“All that’s required is political will and leadership”

by Matt Bivens, MD, an emergency medicine attending physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford MA

Terumi Tanaka was 13 years old, at home, reading a book, when the last atomic bomb ever dropped on a city exploded less than 2 miles away. 

The flash of bright light startled him, and he threw himself on the ground and covered his ears, just before a shock wave struck. He woke unharmed under debris, self-extricated, and entered the waking nightmare of a wrecked Nagasaki. 

Over the next few days, he saw hundreds of people “suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention.” Five of his family members were among the dead. They included a beloved aunt who Tanaka, at age 13, had to cremate by himself in a field.

Today, aged 93, Tanaka is a retired physicist. He was one of many moving and engaging speakers at the 24th IPPNW World Congress, held in Nagasaki this week. He was also the recipient last year of the Nobel Peace Prize, which Tanaka accepted on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The three-day World Conference was attended by more than 350 physicians, about 50 medical students, and many other citizens from 35 countries concerned by the existential threat of nuclear weapons. It opened with speeches from the governor of Nagasaki province, the heads of Japanese medical societies, and the UN Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs. This was followed by a series of addresses from leaders of four organizations who have won Nobel Peace Prizes for work on nuclear abolition: IPPNW, honored with the Nobel Prize in 1985; the Pugwash Conferences, honored in 1995; ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, honored in 2017; and Nihon Hidanyko, honored in 2024.

Conference attendees heard sobering accounts of how the possibility of a nuclear war has grown more likely than ever — with more than 12,000 nuclear weapons held by nine states around the world, aggressive plans to expand arsenals in many key nations, destabilizing factors like artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles, and numerous flash points for conflict, from the Kashmir region to the war-wracked territory of Ukraine. Conference attendees also reviewed the evidence that even a regional or “small” nuclear war could crash the world’s climate and agriculture, leading to hundreds of millions of deaths in lands far from a war zone.

“Alas, the world is nearer a nuclear war than it has ever been,” said Dr. Kati Juva of Finland, the co-president of IPPNW, in her address to the huge hall of listeners at Nagasaki’s Dejima Messe convention center. “The Doomsday clock stands at 89 seconds to midnight, and international diplomacy seems to be failing us.”

And of course, attendees heard extensive testimony about the humanitarian consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago, including direct testimony from some of the hibakusha, or atomic bombing survivors. 

A census earlier this year found 99,130 surviving hibakusha, with an average age today of 86. 

“I urge everyone to listen to the voices of those who can still speak today,” said Tanaka, and addressed the 50 medical students in the hall directly, charging them to continue to work for nuclear abolition.

It was repeatedly noted that all of the hibakusha were children when the atomic bombs were dropped — which means that in essence, the only eyewitness testimony we have of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the testimony of children. (The bombings killed 38,000 children outright, and countless more were injured.)

“They were just boys when the United States dropped a single nuclear bomb on this city,” said Melissa Parke, the ICAN Executive Director, of some of the dignified older men who had addressed the hall earlier. 

Parke recounted working for the UN Relief Agency more than 20 years ago and watching one August evening in Gaza as a commemoration ceremony was held for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Hundreds of Palestinian children lit candles on Gaza Harbor,” she said. “They were remembering children in another time and place who had been bombed.”

These days, she continued, the elderly hibakusha, shaped by their own childhood experiences, are often found leading vigils in Japan to honor the children of Gaza. And of course, by sharing their childhood memories, the hibakusha have been instrumental in convincing the majority of the world’s nations to sign on to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“The abolition of nuclear weapons will be a moral frontier as significant as the abolition of slavery,” Parke said. “Of all our challenges, this is the least complex. All that’s required is political will and leadership.”