Reflections on Hiroshima

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Tom Unterrainer

Tom Unterrainer delivered the following ‘reflection’ on behalf of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at Coventry Cathedral, UK, on Hiroshima Day 2021.

On October 21, 1945, the physicist Daniel Posin wrote to an esteemed colleague in the following terms:

The final total confirmation of your principle … should mark the beginning of an era of light; but we stand perturbed and seem to see ahead an impenetrable night …

The recipient of this letter was, of course, Albert Einstein.

How could Einstein have possibly known the destructive, genocidal consequences of his discoveries in advance?

Is the world in which such creative impulses are inhibited by fear a desirable one? I think not.

Instead, we should question why an era of light gave way to impenetrable night. Einstein’s last public act, in 1955, was to put his name to the ‘Russell-Einstein Manifesto’, which stated:

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

And continued:

If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

The light-seekers set an example for us all.

Take Setsuko Thurlow as an example. Thurlow was a 13-year-old schoolgirl when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, her home.

She recalls:

I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the sensation of floating in the air … Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man saying: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can.”

Setsuko survived the bombing. She moved towards the light. Not everyone who survived the initial blast, not everyone who – like her – emerged from the rubble of a city destroyed by the American bomb made it. She continues:

As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation.

In the decades that followed Setsuko Thurlow deployed her powerful testimony and a determination that such events should never occur again to build an international movement to ban nuclear weapons once and for all. The fruits of her efforts and those of thousands of others can be found in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or ‘The Ban’.

‘The Ban’ is now in force. It is international law. The non-nuclear-armed world has come together to say “enough”. Yet the nuclear-armed states retain their nuclear machines of mass death. ‘The Ban’ opened the prospect of a “new era of light”, but the nuclear powers seem hellbent on perpetuating the “impenetrable night”.

Yet we continue with our work, for to do otherwise is to abandon hope for the world. Our task is obvious: the abolition of nuclear weapons, war and injustice.

The great American abolitionist John Brown once wrote that:

I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day.

Despite his forceful character and heroic efforts, Brown did not live to see the abolition of slavery in the United States. Will we live to see the abolition of nuclear weapons, war and injustice? Will the demands of “no more Hiroshima’s, no more Nagasaki’s” be heard in our lifetimes?

The night is, after all, pretty dark and it is getting darker.

When the world faces the triple threats of climate catastrophe, pandemic and nuclear dangers you would hope to see increased international cooperation and solidarity. Instead, a carrier strike group is making its way from these shores to the other side of the world. Whether this voyage of provocation results in acute embarrassment or acute danger largely relies on the tolerance of others.

When international laws are broken and additional billions of pounds are expended on an increased nuclear warhead stockpile, sharp questions must be raised.

When poverty and inequality stalk the land, the world is re-arming: developing new nuclear weapons, new killer drones, automatic death machines and much else. There is a new arms race when the race that really matters – to vaccinate the world, to end poverty, eradicate inequality – has hardly begun.

In all this darkness, we must keep pointing and moving towards the light. In these efforts, we are not alone. We number in the millions. We exist in every village, town and city in every corner of the world.

With John Brown, surely we cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day.