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Remembering the Children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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 policy-making in nuclear-armed states and spur action for disarmament. And yet the world's nuclear-armed states continue to withhold their support for abolition.
Aug 06, 2025
Before dawn on August 6, 1945, Tsuyako Kubota gave birth to her second daughter at her home in Hiroshima’s Nishikanon neighborhood. A few hours later, in a blinding flash, much of the city was reduced to smoldering ruins by a single atomic bomb.
The young mother, her newborn baby and her two-year-old daughter, Sumie, became trapped in the wreckage of their home. The girls’ father, Minoru, a Japanese-American from Hawaii, tried desperately to free them.
“Sumie was crying,” he recalled. “She said to me, ‘Daddy, it’s hot! The fire is coming! My hands are burning!’ There was a final scream, and then I couldn’t hear her voice anymore.”
Sumie and her hours-old sister—who was never given a name—were among the estimated 23,000 children killed in the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago this week. A further 15,000 perished in the attack on Nagasaki three days later.
“She said to me, ‘Daddy, it’s hot! The fire is coming! My hands are burning!’ There was a final scream, and then I couldn’t hear her voice anymore.”
Their deaths, and those of tens of thousands of other civilians, challenge official narratives in the West that the use of nuclear weapons against the two Japanese cities in the final days of World War II was morally justified.
It is believed that this photo was taken one day before the Hiroshima bombing. Five-year-old Wataoka Hirono (right) and her two-year-old sister, Kimino (right), were both killed. (Photo courtesy of Iwata Miho)
A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that U.S. public support for the attacks is declining. In 1945, it was as high as 85 percent. Today, only around 35 percent of Americans believe their government’s actions were justified, with 31 percent believing they weren’t. The other third are unsure.
…
With few exceptions, those who survived the atomic bombings and are still alive were children at the time. Through their young eyes, they witnessed unimaginable horror. Known in Japanese as hibakusha, many have devoted their lives to the cause of nuclear disarmament, sharing their first-hand testimonies time and again in the hope of avoiding a recurrence of such tragedies. Their warning is stark: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
Last December, their efforts were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations.
Their warning is stark: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
Many of the survivors lost their parents, siblings, and friends. They have suffered lifelong physical and psychological trauma. Some have endured multiple surgeries to treat painful keloid scars, extract glass fragments embedded deep in their bodies, or remove cancers caused by their exposure to the bombs’ radiation.
Three-year-old Tetsutani Shinichi (right) was killed in the Hiroshima bombing while doing what he loved most: riding his tricycle. His seven-year-old sister, Michiko (left), and their baby sister, Yoko, were also killed. (Photo courtesy of the Tetsutani family)
In a nuclear attack, children are especially vulnerable, as their skin is more delicate and their bodies frailer, and they have more cells that are growing and dividing rapidly and thus more susceptible to radiation effects. They are significantly more likely than adults to die from burns, blast injuries, and acute radiation sickness.
As the late paediatric endocrinologist Michael S. Kappy explained in a 1984 paper, “Children and adults do not share equally the dreadful short-term effects of ‘the bomb’, and it is clear from all available data that children are also most susceptible to the long-term effects that appear after varying latency periods.”
The disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons on infants and children was underscored in a declaration adopted this March by the 73 countries that have so far ratified or acceded to the landmark 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
In a nuclear attack, children are especially vulnerable, as their skin is more delicate and their bodies frailer, and they have more cells that are growing and dividing rapidly and thus more susceptible to radiation effects.
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 policy-making 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.
…
In Hiroshima, thousands of school students were outdoors creating firebreaks on the morning of the atomic bombing. Completely unshielded from the bomb’s effects, they stood little chance of survival. The mortality rate for those within one kilometre of the hypocentre was around 94 percent. Approximately 6,300 of them died.
Many parents spent days or weeks searching for their missing children in the aftermath. For some, not knowing their children’s fate became unbearable. One mother in Hiroshima, refusing to accept her daughter’s death, kept a door or window open for the rest of her life in case she one day returned home.
Suzuki Kimiko (left) and her elder brother, Hideaki (right), in Hiroshima a few years before the bombing. Both were killed, along with two other siblings. Their father, Rokuro, was a keen photographer. (Photo courtesy of Suzuki Tsuneaki)
Some parents managed to identify the charred, swollen bodies of their children among scores of corpses only by the name tags on their clothes. Others found their children alive and nursed them for days, weeks or months until they took their final breaths. More than a few expressed guilt at the inadequacy of their care amid extreme shortages of medicines and food.
