Peace Through Health
16th World Congress
Beijing, China
September 16-19, 2004
Spreading the Light
of Hiroshima's Desire
to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor of Hiroshima
Ladies and gentlemen, as mayor of Hiroshima, the city that experienced the horror of the world's first atomic bombing, it is a great honor and privilege for me to come before this important gathering.
Japan and China have known 2,000 years of friendly relations, but we must not forget that earlier in this century we experienced a time of terrible animosity. The people of Hiroshima profoundly regret the fact that Japan's colonization and the Fifteen-year War inflicted such enormous suffering and grief on the Chinese people. We know the emotional scars of that time remain deep, and we believe that we must truly make that pain our own if we are to strengthen the bonds between us to create a brighter future for all. To build a relationship of peace and goodwill between our nations, we must also renew our gratitude for the generosity of the Chinese government, and we must greatly strengthen the partnership between Japan and China within the international community.
Fifty-nine years ago, Hiroshima was utterly destroyed by an atomic bomb. The devastation was so great that it was said that nothing would grow there for 75 years. The new Hiroshima that arose from the A-bomb rubble stands ready to do everything in its power to ensure that the year prior to the 60th anniversary of that bombing will be profoundly meaningful.
In my Peace Declaration this year, I promised that Hiroshima, along with the Mayors for Peace, an organization that now has 619 city members including Beijing, would make August 6 this year to August 9 next year a Year of Remembrance and Action for a Nuclear-Free World. I would like now to explain the background and meaning of that declaration.
In June and July this year, Hiroshima conducted its third excavation search for the remains of A-bomb victims on Ninoshima, an island just off-shore from Hiroshima. Immediately after the bombing, the army quarantine station on Ninoshima was used as a field hospital, and approximately 10,000 injured victims were taken to the island. Our most recent search revealed the remains of 85 victims, and I believe this discovery holds meaning for us all. It seems to me that the souls of those who have suddenly reappeared on Ninoshima are offering us one more warning regarding the inhumanity and cruelty of the atomic bomb. The A-bomb victims are sound the alarm and asking, "Are you actually going to repeat the horror of 59 years ago?"
The inscription on the front of the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims in Peace Memorial Park says, "Rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the error." I believe the souls of the A-bomb victims are reminding us to keep that promise. Their reemergence means that we are not accomplishing our task, and I am forced to contemplate the reasons. Why have we failed to let the A-bomb victims rest in peace?
Fifty-nine years since the atomic bombing, the human family still lacks the vocabulary and powers of expression to fully express the cruel tragedy it caused, and most of us lack the power of imagination to fill the gap. The atomic bombing still is not a collective human memory.
Worse yet, most of us float idly in the current of the day, clouding with self-indulgence the lens of reason through which we should be studying the future, blithely turning our backs on the courageous few.
The results of that complacency are clearly manifest in the crises we face today in Japan and the world at large, and the most pressing of those is the fact that the NPT, the central international agreement through which the human family is seeking the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the brink of collapse.
The United States, the nuclear superpower, has openly stated its willingness to use nuclear weapons preemptively and has resumed research into smaller, more "usable" nuclear weapons. In these and many other ways, the US is utterly discounting the NPT. This attitude is creating an extremely dangerous situation. It almost forces other nuclear-weapon states to cling more rigidly to their nuclear weapons, and it provokes non-nuclear nations to seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent. North Korea has already announced its withdrawal from the NPT and has told the US that it intends to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, India, Pakistan, and Israel still refuse to sign the NPT.
North Korea, India, and Pakistan all share borders with China, and this is a situation that requires careful attention if we are to reduce tension in Asia and achieve world peace. I hereby request that the Chinese government immediately abandon its nuclear weapons and, as a nation not dependent on nuclear weapons, begin working with us to strengthen the NPT and actually eliminate all nuclear weapons.
However, the problem lies deeper than nuclear weapons. Ever since the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, the world seems obsessed with the concept of retaliation. In September 2003, speaking before the United Nations, President Bush said, "We are going to war to preserve the peace." Thus, we have entered the age predicted in George Orwell's book 1984 in which politicians say, "War is peace," and the people believe them.
The clearest manifestation of this age thus far is the Iraq War led by the US and Great Britain. This war took place over the vociferous objections of literally millions of people who filled the streets of their cities demanding more time for the UN inspections and a peaceful solution. As a result of this war, thousands of innocent women, children and elderly have been killed, and the natural environment in Iraq has been terribly damaged by radioactive contamination that will last for billions of years. The weapons of mass destruction, the stated excuse for this war, have never been found.
