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nuclear nonproliferation
A Hiroshima Survivor Reminds the World Why History Must Not Repeat Itself
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has.
Aug 21, 2025
Michiko Kodama was only seven years old when the world’s first nuclear weapon was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. Since then, she has dedicated her life to ensuring that her generation remains the only victims of a nuclear holocaust.
“When you witness something like this, you think how can I live? Am I allowed to live? But, I’m glad I’m alive,” Kodama said. “I’m glad I had the life I wanted, and I think it’s because I can tell the stories of those who have passed away.”
Kodama is the assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization composed of Hibakusha, the Japanese word that refers to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In 2024, Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their advocacy work on nuclear nonproliferation.
“To fight against nuclear weapons is to preserve life because it is the weapon that is capable of completely destroying the entire Earth. It’s the weapon that’s capable of stopping time,” Kodama, 87, said.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has. And she’s determined to continue reminding the world of the terrors of nuclear weapons.
She remembers being under her desk as the bomb hit. She saw a flash of light followed by an extreme wave of heat. Somehow she survived along with her classmates. She recalled the horrific sight of people who had come to her families’ suburb to try and get relief from the epicenter. People who had been so badly burnt that their skin was coming off their flesh.
“These sorts of images show the differences between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. It’s just a weapon that is so inhumane, so indiscriminate that we just should not have it,” Kodama said.
The Doomsday Clock, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created in 1947 to measure how close the world is to man-made catastrophe, signals that the world has moved closer to nuclear catastrophe than it ever has been. In January 2025, the clock was moved one second closer to midnight, sending a stark signal to the global community that we are moving closer toward the brink of nuclear holocaust. The clock currently looms at a mere 89 seconds to midnight.
“I fear that World War III will turn into a nuclear war,” she said.
Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons, and many more are seeking to get it as a deterrent.
“I think it’s a huge mistake,” Kodama said. “Nuclear weapons and humans, and of course the Earth, cannot coexist. I know this from personal experience.”
In June 2025, the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites out of fear they were getting closer and closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Experts said that Iran’s aspirations will not stop and that other countries could follow its example
“In the span of two weeks, Iran was bombed by two nuclear powers, the US and Israel. That could lead to a perverted logic in which developing the nuclear bomb is seen as their only way to be safe from further attacks,” said Thomas Countryman, president of the board at the Arms Control Association.
Kodama warned that more countries with nuclear weapons would only increase the likelihood that a nuclear holocaust would take place.
Kodama described apocalyptic scenes from when the bomb first hit in the center of Hiroshima. People riding on Hiroshima’s famous tram instantly turned to charcoal; those that didn’t die instantly had their skin stripped off from the heat of the ground, and many ended up jumping in the river for relief where they also died.
Although she was one of the fortunate ones to survive the bombing, the consequences of the bomb continued well after August 6 for Kodama.
“I’ll be a victim of the atomic bomb until I die. Yes, I can’t escape the fact that I was a victim of the atomic bomb” Kodama said.
For example, Kodama recalled how she faced discrimination within Japan as a survivor and was told that would have to live alone without getting married because people at the time did not want their future generations “mixed” with those that survived an atomic bomb. Moreover, even after she married and had kids, her daughter suddenly died at 45 after contracting cancer, which Kodama believes was passed down from herself.
Her mother, father, and two brothers, one of whom was born after the bombing Hiroshima, also died of cancer which she attributed to the effects of radiation exposure.
However, even with the devastating effects of Hiroshima, Kodama warned that the bomb dropped 80 years ago would only cause a fraction of the damage that today’s weapons could inflict.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
In fact, just 20 days before the bomb exploded she moved from the center of Hiroshima to a suburb. Everyone in her former school was killed. Kodama noted that in some ways she was lucky because the Hiroshima bomb didn’t completely destroy life.
“When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, it was said that no plants would grow for 80 years, but the following year, those trees in the garden sprouted young shoots,” Kodama said. “If something like that were to happen again, no plants would really grow. They wouldn’t grow for 80 years, or even a hundred years. It would be impossible to survive.”
