At 83, Setsuko Thurlow is still full of passion and principle, but she’s had enough. “We have waited 70 years,” she said of her fellow hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivors). “I think the time has come.” Thurlow survived the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima when she watched her city of 350,000 shatter into heaps of bodies and rubble. She’s since traveled the world, speaking about the terrors of nuclear weapons and fighting for disarmament.
For her lifetime of efforts, Thurlow will be presented this Sunday with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. Earlier this year, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She talked with me by phone from her home in Canada about why people aren’t more afraid of the big bombs, why they should be, and why the tide may finally be turning toward abolishment.
You’ve said the issue doesn’t get the attention it should. Why do you think that is? Generally, people feel powerless, helpless. They think, “Even if I oppose it, the government will do what it wants anyway.” And nothing has happened in the last 70 years. Because it is such a dreadful issue, people consciously and unconsciously put it out of their minds.