In Nagasaki, one mother watched as four of her children succumbed to acute radiation poisoning one after another. “I kept thinking that human beings shouldn’t die so easily,” she reflected.
Another Nagasaki mother’s face was so badly burnt and disfigured in the attack that her grievously injured two-year-old son couldn’t recognize her as she cared for him in his dying moments.
Some children appeared unharmed at first, having sustained no burns or other visible injuries, but developed fatal diseases years later, as ionizing radiation had entered their bodies and altered their cells.
All four members of the Miyazaki family in this photo were killed in the Nagasaki bombing: eight-year-old Yuji (centre rear), five-year-old Tsuneji (right), three-year-old Yasuko (centre front) and their mother, Tsuneko. (Photo courtesy of Saito Takeo)
One such child was Sadako Sasaki, a toddler at the time of the Hiroshima bombing. She died a decade later from acute malignant lymph gland leukemia. During her hospitalization, she folded over a thousand paper cranes with her weak and skinny arms in the hope it would bring her good health.
“Until her very last moment, she held onto her wish and made a great effort to survive,” her father remembered. “I loved her so much that I couldn’t come to terms with her death for a long time.”
Sadako’s tragic story continues to inspire children in Japan and throughout the world to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons—an increasingly urgent task given deteriorating relations among nuclear-armed states and the enhancement and expansion of their arsenals.
It is estimated there are more than 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, most of them vastly more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped eight decades ago. In the words of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, “They offer no security—just carnage and chaos. Their elimination would be the greatest gift we could bestow on future generations.”
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'Up in Arms': Ben & Jerry's Co-Founder Launches New Campaign Against Bloated Pentagon Budget
"If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want," said Ben Cohen, "the American Dream can become a reality again."
Jun 14, 2025
Joined by retired military officers and national security experts, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen on Thursday launched a campaign targeting the nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget and the $100 billion spent on nuclear weapons and "to get our country to start funding the American Dream instead of the death of millions of people."
Standing near Union Station in Washington, D.C. beside a towering sculpture showing what $100 billion looks like, supporters of the Up in Arms campaign—a planned four-year public education and advocacy project "to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line"—chanted, "Money for the poor, not nuclear war!"
"There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world," Cohen said at the event. "And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again."
The peace group Ploughshares, which moderated a press conference for the launch of Up in Arms, said that the faux-$100 billion installation could be the tallest protest structure ever erected in Washington, D.C.
"This is a structure that represents the $100 billion that our country spends each year on nuclear weapons," Cohen said while standing in front of the tower and embracing Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the peace group CodePink. "Fifty percent of that is for a whole new generation of nuclear weapons."
"Ice cream not bombs!" Benjamin said next. "Ice cream not nuclear weapons!"
The $100 billion figure includes spending on modernizing the nuclear arsenal, supporting its infrastructure, and addressing legacy issues like nuclear waste.
"Congress could make it easier for Americans to buy homes and save on gas or they could tackle the opioid epidemic–but those are clearly NOT their priorities," Up in Arms says on its website. "We have all the money we need to create a good life for all Americans. For half the money we spend on nuclear bombs, we could stop poisoning kids with lead, provide funding for public schools, and make childcare affordable."
Former U.S. military officers-turned-peace defenders Dennis Laich, Lawrence Wilkerson, Ann Wright, Karen Kwiatkowski, William Astore, and Dennis Fritz, as well as FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and former CIA officer Ray McGovern, are taking part in the Up in Arms campaign.
"We're here today to say we don't want our money spent this way, we want our money spent… on things that keep people alive, not on things that kill people," said Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and current member of the Eisenhower Media Network and Veterans Against Genocide.
"We're up in arms and down on these damn nuclear weapons," she added, "and We the People have to be able to go to each one of these congresspeople and say, 'We don't care how much money you're getting from all of these companies that make a killing out if killing with these nuclear weapons.'"
Laich, a former U.S. Army general also with the Eisenhower Media Network, noted that the U.S. military budget "is larger than the next 10 countries combined, and what do we get for it?"
"Since World War II, we tied in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, we won the first Gulf War, we lost in Iraq, and we lost in Afghanistan," he said. "They always say we have the greatest military on earth; I don't buy it."
President Donald Trump is proposing a record $1 trillion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2026 while backing legislation that would dramatically slash spending on vital social programs in order to fund a massive tax break that would overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations.
On Friday, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—which earned the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for spearheading the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—published an analysis showing the world's nine nuclear powers spent a combined baseline $100 billion on their arsenals last year, an 11% increase from 2023. The United States alone accounted for well over half of that amount.
