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hibakusha
Testimony of the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: No More Nuclear Weapons
They have been telling their stories for nearly 80 years. It’s about time more of us listen.
Aug 09, 2025
CONTENT WARNING: This article contains descriptions of nuclear weapons effects, including disturbing accounts of the victims.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, on August 9, the second was dropped on Nagasaki. Both cities were totally destroyed by the bombs, a new type of weapon developed by the United States, infamously through the Manhattan Project. In Hiroshima, over 140,000 were killed. In Nagasaki, over 70,000. In the blink of an eye, humanity witnessed two of the darkest days in history.
This year marks the 80th commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each year, scores of Japanese peace organizations, and those from other nations, hold events in the two cities to remember the tragedies and renew passions for continuing the fight for peace.
This year, I had the privilege of being invited to attend one such event: the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, organized by Gensuikyo. It has been a tremendous honor to join as part of a delegation from the United States and as a representative of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, an organization whose board I sit on.
What I have experienced has moved me powerfully. I learned from testimony from nuclear bomb survivors (Hibakusha), technical descriptions of the events of those days, diplomatic arguments from around the world, and demonstrations of peace movements from Japan and beyond. In the aftermath of such powerful testimony, the natural conclusion is inescapable: Nuclear weapons should be made illegal, never used again, and dismantled. The wealth of resources going toward their production should instead be dedicated to programs that actually create security like education, diplomacy, material security, and cooperative institutions.
I’d like to report back what I experienced and learned for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the details of nuclear weapons control—especially those in the United States. As someone who grew up through U.S. public schools and engages with students in higher education, I can say that we are woefully ignorant of the truth. Let this correct the record and help open more eyes to the truth.
The Reality of the Bombings and their Aftermath
I want to share both the technical details of what happened during nuclear bomb detonation as well as testimony from those who survived the blasts, the Hibakusha. Both are difficult to read. I urge readers to open their minds and hearts and imagine to their greatest ability what those who experienced the bombings felt like as horror unfolded before their very eyes.
At the World Conference, Professor Oya Masato of the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science shared a scientific account of the bombing of Nagasaki. This second bomb exploded at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, 503 meters above the town of Matsuyama, about three kilometers north of Nagasaki city center. Instantly, the bomb turned into a fireball of tens of millions of degrees. The surface of the fireball cooled to approximately 7,000°C in 0.1 seconds. The ground temperature at the hypocenter (point of detonation) rose as high as 3,000-4,000°C, and humans in the area were instantly carbonized. The bomb generated a shock wave and blast which traveled at 440 meters per second at the hypocenter and 60 meters per second two kilometers away from the hypocenter. Those shock waves destroyed most of the city, an area of 405 square kilometers, within 10 seconds. Fires emerged and burned an area of 6.7 square kilometers. Thousands were instantly killed, and by the end of 1945, the death toll rose to 74,000.
This scientific description begins to describe the horrors of the bomb. But it can be hard to imagine. What stands out is the sheer power and devastation: a whole city leveled and engulfed in flames within seconds. Devastation on a scale never before seen. Callous destruction, indiscriminate murder.
What truly rends the heart is the testimony of Hibakusha, those who survived the bomb and tell their stories. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum depicts many such stories. It’s nearly unbearable to take in and try to imagine even a sliver of what these horrors would feel like. The stories make clear that the atomic bombs created a literal hell on Earth.
A device that can cause this amount of suffering has no place in human society.
One story, shared by a Hibakusha of Hiroshima, Park Jung-soon, 11 years old at the time, describes her experience. On the morning of the bombing, she and her six family members living together were surprised by a flash like lightning and thunder. The sky lit up. Suddenly, a blast and tremendous sound shook the whole house, lifting the entire structure upward. The house fell back down, collapsed, and crushed the family beneath it. It all happened in seconds. They could not move their bodies and thought they would die.
Imagine the sheer terror of suddenly being launched into the air only to plummet down and be crushed by your home. Imagine your home, something that we hold deep attachment to and a place of safety, comfort, and love, collapsing down on you and your whole family. In moments your safe haven becomes the source of incredible pain. Imagine those you love looking at you with the fear of death in their eyes for a split second before having your gaze ripped away by the force of crushing weight.
Jung-soon opened her eyes and found herself trapped under a thick beam. Her mother desperately pulled her out and helped her crawl out of the collapsed walls. Her head was bleeding heavily, but she rose to her feet and looked around: The house next door had fallen down as well, people were running away, crying, shouting. The village as she knew it was falling apart.
