Documenting Hiroshima 80 years after A-bombing: August 6, 1955, first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs is held
Mar. 16, 2025
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
On August 6, 1955, the first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs got underway in Hiroshima City. The three-day conference and related events that followed attracted a total of 5,000 people. That number included citizens from throughout Japan involved in the collection of signatures for the campaign to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs, as well as 52 people from 14 countries overseas, including peace activists from the United States, a nuclear-weapons state, and medical professionals from the Soviet Union, another nuclear power.
Ten years earlier, the atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. military on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had claimed the lives of many people. The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in 1949, and the United Kingdom followed with its own in 1952. In March 1954, the United States conducted a hydrogen bomb test on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean. That unprecedented test exposed fishing boat crews and local residents to radiation.
A national Tokyo-based organization coordinating a signature-collection drive that had spread following the Bikini Atoll disaster made the decision to hold the world conference as a culmination of its campaign. In consideration of the 10th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Hiroshima citizens involved in the signature-collection campaign had proposed the idea for the conference. After the decision was formalized, a preparatory committee that included A-bomb survivors was formed in Hiroshima.
Heiichi Fujii, a member of the committee at the time, worked hard to raise funds. Mr. Fujii, who died in 1996 at the age of 80, later became the first secretary-general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) when the group was formed in 1956. Mr. Fujii’s father and younger sister had been killed in the atomic bombing, and after the war, he served as a social worker. Later, in an interview with Satoru Ubuki, a researcher of the A-bomb survivors’ movement, he recalled the time he was sent 100 yen from a child living in the northern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. That episode is described in his book Madotekure (in English, ‘Restore Hiroshima as it was’), published in 1981.
Mr. Fujii explained how he believed that “the rewriting of world history will begin with the campaign to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs. The direction of world history will be determined by, not the history of imperial courts or of power, but rather by such things as 100 yen from ordinary people.”
A wide range of people were able to unite under the theme of “banning atomic and hydrogen bombs” based on humanism, and the groundswell created by that movement led to the holding of the first world conference. However, before the start of the conference, the issue of the A-bomb victims, which Mr. Fujii emphasized, had not yet attracted sufficient attention. However, when those victims, “ordinary people,” spoke at the conference venue about the suffering etched into their minds and bodies and the emotions built up over those 10 years, a profound change began to take place.
(Originally published on March 16, 2025)
On August 6, 1955, the first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs got underway in Hiroshima City. The three-day conference and related events that followed attracted a total of 5,000 people. That number included citizens from throughout Japan involved in the collection of signatures for the campaign to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs, as well as 52 people from 14 countries overseas, including peace activists from the United States, a nuclear-weapons state, and medical professionals from the Soviet Union, another nuclear power.
Ten years earlier, the atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. military on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had claimed the lives of many people. The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in 1949, and the United Kingdom followed with its own in 1952. In March 1954, the United States conducted a hydrogen bomb test on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean. That unprecedented test exposed fishing boat crews and local residents to radiation.
A national Tokyo-based organization coordinating a signature-collection drive that had spread following the Bikini Atoll disaster made the decision to hold the world conference as a culmination of its campaign. In consideration of the 10th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Hiroshima citizens involved in the signature-collection campaign had proposed the idea for the conference. After the decision was formalized, a preparatory committee that included A-bomb survivors was formed in Hiroshima.
Heiichi Fujii, a member of the committee at the time, worked hard to raise funds. Mr. Fujii, who died in 1996 at the age of 80, later became the first secretary-general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) when the group was formed in 1956. Mr. Fujii’s father and younger sister had been killed in the atomic bombing, and after the war, he served as a social worker. Later, in an interview with Satoru Ubuki, a researcher of the A-bomb survivors’ movement, he recalled the time he was sent 100 yen from a child living in the northern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. That episode is described in his book Madotekure (in English, ‘Restore Hiroshima as it was’), published in 1981.
Mr. Fujii explained how he believed that “the rewriting of world history will begin with the campaign to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs. The direction of world history will be determined by, not the history of imperial courts or of power, but rather by such things as 100 yen from ordinary people.”
A wide range of people were able to unite under the theme of “banning atomic and hydrogen bombs” based on humanism, and the groundswell created by that movement led to the holding of the first world conference. However, before the start of the conference, the issue of the A-bomb victims, which Mr. Fujii emphasized, had not yet attracted sufficient attention. However, when those victims, “ordinary people,” spoke at the conference venue about the suffering etched into their minds and bodies and the emotions built up over those 10 years, a profound change began to take place.
(Originally published on March 16, 2025)