Cohen is a longtime anti-war activist. Last month, he was arrested after disrupting a Senate hearing, shouting, "Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S." as he was hauled off by police.
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War Profiteers Benefit as Nuclear Weapons Spending Soared Above $100 Billion Last Year
New analysis reveals that global nuclear weapons spending "could feed all of the 345 million people currently facing the most severe levels of hunger globally, including starvation, for nearly two years."
Jun 13, 2025
The world's nine nuclear-armed nations spent more than $100 billion on their atomic arsenals last year—up 11% from 2023—with the United States accounting for both the largest share and biggest increase in expenditures, a report published Friday by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reveals.
The new ICAN analysis identifies a $9.9 billion increase in global nuclear weapons spending in 2024, with the U.S.—the only country to ever carry out a nuclear attack on another nation—spending $56.8 billion, more than the combined expenditures of the eight other countries with nukes. In addition to the U.S., Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have nuclear arsenals. The $5.3 billion annual spending increase by the U.S. was also more than any other nuclear power.
All that spending on doomsday weapons padded the profits of major arms makers. According to the report:
In 2024, at least twenty-six companies working on nuclear weapons development and maintenance held significant contracts for their work. These companies earned at least $43.5 billion in the year and hold at least $463 billion in outstanding contracts. In 2024, new contracts worth around $20 billion were awarded to these companies. The companies identified in this report paid lobbyists in France and the United States more than $128 million to represent their interests last year. They also had 196 meetings with high-level U.K. officials including 18 with the prime minister's office in 2024.
"Nuclear-armed countries could have paid the United Nations' budget 28 times with what they spent to build and maintain nuclear weapons in 2024," the report states. "They could feed all of the 345 million people currently facing the most severe levels of hunger globally, including starvation, for nearly two years."
Noting that "98 countries have signed, ratified, or acceded" to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), ICAN—which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark accord—asserted that "it is up to each government, and the citizens of that country, to decide which path they will choose."
ICAN asserted that the stakes are higher than at any time in a generation.
"With two major wars involving nuclear-armed states in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as nuclear tensions escalating between India and Pakistan and on the Korean Peninsula, the risk that nuclear weapons could be used in combat is widely regarded as the highest it has been since the Cold War and possibly ever," the group warned Friday in a separate statement. "In response, the nuclear-armed states are clinging to the doctrine of deterrence which is based on brinkmanship and the threat to use nuclear weapons, exacerbating the risk of conflict."
Susi Snyder, ICAN program coordinator and report co-author, said Friday that the global crisis of nuclear proliferation and out-of-control spending can be solved, but that "doing so means understanding the vested interests fiercely defending the option for nine countries to indiscriminately murder civilians."
"The good news," she added, "is a majority are going in another direction. Ninety-eight states, supported by over 700 civil society organizations, have either signed, ratified, or directly acceded to the... TPNW that came into force four years ago."
This year's ICAN report highlighted the "hidden costs" of nuclear weapons.
"It's an affront to democracy that citizens and lawmakers in countries that boast of their democratic credentials are not allowed to know that nuclear weapons from other countries are based on their soil or how much of their taxes is being spent on them," ICAN policy and research coordinator and report co-author Alicia Sanders-Zakre said. "It is time for these democratically elected leaders to heed the call of their people to remove nuclear weapons from their countries and work for their total elimination."
Responding to the report, Oliver Meier, policy and research director at the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, said, "At a time when better transparency and accountability of nuclear weapon states range high on the agenda of many non-nuclear weapon states, the absolute secrecy and lack of engagement on the costs of Russian and NATO nuclear sharing arrangements are an anachronism."
"In democratic societies, legislators and other stakeholders must have opportunities to review these arrangements, including relevant expenditure," he added.
The day before ICAN published the report, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, was joined by retired military officers and national security experts in Washington, D.C. for the launch of Up In Arms, a four-year campaign "to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line."
"There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world," said Cohen. "And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again."
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As the Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer to Midnight, Will Trump Make the Ultimate Deal?
All nuclear nations are following the U.S. lead in rebuilding their arsenals, giving President Trump, who has expressed concern over nuclear war, a chance to act if he will take it.
Jan 28, 2025
Eighty years ago saw the dawn of the nuclear age with the development and subsequent sole use of nuclear weapons when the United States dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing roughly 200,000, mainly civilian Japanese citizens. These events and the subsequent nuclear arms race driven by the myth of nuclear deterrence have hung over civilization to this day, threatening our very existence.
