Experts Say

Edmonton Journal
Apr. 27, 2011
By Douglas Roche

The following is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Edmontonian Doug Roche's new book, How We Stopped Loving the Bomb. Roche, who was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his disarmament work, is a former Progressive Conservative MP, a former Canadian ambassador for disarmament and a retired member of the Canadian Senate. How We Stopped Loving the Bomb is published by James Lorimer & Co . The author will discuss his work at a book launch tonight at 7 p.m.at Greenwoods' Bookshoppe, 7925 104th St.

We stood on the stage, our arms interlinked. Keijiro Matsushima, an 81-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, had just told the audience at a conference in Hiroshima in July 2010 about his experience of the attack when he was 16. A slight, balding figure, Matsushima said he suddenly looked up from his classroom desk. "Suddenly, there was an orange-and-yellow flash followed by a huge explosion and intense heat wave. I jumped under my desk. There was blood all over me. I said, 'I'm going to die.' " Had he been on the other side of the room, where the ceiling collapsed on students, he would have. He crawled outside, found a friend with skin peeling away and took him to the Red Cross hospital. "The whole city was on fire. Many people crawled to the riverbank for water. I was able to find my mother. We had no place to go. The next day, disease set in and many more died."

Mayor Tad Akiba called me to the stage a few minutes later to receive an Honorary Citizen of Hiroshima award for my work on nuclear disarmament. I immediately called Matsu shima back to the stage and we embraced as I told the audience: "He is my brother. I, too, was 16 when the bomb exploded. He has suffered enormously. Now I must help him to ensure that this never happens again."

My visit to Hiroshima a few days before the 65th anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing brought me back face-to-face with the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic blasts) and, in the museum, with the terrible scenes of suffering. Once more, I saw the photos of whole blocks completely obliterated, the charred clothing and the depictions of survivors, their burnt skin hanging from their arms and heads. A human shadow etched in stone is still visible; the victim, who had been sitting on stone steps 260 metres from the blast, burned to a crisp. In a two-kilometre radius from the centre the earth was so scorched that the city appeared to have been buried in molten lava. What made the horror even more unbearable was a huge globe in the centre of the museum showing all the places nuclear weapons are stored today, ready to inflict the same suffering all over again.

Steve Leeper, a 62-year-old American fluent in Japanese brought in by Akiba to head the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, escorted me through the museum. Leeper's father was a missionary and his mother was an anti-Vietnam war activist. Though born in Illinois, he spent his early childhood in Japan and returned there as an adult to work as a translator and auto-industry consultant.

In 2002, Akiba asked him to represent the fledgling Mayors for Peace organization at the United Nations, and then appointed him as the first foreigner to oversee Hiroshima's museum and memorials. In entrusting stewardship of the symbol of Hiroshima's annihilation to a citizen of the country that dropped the bomb, Akiba said this about the past and the future: reconciliation is essential to find peace in the world and Hiroshima must never happen again.

Leeper's innate gentleness has helped him to be accepted by his Japanese colleagues and, perhaps more importantly, led him to find a way past the disputatious questions of Japan's imperial past with its own military cruelties -the attack on Pearl Harbor -and whether the U.S. should have used the atom bomb.

Leeper's concern is less about berating past military actions and more about preventing future horrors by the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. He says his appointment is proof that Hiroshima does not seek revenge, but reconciliation. Soon, there will be no living hibakusha to give their testimony; and yet their story must not die with them. Leeper's challenge is to find new ways to make the Hiroshima experience meaningful to coming generations of the Japanese themselves and people around the world. The visitor leaves the museum with these words inscribed on a painting of greenery:

That autumn

in Hiroshima where it was said

"For seventy-five years nothing

will grow"

new buds sprouted

in the green that came back to life

among the charred ruins

People recovered

their living hopes and courage

All around the Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima has been rebuilt into a modern city of 1.6 million people. The broad avenues and traffic jams are like those of cities everywhere. Life is fast paced. The people of Hiroshima don't go around feeling sorry for themselves.

