[NPT Review Conference 2022] Nihon Hidankyo’s Masako Wada comments that humans bear responsibility for nuclear elimination
Aug. 7, 2022
by Koji Higuchi and Kana Kobayashi, Staff Writers
NEW YORK-On August 5, at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference underway at U.N. headquarters in the city, Masako Wada, 78, resident of Yokohama and assistant secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), who experienced the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, delivered a speech. Stating that a nuclear war has got a grip on more reality because of nuclear threat posed by Russia, she expressed a sense of crisis, by warning “New hibakusha (nuclear victims) may be created.” She argued that humans have a responsibility to abolish nuclear weapons as their creator.
Taking the opportunity of presentations held by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Ms. Wada talked from the rear of the assembly hall to the representatives from national/regional governments in English. She experienced the bomb when she was a year and ten-months old. Introducing an A-bombed scene as told to her by her mother, where victims’ bodies had been brought to a vacant space next to her home by two-wheel carts, and burnt day by day, she expressed anger in her speech, saying, “What is human dignity? Human beings are not created to be treated like this and burned like garbage.”
Given the current conditions that the nuclear states turn their backs against the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and that Russia has hinted about the use of nuclear weapons in particular, she voiced concern about a third use of nuclear weapons in war, one that would follow Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She asked for sincere and serious discussion among the nuclear weapons states about the commitment of nuclear elimination, which was agreed to at the 2010 NPT review conference. She concluded that nuclear weapons were created by humans and used by humans, and that humans’ wisdom, public conscience and responsibility can eliminate them, no more hibakusha, and received applause.
Paul Ingram, 54, Academic Programme Manager in the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge University United Kingdom, listened to her speech and said the A-bomb survivor’s testimony had the power to move peoples’ minds.
On behalf of Mayors for Peace (chaired by Hiroshima City Mayor Kazumi Matsui), a solidarity body of about 8,000 cities worldwide pursuing the elimination of nuclear weapons and permanent peace, Tomihisa Taue, the group’s vice chair and Nagasaki City Mayor, spoke at the conference, too. Arguing the only way for humans to evade the risk of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them, Mr. Taue urged the attendees to ensure Nagasaki would be the last place A-bombed in war.
(Originally published on August 7, 2022)
NEW YORK-On August 5, at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference underway at U.N. headquarters in the city, Masako Wada, 78, resident of Yokohama and assistant secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), who experienced the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, delivered a speech. Stating that a nuclear war has got a grip on more reality because of nuclear threat posed by Russia, she expressed a sense of crisis, by warning “New hibakusha (nuclear victims) may be created.” She argued that humans have a responsibility to abolish nuclear weapons as their creator.
Taking the opportunity of presentations held by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Ms. Wada talked from the rear of the assembly hall to the representatives from national/regional governments in English. She experienced the bomb when she was a year and ten-months old. Introducing an A-bombed scene as told to her by her mother, where victims’ bodies had been brought to a vacant space next to her home by two-wheel carts, and burnt day by day, she expressed anger in her speech, saying, “What is human dignity? Human beings are not created to be treated like this and burned like garbage.”
Given the current conditions that the nuclear states turn their backs against the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and that Russia has hinted about the use of nuclear weapons in particular, she voiced concern about a third use of nuclear weapons in war, one that would follow Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She asked for sincere and serious discussion among the nuclear weapons states about the commitment of nuclear elimination, which was agreed to at the 2010 NPT review conference. She concluded that nuclear weapons were created by humans and used by humans, and that humans’ wisdom, public conscience and responsibility can eliminate them, no more hibakusha, and received applause.
Paul Ingram, 54, Academic Programme Manager in the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge University United Kingdom, listened to her speech and said the A-bomb survivor’s testimony had the power to move peoples’ minds.
On behalf of Mayors for Peace (chaired by Hiroshima City Mayor Kazumi Matsui), a solidarity body of about 8,000 cities worldwide pursuing the elimination of nuclear weapons and permanent peace, Tomihisa Taue, the group’s vice chair and Nagasaki City Mayor, spoke at the conference, too. Arguing the only way for humans to evade the risk of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them, Mr. Taue urged the attendees to ensure Nagasaki would be the last place A-bombed in war.
(Originally published on August 7, 2022)