On Tuesday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists unveiled its prophetic “Doomsday Clock” moving the hand to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight, representing the time at which our planet is uninhabitable and life as we know it is no longer possible. The Bulletin was originally founded in 1945 by the developers of the atomic bomb, including Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists to inform the public of man-made threats to human existence.
While nuclear weapons were the initial existential threat focus of the Doomsday Clock, risk multipliers are now included. These include the climate crisis, which reduces access to natural resources fueling conflict. Bio threats, like COVID-19 and future pandemics, are increasing as mankind and the animal kingdom interface ever more closely. In addition, the threats of bioterrorism, disinformation, and disruptive technologies—including AI—have made the risk even greater.
An important element to realizing this call to protect our world is the need to build the political will and give cover to members of Congress, many of whom who have been captured by the nuclear and military industrial complex.
Even at this time of great challenge, there is great hope arising from the international community as the fourth anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was celebrated last week. Under this treaty, nuclear weapons are illegal to stockpile, develop, test, transfer, use, or even threaten to use, and join all other weapons of mass destruction in that reality. The treaty emanated from civil society; impacted communities, including Hibakusha and victims of nuclear weapons, testing, and development legacy; international organizations; and government and elected officials. Today, with 73 nations ratifying the treaty, half the world’s countries representing over 2.5 billion people are on board with this nuclear ban.
The international movement that brought forth this treaty is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace prize. This movement currently has 652 international partner organizations. The aim of this movement is to stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons.
In the United States there is a parallel effort endorsing nuclear abolition and the precautionary safeguard measures to reduce the risk of nuclear war until these weapons are verifiably abolished. This movement is called “Back from the Brink.” Similar to the TPNW, this movement has been endorsed by 493 organizations, 77 municipalities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 428 municipal and state officials, and 44 members of Congress. It calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:
- Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
- Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first;
- Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack;
- Taking U.S. Nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
- Canceling the plan to replace the U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
There is companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, H. Res. 77, calling on the United States to adopt Back from the Brink’s comprehensive policy prescriptions for preventing nuclear war. This legislation introduced by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) is expected to be reintroduced soon in the new Congress.
An important element to realizing this call to protect our world is the need to build the political will and give cover to members of Congress, many of whom who have been captured by the nuclear and military industrial complex, to endorse this legislation and to engage the next generation whose future is threatened by policies that they have had no say in. Across the nation over the past year a student movement called Students for Nuclear Disarmament (SND) has been taking shape in our high schools, colleges, and universities.
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Talia’s Story
I am currently a senior at Tufts University, graduating this June. As I reflect back on my choice of major, I recognize that I first knew I wanted to study international relations as a freshman in high school. I am an avid news reader and am fascinated by different countries’ decision-making processes. I considered myself well read and up to date on current events. It wasn’t until near the end of my freshman year of college that I had even heard of the nuclear threat.
After hearing one lecture on the growing threat of nuclear war, I changed my major to focus on understanding the history of nuclear weapons and advocating for disarmament through extracurricular activities. I joined SND last year, and, working with other student activists, renewed my passion for this work. Through webinars, emails, phone calls, and social media, we have engaged with students across America to build our movement.
It is clear that my generation does not associate the nuclear threat with problems we face today. SND is not only an organization that raises awareness, but also an organization that empowers young people to take action and show their congresspeople that we are not blind to this threat. Successful student activism inspires students on the precipice of action to take the next step. SND has made great strides in 2024, and, with growing chapters and more student leaders, SND is ready to push Congress to take action.
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The timing of this Doomsday Clock unveiling could not be more critical. U.S. President Donald Trump, who professes wanting to make America great again, has expressed his concern about the existential consequences of nuclear war throughout his public life. Campaigning last June he said, “Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it. Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it.”
With Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Gaza war, heightened tensions between Taiwan and China, and North Korean nuclear advances, the stakes could not be higher. All nuclear nations are following the U.S. lead in rebuilding their arsenals. The U.S. alone is estimated to spend $756 billion on nuclear weapons in the next 10 years.
Time and luck are not on our side. What is required is bold and new thinking about our nuclear realities. President Trump, the “great dealmaker,” is back in the White House with one last chance to make the ultimate deal for the future of humanity.
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Hiroshima Survivors Warn Against Nuclear War 79 Years After US Bombing
"The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," said one hibakusha. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they?"
Aug 06, 2024
As the number of people who survived the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rapidly dwindles 79 years after the attacks, hibakusha—the Japanese word for the survivors—and others are imploring humanity to do everything possible to avert another nuclear war.