While the family fled, they saw people dead on the ground, or alive but in agony crying or shouting. People were pulling carts carrying wounded or dead neighbors. People were covered in burns and suffering in pain. She describes it as like the hell of a cartoon but in reality.
At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, there were many such stories and testimonies, as well as photographs and artwork created by Hibakusha attempting to visually depict what they experienced. Details like those in Jung-soon’s story were common. People burned beyond recognition. Structures flattened. The dead littering the city. People walking around with flesh peeling from their bodies, literally melting off, begging and screaming for water. It was, indeed, hell on Earth.
It may be difficult, but I implore you to try to deeply imagine what these words convey. In a world where many of us are constantly exposed to language of indiscriminate violence through news media, it may be easy to simply read this and register it as fact. But try to register it as feeling. What would it feel like to feel your own broken body throb with pain while simultaneously witnessing mass death all around you? Can you imagine a human being burnt beyond recognition? Someone with their flesh melting off? The sounds of screams, crying, wailing, and pure fear were profoundly traumatizing.
The effects of nuclear weapons, the scenes described by the Hibakusha, are things that should never be visited upon this Earth. A device that can cause this amount of suffering has no place in human society.
This does not even describe the effects of the bombing that persisted long after the initial devastation. Hibakusha faced severe effects from radiation poisoning and the physical damage—burns, breakages, disfigurations—they sustained. They were also subject to discrimination for decades, as people feared contamination if they came in contact with Hibakusha. Many kept their stories secret.
These are tragic tales that the Japanese peace movement describes and uplifts for all to learn from. They have been telling their stories for nearly 80 years. It’s about time more of us listen.
Telling the Truth in the United States
In the United States, there is a profound culture of ignorance surrounding nuclear weapons. I experienced this firsthand growing up in U.S. public schools and then in collegiate engineering studies.
When I was in high school, I elected to take the upper-level U.S. history class—one which gives college credit if you do well enough. The course is infamous in American high schools: AP U.S. History, or APUSH for short. Our teacher taught out of a book used in many classrooms across the country, titled The American Pageant: A History of the Republic by Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey. This book, like many others used in the U.S., describes the atomic bombing as the key to ending the second World War, a tough but necessary decision by President Harry Truman. The argument goes that dropping the bombs eliminated the need for a U.S. ground invasion, which would have cost half a million lives (which Howard Zinn notes in A People’s History of the United States seemed to have “been pulled out of the air to justify the bombings”). It becomes a trolly problem of sorts: Would you end 200,000 lives to save half a million?
That’s as far as we typically get in U.S. depictions of the bombings. We are stuck thinking at a high school level about nuclear weapons—in a country whose high schools are not known for their rigor or nuanced teaching of U.S. history. Now, when I teach at universities and talk with students in engineering, their understanding of the bombings is the same: an unfortunate necessity or political blunder. Even the faculty teaching the course, presumably sharp thinkers with PhDs, repeat the same lines.
Students should not be indoctrinated into a version of the story favorable to the U.S. perspective.
In popular media, the story is no different. 2023’s blockbuster Oppenheimer—which broke box office expectations and was given seven awards at the Oscars—was a shallow depiction of the events. As it told a dramatized version of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work on the Manhattan Project, it attempted to depict his inner turmoil as he grappled with visions of what must have become of victims. However, the screen time dedicated to his haunting visions does not exceed five minutes in a three-hour film.
Accurate depictions of the horrors of nuclear bombings are nowhere to be found in dominant U.S. education and media. Textbooks do not describe the detailed suffering of victims, the social discrimination they experienced afterward, or the stories of their deeply difficult lives. Films choose not to center the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather the perpetrators. It is tragic and laughable to consider the fact that a film like Oppenheimer is praised for its critique of nuclear weapons while it entirely centers the life of the man who was instrumental in their creation rather than the lives of his victims.
Peace organizations across the U.S. are pushing against these narratives, trying to spread the truth, and fighting for nonproliferation. But without countering the widespread ignorance of our own population, we will not get far. In a world increasingly plagued by misinformation and falsehood, we have our work cut out when it comes to effectively spreading the truth about nuclear weapons. We need to dispel the veil of ignorance covering our communities if we are to build a large enough movement to push the U.S. to disarm, re-engage in treaties, and work toward peace under cooperation rather than precarious stability based on fear and threats.
One of the first steps can be to simply tell the truth. Stories matter, and how we tell the history of our own nation matters. Students should not be indoctrinated into a version of the story favorable to the U.S. perspective. Media should accurately describe the horrors. The stories of the Hibakusha should be known by everyone.
