of nuclear war and achieve eventual nuclear disarmament.

My acute focus on the danger of nuclear war may stem in part from the accident of my birthday. I’ve been writing about the dangers presented by nuclear weapons for over 60 years. I hope the reader will forgive me for quoting some of my previous writings.

Cuban Missile Crisis and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote some political essays for the Oceanside High School newspaper, Sider Press. I wrote an essay about the nuclear danger just before the Cuban missile crisis erupted. I commented:

On a recent television program, Howard K. Smith made the extraordinary statement that President Kennedy was experiencing a decline in popularity because there was no great crisis for him to overcome. Mr. Smith overlooked one extremely important crisis—that of the threatened nuclear holocaust.

If President Kennedy were to effect a decrease in world tension during the next two years, he would undoubtedly be returned to office. The stage would then be set for the president to work toward a successful disarmament agreement during the next four years. If the president accomplished this task, he would become one of the most popular presidents in the nation’s history.

The essay went on to recommend cultural exchanges and a compromise to achieve an end to nuclear testing. “What we need most is for both sides to make a sincere effort to bring about a decrease in world tension. President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev should acknowledge the fact that nuclear war would result in the destruction of mankind. There would be no winner in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.” Before my essay appeared in print, Cold War tensions and the danger of nuclear war reached a peak with the Cuban missile crisis. Eight months after the confrontation over Cuba was resolved by diplomacy, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed on the Limited Test Ban Treaty.

I explored the significance of the events of 1962 and 1963 in an essay published in The Japan Times in 1999:

...the experience of the missile crisis led Kennedy to move away from seeing foreign policy as a tough competitive game. He came to appreciate the human stakes involved. He was, after all, a parent of young children as well as a president.

In a speech at American University on June 10, 1963, Kennedy indicated the changes in his thinking. He said that the U.S. should seek a “genuine peace“ so that nations can “build a better life for their children” rather than a “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.“

Casting a critical eye on cold war attitudes, Kennedy sought to “make the world safe for diversity.” He stressed that “we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

Members of Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization to which I belong, have also been highlighting Kennedy’s American University speech. It’s possible for individuals and presidents to think anew, and it’s dearly needed at a time of the genocide in Gaza and the ongoing and dangerous war in Ukraine.

Ronald Reagan, the Nuclear Freeze Movement, and the INF Treaty

Shortly after he was inaugurated president, I wrote to Ronald Reagan asking him to accept Leonid Brezhnev’s suggestion that they meet in a summit conference:

I am very concerned about the escalation in anti-Soviet rhetoric that has characterized your first weeks in office. A return to 1950s rhetoric can only lead to increasing tensions between our country and the Soviet Union. Such tensions can bring us to the brink of nuclear war again. And who knows if once at the brink, you will be able to stop from falling over into a nuclear holocaust that would destroy us all... Are you afraid that if peace breaks out, you will find it more difficult to line the pockets of the defense contractors with still more billions of taxpayers’ dollars? Whatever your... fears, I believe you should fear nuclear war more. The overwhelming desire of the peoples of the world is to see an end to the nuclear arms race which threatens us all.

Reagan’s initial aggressive posture led to the development of a massive nuclear freeze movement in the U.S. and a movement in Europe against accepting new U.S. intermediate range nuclear weapons. I was among over 1 million people in New York City on June 12 ,1982 demanding that all sides add no new weapons to their nuclear arsenals. It was the nuclear freeze movement, which the Soviet Union supported, and the Reagan administration attacked, that eventually led to a reversal in Reagan’s policy and the adoption of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. Initiatives by a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also played a part in Reagan’s change.

Japan and Peace

About a decade after Reagan left the White House, I was a Fulbright scholar at Tohoku University in Japan. When I arrived in Japan, I mentioned at the initial Fulbright scholar gathering my birth date, my opposition to nuclear weapons, and my experience as part of a generation involved in peace and civil rights activism. Two others around the table, Lois Helmbold, a historian who became a close friend, and Sam Sheppard, the director of the Fulbright program in Japan, mentioned they were also born in 1945. In interviews I’ve conducted with members of my birth cohort, it seemed clear that most of us were influenced by Kennedy’s idea that “the world is very different now.” As San Antonio playwright Sterling Houston put it in my interview with him: “Coming of age in the 60s when there was this ferment [and] the possibilities of change and all this stuff was happening... It seemed like it really could happen... we really could make it better.”

The most memorable experience of my stay in Japan was the visit my younger daughter Leah and I took to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Children’s Peace Monument in Peace Memorial Park. We were already aware of the story of Sadako Sasaki and the folding of paper cranes. Seeing the exhibits in the museum, the monuments, the film Hiroshima: A Mother’s Prayer, and the thousands of cranes in the park brought both of us to tears.

With the danger of nuclear war, greater than ever, we need a renewed grassroots movement to support the eradication of nuclear weapons from the planet.

In an essay published in The Japan Times after I returned home, I commented on the impact of the visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and my concern that Japan was sending 600 soldiers to join the U.S. occupation of Iraq. I mentioned my fear that the government of Japan was undermining the country’s peace constitution. The New York Times article on Japan’s military mission emphasized that the U.S. “imposed” the peace constitution on Japan, but I pointed out the Times failed to note “the strong desire of the Japanese people after the war to break with the militarism and aggression that had brought enormous harm and suffering to Japan’s neighbors and disaster to Japan itself.” I added that “I learned from my time in Japan that strong sentiments for peace and opposition against nuclear arms persist to this day.”

I learned a great deal from the peace museum’s “documentation of the many times my government has threatened to use nuclear weapons and of the continuing advocacy of nuclear disarmament by the citizens and leaders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” I argued, that “at a time when a neoconservative clique seeking world hegemony plays a leading role in U.S. foreign policy formation... Japan’s antinuclear advocacy is needed now more than ever.”

Anti-Nuclear Weapons Advocacy Today

Commemorations of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taking place throughout the world this week. On August 6, 2025, United Nations Under-Secretary-General Izumi Nakamitsu issued a statement to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on behalf of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres:

...today the risk of nuclear conflict is growing. Trust is eroding. Geopolitical divisions are widening. And the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion.

Yet, there are signs of hope.

Last year, the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo—which represents the survivors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings—was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its tireless work in raising awareness about this critical issue.

We must focus our attention on the genocide in Gaza and the “escalating violence” and “forced displacement” in the West Bank, the continuing war in Ukraine, and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. With the danger of nuclear war, greater than ever, we need a renewed grassroots movement to support the eradication of nuclear weapons from the planet.

Nuclear arms agreements among the nuclear powers are nearly defunct. The people who live in the nuclear armed states need to pressure their governments to eliminate their nuclear stockpiles and instead pursue diplomacy with all the other nations of the world rather than nuclear intimidation.

The United Nations notes that September 26 “The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons has been observed annually since 2014.” The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the United Nations entered into force on January 22, 2021. We the people of the states possessing nuclear weapons must do all in our power to persuade our governments to ratify the treaty and implement its provisions that will lead to a world without nuclear weapons. The survival of humanity is at stake.

This piece was originally published on Martin Halpern’s Substack, A Marxist Writing and Making History.