August 4, 2025
Masako Toki
The following is an excerpt from The Conversation.
Eighty years ago, in August 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated by the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war. By the end of that year, approximately 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.
Those who survived – known as Hibakusha – have carried their suffering as living testimony to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, with one key wish: that no one else will suffer as they have.
Now, in 2025, as the world marks 80 years of remembrance since those bombings, the voices of the Hibakusha offer not only memory, but also moral clarity in an age of growing peril.
As someone who focuses on nuclear disarmament and has heard Hibakusha testimonies in my native Japanese language, I have been enthusiastically promoting disarmament education grounded in their voices and experience. I believe their message is more vital than ever at a time of rising nuclear risk. Nuclear threats have reemerged in global discourse, breaking long-standing taboos against even talking about their use. From Russia and Europe to the Middle East and East Asia, the possibility of nuclear escalation is no longer unthinkable.
Continue reading at The Conversation.