It is no exaggeration to say that by discounting UN inspections and ignoring UN resolutions, the world has fallen away from the rule of law. The fate of the world now is being determined by the rule of raw, violent power.
Why is this happening now? Why is the world reverting now to the rule of power? Why must we now fear the third use of a nuclear weapon?
The memory of World War II, especially of nuclear war, is fading worldwide. Most world leaders today have no experience of war. They are utterly unable to imagine the horror of the atomic bomb. Most have never read John Hersey's Hiroshima or Arata Osada's Children of the A-bomb, or Kenzaburo Oe's Hiroshima Notes, or even Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth. These books are being forgotten, and as the saying goes, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." We are forgetting the atomic bombings, and the probability that nuclear weapons will be used is increasing.
I hereby invite President Hu Jintao to visit Hiroshima to see with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store for the human family. I believe that would help him understand that nuclear weapons are the ultimate evil, clearly immoral and illegal under international law.
We have to solidify the memory of the atomic bombing. To help the younger generation understand the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and the cruelty of war, Hiroshima is providing survivor testimony around the world, and during the coming year, we will be implementing a special project that will encourage adults everywhere to read A-bomb accounts to children.
Reading and communicating the A-bomb experience to children is something anyone can do. But we hope you will not stop with the reading. As you read A-bomb accounts to your children or grandchildren or at school or with friends, you will generate considerable energy. It is vital then that you help to convert that energy to action. I ask all of you here today to help us make the A-bomb experience a collective human memory.
To borrow the words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., "get quote." The only way for the world to share the memory of the A-bomb experience is for all of us to share this light.
Another light we must share is the rule of law, that is, governance in accordance with widely accepted rules developed by the international community. The great global symbol of the rule of law is the United Nations. The UN is a light that seeks to illuminate the future of the human race. We must do everything we can to ensure that this light is preserved and shines ever brighter.
Let me tell you now about two ways in which Hiroshima is seeking to spread the light of its desire to eliminate nuclear weapons. The projects I will describe are being implemented by the city of Hiroshima in conjunction with the Mayors for Peace.
The first project is the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Course. To understand the need for this project, you need to understand the attitude toward World War II and the atomic bombing that I noticed while I was living in the US, and this attitude should be juxtaposed to certain achievements of the hibakusha, or A-bomb survivors.
The historical understanding of the average American is that the Second World War was one of America's finest hours. It was a war about which no doubts or second thoughts are required. The overwhelmingly predominant view is that the US was the 100% good guy fighting for justice against terrible evil.
Americans believe that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a cowardly, inhumane act that deserved to be punished. Japan, the perpetrator of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was an evil nation even worse than Nazis Germany. To use a temperature analogy, Japan and Pearl Harbor are located at absolute zero, and it was to punish that evil that God gave the US the atomic bomb. With that God-given weapon, the US was able to defeat the evil Japanese.
Unfortunately, the average American view of the atomic bomb has changed very little since the war. Some Americans, though they are a minority, even say that the US should have dropped more atomic bombs on Japan.
So public opinion in the nation that dropped the atomic bomb has changed little. Meanwhile, what have the hibakusha been doing for the past 59 years? What sorts of lives have they been leading? How have they managed to live with the A-bomb experience? In my Peace Declaration of 1999, I looked back at what I consider to be the three most important achievements of the hibakusha.
Their first accomplishment was to affirm life. Under conditions in which no one could have blamed them for choosing death, they chose to live. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaski truly turned those cities into "hell on earth." Given a choice between life and death, in our normal states of mind most of us would choose life. However, August 6 and 9, 1945 lie beyond any normal state of mind. Some refer to such situations as the "realm of the absurd." One thing is certain. Under those conditions, it was not easy to choose life.
The second achievement of the hibakusha was to tell the world about their experience. To tell an experience is to relive it. For the hibakusha to tell their experience is to taste again that terrible suffering. The most normal response is to try to forget such a painful experience, and yet the hibakusha overcame that initial impulse to tell their experience continually to people around the world. I believe that the fact that no atomic bomb has been used in combat since Nagasaki is largely due to their efforts.
Their third achievement was to rejected the path of retaliation and chose instead the path of reconciliation. This choice is concisely expressed in the engraving on the A-bomb Cenotaph and embodied in the Japanese Constitution. The cenotaph inscription says, "Rest in peace, for the error shall not be repeated." When the cenotaph was completed, the lack of a subject in this sentence created a major controversy. Many Hiroshima residents said, "Why should the hibakusha or the people of Hiroshima who suffered from the atomic bombing apologize for anything? We should make the Americans apologize." Ultimately, most of the hibakusha and most citizens interpreted these words to mean, "We, the human race, will not repeat the error." Based on this interpretation, the words were not changed.