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Trump (and Biden) Could Have Forestalled War With Iran If They Wanted
There appears to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington against universal law-based approaches to nuclear nonproliferation through diplomacy in favor of unilateral military action.
Jun 20, 2025
The unprovoked attack by Israel against Iran and the tragic war that has resulted could have been avoided back in 2017 had President Donald Trump not broken off the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA—commonly known as the “Iran Nuclear Deal”—and if President Joe Biden hadn’t refused to return to it.
The agreement—signed by Iran, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China, and approved by the United Nations—reduced Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile by 98% and restricted the level of enrichment to 3.67%. Given that an enrichment level of 90% is needed to build a nuclear bomb, it made it impossible for Iran’s uranium to be weaponized.
Under the deal, Iran also reduced its number of centrifuges (used to enrich uranium) to a little more than 5,000, which is far below the number that would be needed to achieve anything close to the 90% level. Additionally, the agreement prevented Iran from commissioning its Arak reactor, which is capable of producing plutonium, and restricted research and development activities in other nuclear facilities. It also cut off all of Iran’s other potential pathways to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
In effect, the United States is demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid, where allied governments can develop nuclear weapons in defiance of international law while supporting the use of military force against countries like Iran which simply have the potential to develop nuclear weapons.
In short, the agreement made it physically impossible for Iran to build a single atomic bomb. The agreement also imposed one of the most rigorous inspection regimes in history, with international inspectors monitoring Iran’s nuclear program at every stage: uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel manufacturing, nuclear reactors, and spent fuel, as well as any site—military or civilian—they considered suspicious.
There were no requirements that Israel, Pakistan, India, the United States, or any other nuclear power reduce their arsenals in return. Iran agreed to this one-sided proposal only in return for some relief of draconian sanctions that had been imposed, with U.S. encouragement, by the international community. When Trump broke the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions—essentially forcing other nations to do so as well under threat of punishing any company or government that refused, resulting in devastating impacts on the Iranian economy—Iran no longer had any obligation or incentive to remain in compliance. While all the evidence seems to indicate that Iran’s nuclear program thus far is only for civilian purposes such as medicine and energy production, the abrogation of the agreement has allowed the country to process uranium to a level that today could potentially be diverted to military applications if Iran decided to go in that direction.
Trump insisted at the time that he could somehow make a better deal, but did not make any serious attempt to do so. In my 2019 meeting in Tehran with then-Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, he described how the JCPOA was the result of a decade of posturing and two years of intense, painstaking negotiations, during which he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met no fewer than 50 times to hammer out every line of the agreement. It is doubtful that Trump was ever serious about a negotiated settlement, preferring to set up talks which appear to have lulled Iran into thinking its military leaders and scientists were not at risk and thereby leaving them vulnerable to Israel’s initial devastating surprise attack.
In short, if Trump was really concerned about Iran getting a nuclear bomb, he would not have ended the agreement. And if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was really concerned about that possibility, he wouldn’t have supported Trump’s doing so.
So, Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Iran is not actually about stopping Iran from potentially developing a nuclear weapon. Indeed, Israeli strikes have been hitting scores of sites completely unrelated to Iran’s nuclear industry—including the studios of the national television station. It would appear to primarily be about weakening its stronger regional rival. As unpopular as the autocratic regime in Iran is among the Iranian people, they are uniting in opposition to the devastating attacks on their cities.
While some congressional Democrats have spoken out against any direct U.S. involvement in the war, their leaders have been lining up in support of Trump and Netanyahu. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who once opposed the JCPOA, insisted that, despite the fact that Israel started the war, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Just over a week ago, he was criticizing Trump for even engaging in negotiations with Iran.
Similarly, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has refused to criticize the Israeli attack or call for a return to the JCPOA, echoing his 2023 statement: “Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad.” Although Iran has no capability of striking anywhere outside of the Middle East, Jeffries claimed, “The Iranian regime poses a grave threat to the entire free world.”
Other Democrats have also rushed to Netanyahu’s defense, with Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania posting on social media, “I fully support this attack. Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary—military, intelligence, weaponry—to fully back Israel in striking Iran.” Meanwhile, Representative Richie Torres of New York insisted on X, “Israel is not the aggressor. It is defending itself.”