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80 Years After US Attack on Hiroshima, Rising Threat Fuels Calls to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
The hibakusha, or survivors, "deserve to see their work vindicated and to witness the end of these inhumane, indiscriminate weapons of total destruction in their lifetime," said ICAN's leader.
Aug 06, 2025
Survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and other nuclear abolitionists renewed calls for ridding the world of nukes on Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the American attack on the Japanese city.
During the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony in Japan, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui pointed to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which have contributed to the narrative that nuclear weapons are necessary for national defense and elevated global fears of their use.
"These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history," he said. Russia and the United States—which is arming Ukraine and Israel—have the largest nuclear arsenals. The other nuclear-armed nations are China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.
"Despite the current turmoil at the nation-state level, we, the people, must never give up," Matsui added. "Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world."
Silent prayers were held in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, marking 80 years since the atomic bombing of the city by the US on August 6, 1945.
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— Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) August 6, 2025 at 6:35 AM
The mayor also urged the Japanese government to respect the wishes of hibakusha, or survivors, and join the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was adopted in 2017 and took effect in 2021.
"The treaty not only bans nuclear weapons and all activities related to their production, deployment, and use, but also mandates that countries that joined the treaty provide support for people harmed by nuclear weapons in the past and for the cleanup of areas that were used for nuclear testing," survivor Terumi Tanaka noted Wednesday in a New York Times opinion piece.
Tanaka was 13 years old at the time of the bombing—an experience he recounted last year, while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of a group he co-chairs: Nihon Hidankyo, also known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers.
"Our Nobel Peace Prize sends a message to younger people that they need to be aware that we are facing an emergency—and the need to see a larger movement of young activists working to address the nuclear threat," 93-year-old Tanaka wrote Wednesday. "Even here in Japan, not enough people see this as a pressing issue."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the Nobel Peace Prize after playing a significant role in building support for the TPNW in 2017—also used the anniversary to advocate for abolishing nuclear weapons.
ICAN executive Melissa Parke, who joined the ceremony in Japan, said in a statement that "it is not possible to come to Hiroshima and attend these solemn commemorations without being moved as well as convinced of the urgent need for nuclear weapons to be eliminated."
"The hibakusha, who were awarded last year's Nobel Peace Prize for their tenacious campaigning for the elimination of nuclear weapons, deserve to see their work vindicated and to witness the end of these inhumane, indiscriminate weapons of total destruction in their lifetime," Parke argued. "That means the nine nuclear-armed countries, most of which were represented here today, must heed their call to join the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and get rid of their arsenals."
As we mark 80 years since the atomic bombings of Japan, CND Vice-President Caroline Lucas writes from Hiroshima and asks why are nuclear powers ditching disarmament for a new nuclear arms race? Read more: www.independent.co.uk/voices/hiros...
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— Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (@cnduk.bsky.social) August 6, 2025 at 8:03 AM
In a Common Dreams opinion piece about the youth impacted by the 1945 bombings, ICAN treaty coordinator Tim Wright wrote: "The fact that children would suffer the greatest harm of all in the event of a nuclear attack against a city today should have profound implications for policymaking in nuclear-armed states and spur action for disarmament. Yet, all nine such states continue to act contrary to that objective. And the risk of a nuclear weapon being used again appears to be at an all-time high."
Common Dreams also published related opinions from Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of Veterans for Peace; Austin Headrick, public education and advocacy coordinator for Asia at American Friends Service Committee; and Ann Wright, a U.S. Army veteran who resigned from the U.S. State Department in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Speaking at the ongoing 2025 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, Wright noted that "there are a multitude of organizations in the United States and around the world that are working for the elimination of nuclear weapons."
"As we commemorate the lives lost and damaged by nuclear weapons 80 years ago," she said, "we commit ourselves to work harder for the elimination of these weapons, taking on our governments and the industries that make money from the construction and testing of these weapons of mass destruction."
ICAN in June released a report showing that the world's nine nuclear-armed nations spent more than $100 billion on their arsenals last year, up 11% from 2023. A few days later, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual yearbook warned that "a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened."
Those reports followed similar warnings from the experts behind the Doomsday Clock, who in January set the symbol of how close the world is to apocalypse at "89 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to catastrophe."
Fueling fears of such a catastrophe, U.S. President Donald Trump said last Friday that he "ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions" in response to "highly provocative statements" by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council.
During Trump's first term, he withdrew the United States from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia—after which the Kremlin declared a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of those missiles. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced Monday that it will no longer abide by its rules, citing recent moves by the U.S. and its allies.
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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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