I think this an extremely important statement. The hibakusha do not see the world as a collection of enemies. They do not divide the world into friends and enemies, nor do they believe that anyone who does not agree with their friends is an enemy. Their interpretation of the inscription on the cenotaph assumes that the world is a single unit and commits the whole world to cooperation toward a brighter future.
The hibakusha themselves say the same thing in simpler words. What they say is, "No one else should ever suffer the way we suffered." This is among the most common phrases we hear from hibakusha telling their A-bomb experiences. Our suffering was more than enough. We must never let anyone else go through the same thing. Please understand that this "no one" included even President Truman, who ordered the A-bomb dropped. It included the scientists who developed the bomb; it even included the crew that actually flew the bomb to Hiroshima and pushed the button. The critical point herre is that this way of thinking eliminates all possibility of retaliation or any violent punishment of an enemy.
In light of the three achievements described above, the city of Hiroshima is asking colleges and universities around the world to help us convey the hibakusha message by establishing Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study courses.
One reason we need this help is that the hibakusha are aging. For decades the hibakusha have communicated their message directly. We have relied heavily on them because their words, their gestures, their very presence are deeply moving and highly effective. However, their average age has now exceeded 72.Most hibakusha no longer have the energy to travel around the world telling their stories. They tend to fall ill. Thus, we must relieve them of this burden.
On the other hand, we must continue communicating the message from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To that end, one method is to academically analyze and systematize the meaning of the A-bomb experience and have it universally and continually communicated to the young as an academic subject at the college level. Then, students who have understood that message can make use of it, study it further, and communicate it to the next generation. This is the cycle we hope to initiate. We want the role the hibakusha have played to be taken up by colleges and universities, the places where intellectual meaning is established and conveyed to the future.
Another reason for this project has to do with my experience as a professor in the US. While there I became aware that American colleges, indeed colleges and universities around the world, do an excellent job of studying and teaching the holocaust, that is, the tragic experience of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. In psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy and many other fields, the Jewish holocaust has been thoroughly explored, and most colleges offer courses that take it up as a formal subject of study. In comparison, the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, partly because of the American attitude toward World War II that I mentioned before, have hardly been studied at all.
In line with our intention, a number of colleges are now teaching the meaning of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki message. American University in Washington, D.C., Tufts University in Boston, where I used to teach. In Europe, the Berlin Technology Institute and the Paris Institute of Political Studies are national educational institutions now moving toward establishing formal courses. In Montreal, where I visited this past April, four universities including the University of Montreal and Quebec University are working together to establish graduate level seminars to begin next spring.
In Japan, peace studies scholars have long worked toward similar courses, the main colleges that already offer them are Hiroshima City University, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima Shudo University, Hiroshima Jogakuin University, Waseda University, International Christian University, Mie University, Ritsumeikan University, Kwansei Gakuin University, Nagasaki University, and Meiji Gakuin University.
We intend to do whatever we can to popularize Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study courses that convey the hibakusha message.
The second major initiative I want to tell you about is the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons.
The Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the NPT and lead to the actual abolition of nuclear weapons. I first called for this campaign in association with many other NGO representatives at the NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in April 2003, which I attended as representative of the Mayors for Peace, an NGO that now has 619 city members in 109 countries and regions.
Last October, in Manchester, England, the Mayors for Peace Executive Conference decided that Mayors for Peace would work closely with cities around the world, NGOs, and grassroots organizations to develop an Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, and this campaign was officially launched at the Global Citizens' Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons in November.
The purpose of the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons is to facilitate the expression of international demand for the abolition of nuclear weapons and to actually abolish those weapons. To that end, we are seeking the following from the international community.
First, we are calling for the NPT Review Conference in May 2005 to mandate that all nuclear weapons must immediately be taken off of alert status and a prompt start to concrete negotiations toward the signing of a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
We are also calling for these negotiations to result in a Nuclear Weapons Convention to be signed and accepted by all countries by 2010, followed by a program to actually eliminate nuclear weapons within ten years. Thus, we would achieve a genuinely peaceful world free from the threat of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.
We are proceeding by four concrete steps. The first step took place last April at the NPT preparation committee meeting in New York. I attended that conference with a delegation of 19 mayors and deputy mayors from 12 countries. As president of the Mayors for Peace, I spoke on behalf of the people and the mayors of cities around the world that are demanding the abolition of nuclear weapons.