This U.S.-backed war of aggression could push the regime to actually move towards developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future attacks.
These politicians have not taken such positions due to political pressure. A May 2025 poll regarding Iran’s nuclear program showed fewer than 15% of Americans, including less than a quarter of Republicans and only 5% of Democrats, supported military action. Overwhelming majorities of Americans have long preferred diplomacy.
Despite this, there appears to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington against universal law-based approaches to nuclear nonproliferation through diplomacy in favor of unilateral military action.
For example, Iran and many Arab states have gone on record supporting the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) for the entire Middle East, similar to already-existing NWFZs in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Antarctica. The leadership of both political parties in Washington, however, have consistently opposed this, since it would require Israel to rid itself of its nuclear arsenal and prohibit the United States from bringing nuclear weapons into the region on its planes and ships.
Despite trying to justify targeting Iran due to its violations of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions regarding its nuclear program, the United States has blocked the United Nations from enforcing UNSC resolution 487, which requires Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
UNSC resolution 687, which laid out the international community’s demands for Iraqi disarmament in 1991, also called for “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.” Though Iraq was in full compliance of this resolution, as noted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the time, the Bush administration’s false claims they were not were used as an excuse to invade and occupy that oil-rich country in 2003.
Another United Nations agreement, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), normally allows countries to reprocess uranium, though the IAEA put special restrictions on Iran as punishment for not reporting certain research back in the 1990s. What few American politicians are willing to acknowledge, however, is that the NPT—in addition to preventing new countries from developing nuclear weapons—requires the existing nuclear powers “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” In other words, the United States—along with other nuclear powers—are themselves in defiance of the NPT.
In effect, the United States is demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid, where allied governments can develop nuclear weapons in defiance of international law while supporting the use of military force against countries like Iran which simply have the potential to develop nuclear weapons.
This will not prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Indeed, given that it is highly unlikely that Israel can completely destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or kill all of its scientists, this U.S.-backed war of aggression could push the regime to actually move towards developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future attacks, which until now it has refrained from doing. They can only compare the fates of Iraq, which disarmed as required but was invaded anyway, with the regime in North Korea, which developed nuclear weapons and is still in power.
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Nihon Hidankyo's Nobel Peace Prize Win Could Not Have Come at a More Important Moment
With the world, our species, facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year's Peace Prize will refocus world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy.
Oct 12, 2024
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo is long overdue and could not come at a more important time.
The Hibakusha (A-bomb witness/survivors) of Nihon Hidankyo have been among the world’s most courageous and steadfast advocates of nuclear disarmament. The organization has focused on three core demands: preventing nuclear war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and obtaining essential medical care for A-bomb victims.
Hidankyo was founded in 1956, in the wake of the Bravo H-Bomb test 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb, which poisoned Japanese fishermen and Marshall Islanders.
As Wilfred Burchett, the first Western journalist to witness the ruins and suffering in Hiroshima in 1945, later reported, despite their excruciating physical and emotional suffering, the Hibakusha became the world’s most powerful and influential force for the abolition. With the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, the voices of the Hibakusha, their tortured testimonies, and their truth that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist will now ring out more powerfully around the world.
Nihon Hidankyo was repeatedly nominated for its now well-earned Peace Prize, and the Nobel Committee is now to be celebrated for finally making this year’s decision. With the world, our species, facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Peace Prize will refocus world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy. In addition to Russian nuclear threats related to the continuing Ukraine war, an accident, incident, or miscalculation growing out of provocative U.S., allied, and Chinese military operations in and around the Taiwan Strait and the South China/West could ignite escalation to a nuclear cataclysm.
With uncertainties about a possible Trump election victory, there are growing demands among Japanese and South Korean elites for their nations to become nuclear powers. The U.S. and Russia have lowered their official operational thresholds for launching their nuclear weapons. All of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems, with the U.S. committing an estimated two trillion dollars to “modernize” its systems when that money could be spent to stanch and reverse the climate emergency and to address other urgent human needs.
