Remembering Hiroshima

by Sarah Brown, Ploughshares Fund Intern

On the eve of the anniversary of Hiroshima, Frida Berrigan of the Ploughshares-funded New America Foundation commemorates the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Her account of harrowing stories of the dead and the survivors preface her argument against nuclear weapons. She warns, “The terror of nuclear annihilation seems to have worn off almost completely,” though “the unthinkable is still under consideration -- even as the Obama administration takes its first steps in the right direction.”  These steps include renewed talks with Russia and efforts to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but more is needed. 

Berrigan also comments that the bombs used “were puny when compared to today's typical nuclear weapon.”  An article by the Ploughshares-funded Federation of American Scientists highlights the debate over renewing the Fogbank program, creating hazardous materials to expand the lives of the nuclear warhead.    The article argues, “Tremendous amounts of financial, intellectual, and political capital could be saved from a move away from two-stage thermonuclear weapons to more simply designed HEU gun-type assembly weapons,” like those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The article queries, “Some detractors will say that a 13kiloton nuclear explosion, such as the one that leveled Hiroshima, is not powerful enough to maintain the balance of fear that is our nuclear deterrent policy (the W76, by contrast, is a 100kiloton weapon).  But just barely beneath the surface of that assertion is the question, for what purpose is a 13kiloton nuclear weapon not powerful enough?” Berrigan concludes, “The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the children of our future need us to understand this and act upon it -- 64 years too late... and not a minute too soon.”

Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, a Ploughshares Fund grantee, reports from Hiroshima on commemorations in that city, and the Peace Action website offers information on local and national events here in the U.S.