Amidst the escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, a nuclear bomb survivor from World War II has spoken up about the horror of a nuclear attack and implored the two countries to not resort to them.
85-year-old Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Japan by the U.S., has expressed, "I repeatedly and strongly urge the leaders (of the United States and North Korea) never to use nuclear weapons." Additionally she also suggested that the two countries and their leaders simply negotiate without resorting to nuclear weapons or even warfare.
Thurlow also stated that her country, Japan, also has a moral responsibility towards her advocacy against nuclear weapons, being the first and only victim of the world's most powerful superweapon. She also urged her country and its officials to work on banishing and eliminating all nuclear weapons in order to prevent other countries from suffering the same fate as they did at the end of World War II where the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Unfortunately, the Japanese government was not supportive of the advocacy and did not join the United Nations treaty against nuclear weapons. This was despite the outcry of its citizens and the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The said treaty was named the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and has even won a Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, this was not enough for Japan to join the treaty, which was ironic since they were the first to experience the atrocities of nuclear arms.
Still, ICAN advocates will continue to uphold their humanitarian intentions and will seek to eradicate and outlaw all nuclear weapons before they can cause millions of deaths. With the current state of animosity between North Korea and the U.S., this possibility is not at all remote.
