‘With one bomb, my beloved city was incinerated’: Hiroshima survivor tells why the world, not just North Korea, must give up nuclear weapons

Kevin Rafferty says the costs of a nuclear weapons exchange, and the words of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, should motivate us to be rid of these weapons forever

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This handout picture, taken on August 6, 1945 by the US Army and released by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, shows the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped over the city of Hiroshima. About 140,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the attack, including those who survived the bombing itself but died soon afterward due to severe radiation exposure. Photo: AFP / Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Published: 11:08am, 22 Dec 2017Updated: 7:33pm, 22 Dec 2017

An elderly Asian-Canadian woman gave a powerful acceptance speech at this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony. Key passages from Setsuko Thurlow’s speech should be inscribed on the walls of the United Nations Security Council.

Thurlow is a hibakusha, an atomic bomb survivor. On August 6, 1945, she was a 13-year-old girl working in a government office in Hiroshima as cheap labour. At 8.15am, she recalls, “I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window”. With immense effort, she emerged from the ruins of the building.

“Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by … Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out … with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its residents were civilians who were incinerated, vaporised, carbonised.”

After hearing this speech, could Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un, all of them leaders of nuclear powers, contemplate using such a bomb?

The Nobel victory of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons offers a challenge to world leaders, and should stir the consciences of all human beings.

North Korea announces it has developed a powerful H-bomb that can fit in missile warhead

Historians and philosophers argue about the use of atomic bombs in 1945. US president Harry Truman, who made the decision, described it as “the most terrible bomb in the history of the world”, but deluded himself by claiming that it would only be used against military targets and not against women or children.