The bustling activity reminded me of my first visit nearly three decades ago, and I told the story at a reception Akiba hosted that evening.

On that first visit I had toured the museum with some friends, which, by the end of the day, had thoroughly depressed us. When we returned to the hotel, a concierge told us there would be a baseball game that evening: Hiroshima vs. Tokyo. On an impulse, we took a cab to the stadium, bought baseball caps and joined in the enthusiastic Japanese chants. The game (it ended in a tie) refreshed us.

Back at the hotel, I realized we had just received a lesson in hope from the Hiroshima people. The evening had not been frivolous, but had offered us a release from the horror of the day and allowed our minds to focus on the future. Hiroshima had rebuilt itself: life went on. The people of Hiroshima have taught the world to have hope.

Hope, of course, needs action to take it beyond mere aspiration. That is why the Hiroshima conference, dedicated to the total abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020, appealed to governments to start negotiations immediately for an international ban. "To this end, governments that have expressed their desire for a comprehensive legal process, in partnership with like-minded NGOs, should convene a special disarmament conference in 2011 to facilitate the start of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention."

The major governments hate any thought of a timeline attached to nuclear disarmament, so Akiba's 2020 vision has, until now, been largely disregarded. But persistence is paying off. The world now knows that Akiba is serious and has 4,000 mayors behind him. While it would be practically impossible to get to zero nuclear weapons by 2020, it is entirely feasible to achieve a convention or framework agreement by that date.

"If 2020 is somehow 'premature,' " asks Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament, "when should the world expect nuclear disarmament to be achieved?"

At the very least, Duarte argues, the nuclear weapons states should make a non-binding political declaration of their willingness to eliminate all their nuclear weapons by an agreed year. "If nuclear disarmament is approached simply as an 'ultimate goal,' then no one should be surprised if compliance with non-proliferation commitments will one day also be viewed as only an ultimate goal." The double standard of trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons while allowing the nuclear powers to retain theirs must stop.

The actual date on which the world reaches zero nuclear weapons -whether it is 2020 or 2030 -cannot be foretold. What is critical is to start down that path now with an agreed determination to get to the end point. This is why starting negotiations now on a Nuclear Weapons Convention is so important. If a comprehensive course to elimination is not charted and is only incremental, disconnected steps will continue, the goal will fade from sight. Both 2020 and 2030 will come and go and the nuclear powers will simply perpetuate their modernization programs. Benchmarks with timelines are essential to keep the process moving.

U.S. President Barack Obama, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, Akiba, two-thirds of all national governments, public-interest groups comprising people old and young, of all cultures, races and religions -all seek a nuclear-weapons-free world. The evidence that most countries in the world have stopped loving the bomb and want a global ban is mounting daily. A worldwide movement to eliminate the means of human destruction is gathering speed.

But the opponents of this movement -the nuclear weapons states -still have the upper hand because they are in positions of power. They have so perfected the art of lying that they have turned the doctrine of nuclear deterrence into gospel. A compliant mainstream media, with fewer and fewer journalists willing to expose the falsity of the nuclear weapons defence, or even willing to counter a corporate mentality that sees anti-nuclear protesters as marginal malingerers, gives support to the lagging establishment thinking.

Former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower was right when he said that every gun "steals" from the poor, but this thought, meant to uplift, is now submerged in the new age of fear of attack. The maintenance of nuclear weapons in the name of security is a sham foisted on a public confused about how to find human security in a globalized world.

The conscience of humanity is, finally, awakening to ban this blatant evil. A spate of art, films, books, the Internet and all forms of modern communication is inspiring growing numbers of people within all civilizations that the threat of mass killings cannot be tolerated.

The abolition of nuclear weapons is no longer just a lofty goal, a noble aspiration, an idealistic thought. It is the paramount human rights issue of our time. Peace is impossible as long as the threat of nuclear war hangs over our heads. A Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibiting the production as well as the use of all nuclear weapons in all circumstances is urgently needed.

It will be constructed once the public rebels against the weapons that would destroy all life.

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