"The Hibakusha have identified with victims of other holocausts and massacres going back to Vietnam, when they identified with the people under the bombs."
Let us marvel and learn from the reality that Hibakusha, who were literally the last people on Earth, once seen by U.S. leaders and media as “vermin” to be eliminated, have awakened the conscience of the world after suffering what was probably the world’s worst war crime. And contrary to the myth propagated by President Truman, the A-bombs were not necessary to defeat Japan. Senior U.S. military officials from Eisenhower to LeMay and Leahy advised the president that “it wasn’t necessary to hit Japan with that awful thing” Secretary of War Stimson had already advised that Japan’s surrender on terms acceptable to the U.S. could be negotiated.”
Hibakusha’s friends, families, and neighbors were incinerated, irradiated, and physically ripped apart by the radiation’s heat and blast waves of the world’s first A-bombs. An entire city was destroyed and burned to the ground. Amidst their own agonies, many Hibakusha were unable to save their families in their shattered and burning homes. They witnessed ghostlike figures, no longer recognizable as human beings, some holding their eyeballs or intestines in their hands marching to their deaths, often in cisterns or the city’s rivers.
In the months and years that followed, many died from radiation-inflicted cancers and other diseases. Memories remain of the birthing of mutant babies and of other young children whose lives were cut short by radiation diseases. With initial fears that the radiation diseases might be contagious and about genetic damages, Hibakusha’s suffering was compounded by marginalization and discrimination.
As a result of the U.S. military occupation which continued until 1952 and subsequently with Japan functioning as the United States’ subservient ally, essential medical and other support services were long denied to Hibakusha. Among the achievements of Nihon Hidankyo and its allies are the collaborations they have built with other “global hibakusha.” These included forced laborers who were brought from Japanese-occupied Korea who also suffered the A-bombings. Compassionately and strategically they supported and joined with nuclear weapons test victims from the Marshall Islands, the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tahiti, the Christmas Islands, and other Pacific Islands. Together with their testimonies in communities across the world and in the United Nations they forged the powerful but still inadequate taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. With their testimonies at the U.N. and elsewhere they have won the majority of the world’s governments to the understanding that for the human species to survive, priority must be given to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, not so-called “state security” interests.
Hibakusha testimonies were essential to the successful negotiation of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which seeks to hold the nuclear weapons states accountable to their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
That nuclear weapons have not been used since the Nagasaki A-bombing was an unfortunate misstatement in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s award announcement. As Daniel Ellsberg, a principal author of the United States’ nuclear war planning in the Kennedy administration, taught during many international crises and wars, the U.S. has used its nuclear arsenal in the same way that an armed robber uses his gun when pointed at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used.
Tragically, this is a playbook from which the Russian government has been working with its Ukraine-war nuclear threats. It is worth noting that in response to the announcement of the award, Hidankyo referenced the terrible assaults on the people of Gaza. The Hibakusha have identified with victims of other holocausts and massacres going back to Vietnam, when they identified with the people under the bombs.
They then warned of the danger that the U.S. might resort to a nuclear attack (which the U.S. prepared and threatened in 1954, 1957, and with President Nixon's 1969 "madman" nuclear mobilization. Numerous popular initiatives are at work in the world which will be boosted by the Peace Prize award to Nihon Hibakusha.
In the U.S., the Back from the Brink campaign, initiated by Physicians for Social Responsibility, has been at the cutting edge. Its call for negotiation of a verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, renunciation of first-use policies, ending the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and canceling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons has been endorsed by 43 members of Congress and numerous U.S. cities and states.
The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security works to prevent nuclear war and achieve a nuclear weapons-free world via its advocacy of Common Security. This is the ancient truth that no nation can achieve security at the expense of its rival. As with the INF Treaty that ended the Cold War before the fall of the Cold War, peaceful coexistence and security can be achieved only through mutual recognition and respectful, if difficult, win-win negotiations between rivals.
In the face of the horrors of nuclear weapons and drawing on the courage of Hibakusha, this is the paradigm on which the Hibakusha's vision of a nuclear weapons-free world can be achieved.
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