"People still don't get it. The atomic bomb isn't a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," Shigeaki Mori, who was an 8-year-old boy on his way to school on the morning of August 6, 1945,
told The New York Times. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that."
Keiko Aguro was also 8 years old and standing on a road near her home in Hiroshima when a U.S. B-29 Superfortress dropped one bomb over Hiroshima that exploded with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT. The explosion destroyed nearly everything and everyone within about a 1-mile (1.62 km) radius. As many as 90,000 people died from the heat, blast wave, and ensuing inferno. Tens of thousands of others were injured, many of them mortally. Tens of thousands more would perish from radiation over the following weeks, months, and years.
"As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story," Aguro said. "'For we shall not repeat the evil'—this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."
"Now what survivors worry about is to die and meet our family in heaven," Aguro added. "I heard many survivors say, 'What shall I do? On this planet there are still many many nuclear weapons, and then I'll meet my daughter I couldn't save. I'll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons?' There is no answer I can tell them."
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was obliterated in a 20-kiloton air burst that killed as many as 75,000 people that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.
The authors of the Times piece—Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen—wrote that "as another anniversary of August 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans—and the globe, really—to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again."
However, they note that "countries like the United States, China, and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles," while "many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening."
"The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history," the trio wrote. But they added that nearly eight decades later, many Americans still hail the bombings as "necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end."
But the prevailing U.S. historical narrative—which portrays the bombings as critical to ending the war—ignores the lack of consensus and grave misgivings among senior military commanders about dropping the bombs. Seven of the eight five-star generals and admirals at the time opposed its use. One of them, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said as president that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—marked this year's ignominious anniversary with a report focusing on how children are affected by nuclear war and the threat thereof.
The report contains graphic descriptions of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and of nuclear weapons testing on children around the world. It also explains how fear of thermonuclear annihilation affected children during the Cold War and how humanity can protect children by disarming.
"Today, several thousand nuclear weapons still exist in the arsenals of nine countries, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere, especially children. Many have vastly greater explosive yields than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," the ICAN report states.
"To protect humanity from the catastrophic harm that nuclear weapons are designed to inflict, governments must act with urgency to eliminate them completely—the only guarantee against their further use and testing," the publication continues. "This would be a great service to the current generation of children and to all future generations, who would grow up free from the threat of nuclear war."
"The alternative is to pass on to them a world still teetering on the brink of catastrophe," ICAN added. "Or, quite unthinkable, a world reeling from the horrors of another nuclear attack, perhaps with a death toll orders of magnitude greater than that of the atomic bombings of 1945."
Echoing ICAN, Hiroshima Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki said during the annual commemoration of the bombing at Hiroshima Peace Park that "as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely be used again someday."
"Nuclear weapons abolition is not an ideal to achieve far in the future," Yuzaki stressed. "Instead, it is a pressing and real issue that we should desperately engage in at this moment since nuclear problems involve an imminent risk to human survival."
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Hundreds of Scientists Urge Biden to Cancel $100 Billion Nuclear Weapons Boondoggle
"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," an expert said.
Jul 08, 2024
More than 700 scientists on Monday called for an end to the United States' land-based nuclear weapons program that's set to be replaced, following a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs.
In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued that the new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel, was "expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary."
The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to "at least" $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according to The Hill.
The Defense review found that Sentinel was "essential to national security," but the scientists disagreed with the assessment.
"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS' global security program, said in a statement.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Barry Barish, a signatory to the letter, was also harshly critical of the Pentagon's approach.
"It is unconscionable to continue to develop nuclear weapons, like the Sentinel program," he said.
700+ scientists & experts are calling on President Biden & Congress to cancel the Sentinel program and retire the US land-based missile force. Doing so would save Americans more than $100 billion and make the world safer.
Learn more: https://t.co/5dQCOUKnQ3 pic.twitter.com/UxtHV9TSod
— Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) July 8, 2024
The soaring costs of Sentinel, which is overseen by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman, have been the subject of media attention. The program will cost an estimated $214 million per missile, far more than originally expected, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
However, the cost is hardly the only reason to cancel the program, UCS scientists argue. The silos that house the nuclear missiles, which are found in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, are vulnerable to attack—in fact, they are designed to draw enemy weapons away other U.S. targets, according to Scientific American. Such an attack would expose huge swaths of the American population to radioactive fallout.
Because they are a likely target, the siloed missiles are kept on "hair-trigger" alert so the U.S. president can launch them within minutes. This "increases the risk of nuclear war" that could start from false alarms, miscalculations, or misunderstandings, the UCS letter states.