During my talk at the PrepCom, I held up a pair of burned and twisted A-bombed glasses from the collection of the Peace Memorial Museum and said, "Get quote." Speaking to the national delegates, I conveyed the spirit of Hiroshima, and the delegates and NGO representatives responded with thunderous and supportive applause.
During the PrepCom the mayors delegation held separate meetings with officials representing the UN, the EU, China, Russia, Brazil, Canada, the non-aligned nations, and other groups. In each case we asked them to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons. Disarmament and Nonproliferation Ambassador Duarte of Brazil, who will be the chairman of the NPT review conference next year, responded positively saying, "get quote." The Chinese official we met said, "get quote." Nearly everyone we spoke to supported our desire to abolish nuclear weapons.
The second step in our campaign was to declare August 6 this year to August 9 next year to be a Year of Remembrance and Action for a Nuclear-Free World. We are asking cities everywhere to hold meetings, symposia, concerts and other events. We are asking them to raise consciousness among their citizens and intensify international public demand for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The third step will take place at the NPT Review Conference in New York next May, which also happens to be the year of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings. We intend to make sure that the governments of the world know that their people are paying attention to this Review Conference.
First, we will invite mayors to attend the review conference, and we will again make speeches during the NGO session. Representing our people, we will tell the delegates how strongly we want to be rid of nuclear weapons. We will also visit UN disarmament ambassadors and other government officials from nuclear-weapon states to demand directly greater effort for the elimination of nuclear weapons. We intend to bring over one hundred mayors to this review conference.
In addition, we want as many NGO representatives as possible to attend the review conference. We expect them to intensify their lobbying activities and work to ensure that the government delegates feel the pressure to abolition nuclear weapons. We are calling for at least 1,000 NGO representatives to be present.
We are also asking NGOs and peace groups to organize a gathering of a million people in New York during the review conference and to hold events that express the will of the people.
Step 4 of the campaign will take place after the review conference. If the NPT review leads to concrete movement toward a Nuclear Weapons Convention, we will press for the states parties, especially the nuclear-weapon states, to faithfully abide by the terms of the agreement.
If the review produces no concrete prrogress toward a Nuclear Weapons Convention, we will shift to a track 2 process. Modeling our campaign on the International Campaign to Ban Anti-personnel Landmines, which was developed through cooperation between NGOs and the government of Canada, we intend to start the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Process to create a Nuclear Weapons Convention and continue pressing for the total elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020.
I have briefly summarized the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, but the motive force supporting this campaign can only be the voices of the people supporting their mayors. We must have an outpouring of public opinion Public opinion motivates mayors; and it moves international politics. In that sense, whether our Emergency Campaign produces fruit or not will depend on the extent to which NGOs and the people themselves respond and raise their voices to loudly demand nuclear abolition. Therefore, I ask that all of you here today find some way to take part.
At present, a wave of support for the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons is building. In February this year, England, France, Germany and the 15 companies of the EU passed by overwhelming majority a resolution specifically supporting the Emergency Campaign. In June, the Conference of US Mayors, which represents 1183 major American cities, passed by acclamation an equally strong resolution. Our task now is to strengthen this wave of support and send out a call to the whole world to support the campaign.
However, the popularization of Hirroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study courses and the growth of the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons are hampered by an enormous obstacle. In the US, if you talk about the atomic bombing, someone is likely to say, "Remember Pearl Harbor." In China and much of Asia, many people point to Japan's responsibility for the Second World War and say they are glad the atomic bombs were dropped.
Unfortunately, many of Japan's government leaders do not know the facts about the past. They make erroneous statements about history and display contempt for the feelings of people elsewhere in Asia by repeatedly visiting Yasukuni Shrine. However, please do not conclude that these leaders represent the attitude of all or even most of the Japanese people. As I said earlier, we know we have to understand the past. We have to learn the facts and make the pain of others in Asia own pain. And, we must get beyond this issue to walk together the path toward a nuclear-weapons-free world.
Professor Lu Xun, the great Chinese literary scholar, said, "The world has not always had roads. Roads were made by a lot of people walking. We need to join hands with the Japanese people and create a new path."
Our ultimate goal is the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth by the year 2020, the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings. Only then will we have truly recovered hope for life and a future on this planet where it was said, "Nothing will grow for 75 years." To create this hope for the future, those of us living now must act. I close my speech by asking you to do just that. Please find some way to involve yourselves in the struggle against nuclear weapons. Thank you very much.
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