[Vision2020] Oslo 12-10-17: Nobel Peace Prize speech by ICAN campaigner, Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow

[Ron Force]

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1988

Ron Force
Moscow Idaho USA

On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 10:15 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:

> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> ***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
> plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
> outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
> without the express written permission of the author.*****
> -----------------------------------
>
> I listened/watched to this speech live at about 5 AM this Sunday morning.
> Words fail to capture the impact.
>
> Assuming humanity survives the barbaric age we are living through, future
> generations will be aghast at the horrors we have and continue to inflict
> on each other, and the living planet as a whole.
> ----------------------------------
> Nobel Peace Prize speech by ICAN campaigner, Hiroshima survivor Setsuko
> Thurlow
>
> December 11, 2017 (Mainichi Japan)
> http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171211/p2a/00m/0na/005000c
>
> International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), activist and
> Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow speaks in Oslo City Hall, Norway, Sunday
> Dec. 10, 2017, after ICAN officially received the Nobel Peace Prize 2017.
> (Terje Bendiksby/ NTB scanpix via AP)
>
> The following is a speech delivered by Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the
> August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on behalf of the International
> Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace
> Prize, as released by the Nobel Foundation.
>
> Your Majesties,
>
> Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
>
> My fellow campaigners, here and throughout the world,
>
> Ladies and gentlemen,
>
> It is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on
> behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You
> each give me such tremendous hope that we can -- and will -- bring the era
> of nuclear weapons to an end.
>
> I speak as a member of the family of hibakusha -- those of us who, by some
> miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
> For more than seven decades, we have worked for the total abolition of
> nuclear weapons.
>
> We have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and
> testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with
> long-forgotten names, like Moruroa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga,
> Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were
> experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted.
>
> We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate
> fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in
> terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought
> us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories
> of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
>
> Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who
> perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around
> us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each
> person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in
> vain.
>
> I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic
> bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15,
> I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the
> sensation of floating in the air.
>
> As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself
> pinned by the collapsed building. I began to hear my classmates' faint
> cries: "Mother, help me. God, help me."
>
> Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man
> saying: "Don't give up! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the
> light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can."
> As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that
> building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter,
> unimaginable devastation.
>
> Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people,
> they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. 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. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the
> air.
>
> Thus, with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its residents
> were civilians who were incinerated, vaporized, carbonized -- among them,
> members of my own family and 351 of my schoolmates.
>
> In the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would
> die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of
> radiation. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors.
>
> Whenever I remember Hiroshima, the first image that comes to mind is of my
> four-year-old nephew, Eiji - his little body transformed into an
> unrecognizable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint
> voice until his death released him from agony.
>
> To me, he came to represent all the innocent children of the world,
> threatened as they are at this very moment by nuclear weapons. Every second
> of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we
> hold dear. We must not tolerate this insanity any longer.
>
> Through our agony and the sheer struggle to survive -- and to rebuild our
> lives from the ashes -- we hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the
> world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our
> testimonies.
>
> But still some refused to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities -- as
> war crimes. They accepted the propaganda that these were "good bombs" that
> had ended a "just war". It was this myth that led to the disastrous nuclear
> arms race -- a race that continues to this day.
>
> Nine nations still threaten to incinerate entire cities, to destroy life
> on earth, to make our beautiful world uninhabitable for future generations.
> The development of nuclear weapons signifies not a country's elevation to
> greatness, but its descent to the darkest depths of depravity. These
> weapons are not a necessary evil; they are the ultimate evil.
>
> On the seventh of July this year, I was overwhelmed with joy when a great
> majority of the world's nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the
> Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having witnessed humanity at its worst, I
> witnessed, that day, humanity at its best. We hibakusha had been waiting
> for the ban for seventy-two years. Let this be the beginning of the end of
> nuclear weapons.
>
> All responsible leaders will sign this treaty. And history will judge
> harshly those who reject it. No longer shall their abstract theories mask
> the genocidal reality of their practices. No longer shall "deterrence" be
> viewed as anything but a deterrent to disarmament. No longer shall we live
> under a mushroom cloud of fear.
>
> To the officials of nuclear-armed nations -- and to their accomplices
> under the so-called "nuclear umbrella" -- I say this: Listen to our
> testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential.
> You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering
> humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.
>
> To every president and prime minister of every nation of the world, I
> beseech you: Join this treaty; forever eradicate the threat of nuclear
> annihilation.
>
> When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smouldering rubble, I kept
> pushing. I kept moving toward the light. And I survived. Our light now is
> the ban treaty. To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I
> repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima:
> "Don't give up! Keep pushing! See the light? Crawl towards it."
>
> Tonight, as we march through the streets of Oslo with torches aflame, let
> us follow each other out of the dark night of nuclear terror. No matter
> what obstacles we face, we will keep moving and keep pushing and keep
> sharing this light with others. This is our passion and commitment for our
> one precious world to survive.
>
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