The scientists further argue that there's no need for a land-based nuclear weapons system given the effectiveness of nuclear-armed submarines—one of the other parts of the nuclear triad, along with bomber jets. Such submarines are "hidden at sea" and "essentially invulnerable to attack," according to the letter. Moreover, the submarine missiles are just as accurate as land-based missiles, and already have "destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively," it states.
The submarine system is also being overhauled, as is the 'air' component of the nuclear triad. In total, the U.S. military plans to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years on renewing the nuclear arsenal, according to the Arms Control Association.
The U.S. leads the way in a surge of global spending on nuclear arms, according to two studies published last month, one of which found that nearly $3,000 per second was spent in 2023.
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'The Abyss Is Beckoning': Global Nuke Spending Surged to $2,898 a Second in 2023
Two new reports detail how the world's nine nuclear-armed countries are spending aggressively to modernize and deploy weapons that pose an existential threat to civilization.
Jun 17, 2024
A pair of reports published Monday show that global spending on nuclear arms surged to nearly $3,000 a second last year as nations expanded and modernized their potentially civilization-destroying arsenals of atomic weaponry.
The United States, the first and only country to ever use an atomic weapon in war, spent $51.5 billion on its vast nuclear arsenal in 2023—more than every other nuclear-armed country combined, according to an analysis by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The U.S. also accounted for 80% of the $10.7 billion global increase in spending last year compared to 2022.
ICAN found that total spending on nuclear weapons globally rose to a record $91.4 billion last year—$173,884 per minute—as countries worked to modernize their arsenals and flaunt new nuclear capabilities.
"By comparison, the World Food Program executive director stated in 2021 that to end world hunger, countries could spend $40 billion per year through 2030, which is a total of $360 billion over nine years," ICAN's new report reads. "That is $27 billion less than what these nine countries spent on their nuclear arsenals in just five years."
Growing nuclear weapons spending has been a major boon for military contractors such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. According to ICAN, "nuclear-armed countries have ongoing contracts with companies to produce nuclear weapons worth a total of at least $387 billion, continuing in some cases through 2040."
🚨NEW REPORT ALERT🚨
Can you believe global spending on nuclear weapons surged to $91.4 billion in 2023? That’s $2,898 a second on weapons that should never be used. Learn more in ICAN’s report “Surge: 2023 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending”🔗➡️https://t.co/svIeAKarmF#NuclearBan pic.twitter.com/2MCMJSJapo
— ICAN (@nuclearban) June 17, 2024
A separate report published Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimated that 3,904 nuclear warheads were deployed across the globe as of January 2024—60 more than were deployed at the start of last year.
SIPRI said that the world's nine nuclear-armed countries—the U.S., Russia, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—"continued to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023."
"While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads," SIPRI director Dan Smith said in a statement. "This trend seems likely to continue and probably accelerate in the coming years and is extremely concerning."
"We are now in one of the most dangerous periods in human history," Smith added. "There are numerous sources of instability—political rivalries, economic inequalities, ecological disruption, an accelerating arms race. The abyss is beckoning and it is time for the great powers to step back and reflect. Preferably together."
The alarming new reports were published hours after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told The Telegraph that the Western military alliance is considering mobilizing more nuclear weapons in an effort to counter China and Russia, respectively the second- and third-largest nuclear spenders last year behind the U.S., according to ICAN.
"I won't go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues," said Stoltenberg. "That's exactly what we're doing."
The Kremlin, which has faced condemnation from ICAN and other groups over its recent nuclear threats amid the war in Ukraine, swiftly denounced Stoltenberg's comments as "nothing else but an escalation."
ICAN said Monday that while its findings and ongoing nuclear threats "paint a bleak picture," progress toward a world without atomic weapons remains possible and worth fighting for.
"While the nine nuclear-armed governments have steadily increased their investments in nuclear weapons, in 2023, 101 cities and municipalities joined the ICAN cities appeal, including Durham and Leicester from the United Kingdom and Lyon and Montpellier from France, calling on their government to join the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of nuclear weapons," the group's report notes. "These cities join international capitals like Washington, Paris, and Berlin which have already adopted the appeal."
"While they continue to make massive profits from contracts to produce and maintain weapons of mass destruction, the number of companies that recognize that nuclear weapons are problematic and that their increasing obligations under human rights reviews and investor scrutiny require them to step away from the industry is growing," the report adds. "It is clear that pressure from the public, investors, and governments is having an effect."
