August 6: Remembering Hiroshima 75 years later

Lovely twilight beckons.  Instead of lazing inside, sheltered from the crowded waterfront, I head out, an evening stroll’s path to be determined by whim.  At Toronto City Hall’s Nathan Phillips Square, I come across a small ceremony marking the 75^thanniversary of the Nagasaki bomb.  Small group, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing launches lanterns into the pool while 3 native women drums.  The event is patched into some other event purported to a larger audience far away.  In my search for the patch, I discover Setsuko Thurlow.  

 

Setsuko Thurlow is likely the Canadian Nobel laureate that you’ve never heard of.  Or more precisely, she is one of the founding members of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) coalition, which received the Nobel Peace Prize.  She is a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb 75 years ago.  In 2017, through ICAN’s efforts, UN passed the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.  Later that year, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons". 

 

https://www.icanw.org/setsuko_thurlow

 

Years ago, I visited Los Alamos.  Fascinating.  I dialogue with my American aunt, who views that the use of the atomic bomb was justified. I differ in this view.  The number of civilian casualties, the long lasting effects of an atomic bomb, unproven need of use of such force in the war made the use of this indiscriminatory weapon immoral.  Now it is also illegal.  

Hiroshima's Atomic Dome, visited in March 2019