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Nobel Prize Winner Says G20 Falls Short by Not Embracing Global Nuclear Ban Treaty
"All G20 members must work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons as an urgent priority," said ICAN executive director Melissa Parke.
Sep 10, 2023
A renunciation of the threat posed by nuclear weapons by G20 leaders in New Delhi this weekend must be matched by action that would actually reduce such a threat and lead the way to the full abandonment of atomic weapons worldwide, according to one of the world's preeminent anti-nuclear organizations.
While the the G20 'New Delhi Declaration' released Saturday states that the "use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible" in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the peace prize in 2017, said that does not go far enough.
ICAN's exective director Melissa Parke said in a statement that while the G20 leaders "reaffirmed the obvious truth that the use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons is unacceptable," it is now vital that they "put these words into action."
"All G20 members must work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons as an urgent priority, including, for those who haven't done so already," said Parke, "by signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons without delay."
The official Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted by the United Nations in 2017 and implemented in 2020, bans signatories from the use, possession, testing, and transfer of nuclear weapons.
None of the nuclear powers in the world—including Russia, the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, India, or China—have signed or adopted the TPNW, and Ukraine, along with the majority of NATO and G20 members, have also not supported or adopted the treaty.
Since its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, numerous Russian officials have invoked the specter of a nuclear exchange or possible use of atomic weapons if Moscow deemed it necessary. Peace advocates calling for urgent diplomacy to help end the war have continued to cite the possibility of a nuclear escalation as a chief concern.
Last month, former president and current senior official Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would have no choice but to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine's counter-offensive, backed by NATO forces, took land claimed by Moscow.
"Just imagine that the offensive… in tandem with NATO, succeeded and ended up with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian Presidential Decree,” said Medvedev.
"There simply wouldn’t be any other solution," he added. "Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the world to go up in nuclear flames."
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Your Doctor Is Worried: Our Prescription for Survival
This month in an unprecedented move, over 100 international medical journals came together in a joint editorial realizing the urgency of the moment to warn about the dangers of nuclear war.
Aug 09, 2023
Seventy-eight years ago the global arms race was ignited with the development and use of the first atomic bombs that were dropped over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a flash, mankind had perfected the means of destroying all life.
From that moment to the present day, medical science has grappled with the devastating medical and humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. From the unique and lasting injuries of atomic weapons caused by radionuclide exposure to the universal injuries caused by massive burns, to the discovery of strontium-90 in human baby teeth resulting from atmospheric testing, and ultimately working with climate scientists to reveal the most dangerous effects of catastrophic climate change that would follow even a limited regional nuclear war, the medical community has fought for the elimination of these weapons.
In a world threatened by climate change, which in and of itself makes nuclear war more probable with competition over dwindling natural resources across the planet, the continued existence of around 12,500 of these weapons is untenable. Nuclear war, either by intent, miscalculation, mistake, or cyber attack, is an ever more real possibility. These facts resulted in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moving their infamous Doomsday Clock, representing nuclear apocalypse, to 90 seconds to midnight this year.
“The nuclear armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us.”
This daunting reality, while overwhelming, can and is providing an opportunity for individuals, nations, NGO’s, and civil society across the planet to become aware and mobilize given the real possibility that these weapons can, and must, be abolished. Internationally, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, is working for all remaining nations to ratify the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Simultaneously, civil society is working in the nuclear states to build support for the elimination of these weapons. In the United States, the grassroots Back from the Brink movement continues to gain momentum and build support for the abolition of these weapons and the precautionary measures necessary until that goal is realized. This effort has resulted in H. Res 77 sponsored by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), and currently has 36 cosponsors in Congress.
For the past eight decades, the medical community has worked to raise awareness without inciting paralysis, or a sense of futility, about the risks of these weapons. This month in an unprecedented move, over 100 international medical journals came together in a joint editorial realizing the urgency of the moment to heed the message of doctors the world over by stating, “We call on health professionals to alert the public and our leaders to this major danger to public health and the essential life support systems of the planet—and urge action to prevent it.”
Furthermore, they endorsed critical components of the Back from the Brink movement in saying
We now call on health professional associations to inform their members worldwide about the threat to human survival and to join with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) to support efforts to reduce the near term risks of nuclear war, including three immediate steps on the part of nuclear armed states and their allies: First, adopt a no first use policy; second, take their nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert; and, third, urge all states involved in current conflicts to pledge publicly and unequivocally that they will not use nuclear weapons in these conflicts. We further ask them to work for a definitive end to the nuclear threat by supporting the urgent commencement of negotiations among the nuclear armed states for a verifiable, timebound agreement to eliminate their nuclear weapons in accordance with commitments in the non-proliferation treaty, opening the way for all nations to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The editorial continued by stating,
The danger is great and growing. The nuclear armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us. The health community played a decisive part during the Cold War and more recently in the development of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We must take up this challenge again as an urgent priority, working with renewed energy to reduce the risks of nuclear war and to eliminate nuclear weapons.
As the world observes this 78th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the opportunity and moment is at hand to finally abolish this threat to future generations. This must be our response when our children’s children ask us what we did when our world was threatened. This is our prescription for survival.
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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Denounces G7 Failure to Deliver on Nuclear Disarmament in Hiroshima
"The G7 are trying to sell decades-old and insufficient initiatives as a new 'vision' when at the same time they themselves are complicit in the rising nuclear risks," said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
May 19, 2023
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on a landmark treaty banning nukes—and others including survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan on Friday criticized a Group of Seven joint statement on disarmament as "missing the moment to make the world safer" from the threat of thermonuclear annihilation.
As the G7 summit got underway in Hiroshima, leaders of Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, United States—the latter three of which have nuclear arsenals—reiterated their belief that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
While the statement acknowledges "the unprecedented devastation and immense human suffering the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced as a result of the atomic bombings" and reaffirms G7 members' "commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons," the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) lamented that "it fails to commit to concrete measures towards that goal and even emphasizes the importance of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons."
"The G7 are trying to sell decades-old and insufficient initiatives as a new 'vision' when at the same time they themselves are complicit in the rising nuclear risks and promoting mass murder of civilians as a legitimate form of national security policy," ICAN added.
ICAN said that "the G7's inaction is an insult to the hibakusha, and the memory of those who died in Hiroshima," referring to the Japanese word for survivors of the atomic bombings, which killed between 110,000 and 210,000 people.
G7 leaders spent less than half an hour visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero of the August 6, 1945 U.S. nuclear attack. They laid wreaths at the cenotaph memorializing the at least tens of thousands of people who died from the bombing and related illnesses and also met with a handful of hibakusha.
U.S. President Joe Biden drew fire for his refusal to apologize for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
"If the U.S. admitted that murdering noncombatants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was inexcusable, it might face questions about [the] legitimacy of maintaining [a] vastly more destructive stockpile now," writer and activist Jon Reinsch tweeted, referring to the approximately 5,400 nuclear warheads in the American arsenal—the world's second-largest after Russia, which has around 6,000 warheads, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Meanwhile, street protesters condemned nuclear weapons, the "imperialist summit," military aid to Ukraine, and Japan's complicity in U.S. militarism—especially toward China.
"Japan is saying it will send a peaceful message of abolishing nuclear weapons to the world through this summit, but at the same time it is seeking to rely on nuclear weapons to achieve 'national security.' This is contradictory," Ichiro Yuasa, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Peace Depot, told teleSUR.
Some hibakusha renewed criticism of leaders of nuclear-armed nations for failing to pursue meaningful disarmament, including their refusal to join scores of countries in signing the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
"This is not the genuine nuclear disarmament that hibakusha are calling for. This is an evasion of their responsibility," Satoshi Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing and secretary general of the Liaison Conference of Hiroshima Hibakusha Organizations, said of the G7 statement.
"Prime Minister [Fumio] Kishida has said that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the final passage for a nuclear weapons-free world," Tanaka added. "No, it is not a final passage. It is the entry point. Prime Minister Kishida and other G7 leaders should accept the TPNW and start the real process of eliminating nuclear weapons."
Derek Johnson, managing partner of the Global Zero movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons, said that "while the G7 statement embraces the goal of global zero and recites a familiar list of worthwhile ambitions, none acknowledge the fierce urgency of now."
"This is long on vision but short on strategy; Hiroshima deserves to be more than a symbolic setting, and the world deserves more than thoughts and prayers for disarmament," he added.
ICAN executive director Daniel Hogstra responded to the G7 statement by asserting that "this is more than a missed opportunity."
"With the world facing the acute risk that nuclear weapons could be used for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, this is a gross failure of global leadership," Hogstra contended, referring to rising fears since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
"Simply pointing fingers at Russia and China is insufficient," he added. "We need the G7 countries, which all either possess, host, or endorse the use of nuclear weapons, to step up and engage the other nuclear powers in disarmament talks if we are to reach their professed goal of a world without nuclear weapons."
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