Today marks eighty years since the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. As I write this on August 6, 2025, I cannot help but reflect on how this anniversary carries a particular weight—not just as a historical commemoration, but as a warning that grows more urgent with each passing year. My journey with the nuclear disarmament movement spans over five decades, beginning with one of my earliest memories: feeling scared with my family during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, just four years old, trying to understand why the adults around me seemed so frightened. That childhood terror of nuclear annihilation would shape the rest of my life.
During my years as NSW State Coordinator for People For Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I witnessed both the power of grassroots activism and the stubborn persistence of nuclear threats. We organized rallies against conflict in the Middle East, blockaded nuclear warship visits to Sydney Harbour, and fought against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Yet here we are, eight decades after Hiroshima, with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists having moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight—the closest we have ever been to catastrophe.¹
The Morning the World Changed
At 8:16:02 AM on August 6, 1945, the uranium bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” detonated 1,968 feet above Hiroshima after falling for 43 seconds from the B-29 Enola Gay.² Within the first second, a fireball 900 feet in diameter reached temperatures of 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The hypocenter beneath the explosion reached 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit—sufficient to vaporize human bodies instantly.³ Between 70,000 and 80,000 people died immediately or within hours from the blast and thermal radiation.⁴
The physical destruction was unprecedented. The blast demolished structures across thirteen square kilometers, with 67% of Hiroshima’s buildings completely destroyed.⁵ Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer 1.7 miles from the hypocenter, described the moment: “The world around me turned bright white. And I was momentarily blinded… It was really a terrible scene. It was just like something out of hell.”⁶ By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima had reached approximately 140,000 people—nearly 40% of the city’s population.⁷
Three days later, on August 9 at 11:02 AM, the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” exploded over Nagasaki. Despite being 40% more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, the mountainous terrain of Nagasaki confined the blast to the Urakami Valley, limiting immediate deaths to approximately 40,000 people.⁸ By year’s end, the Nagasaki death toll had climbed to 74,000.⁹
The Long Shadow of Radiation
The atomic bombings introduced humanity to a new form of suffering that extended far beyond the initial explosions. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation’s Life Span Study, which has followed over 100,000 survivors since 1950, documented the long-term health consequences that continue to this day.¹⁰ Among 49,204 survivors studied from 1950 to 2000, researchers identified 204 leukemia deaths, with 94 excess cases directly attributable to radiation exposure.¹¹ The first wave of leukemia cases appeared just two to three years after exposure, peaking at six to eight years.
Solid cancers began appearing a decade after the bombings and continue to affect survivors today. The study found significant increases in cancers of the stomach, colon, lung, breast, thyroid, bladder, and other organs.¹² What makes these findings particularly chilling is that radiation exposure at young ages produced the highest lifetime cancer risks—children who survived the bombings faced decades of elevated cancer risk throughout their lives.¹³
Beyond the physical effects, the psychological trauma has persisted across generations. A 1995 study by Nagasaki University of 7,000 survivors found persistent high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression even fifty years after the bombings.¹⁴ The stigma faced by hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) compounded their suffering, as many faced discrimination in employment and marriage due to fears about radiation effects.¹⁵
The Decision to Use the Bomb
The decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan emerged from a complex calculus of military strategy, diplomatic positioning, and unprecedented destructive capability. President Harry Truman, who learned of the atomic bomb’s existence only after Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, relied heavily on the recommendations of the Interim Committee headed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson.¹⁶ Meeting between May 9 and June 1, 1945, the committee recommended using the weapon “against Japan at the earliest opportunity, without warning, on a dual target—a military installation or war plant surrounded by workers’ homes.”¹⁷
The alternative to atomic weapons—Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan—carried staggering casualty projections. Military planners estimated 456,000 American casualties for Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu) alone, with total estimates for conquering Japan reaching up to one million American casualties.¹⁸ Japan still fielded seven million military personnel and had mobilized a civilian militia of 28 million armed with everything from ancient rifles to bamboo spears. The Japanese military had prepared 7,500 aircraft for kamikaze missions and thousands of suicide boats.¹⁹
Recent historical scholarship has complicated this narrative. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s research suggests that the Soviet entry into the Pacific War on August 8, 1945, may have been equally or more decisive than the atomic bombs in forcing Japan’s surrender.²⁰ The Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation saw 1.5 million Soviet troops destroy Japan’s Kwantung Army in just days, eliminating Japan’s last hope for a negotiated peace through Soviet mediation. As Admiral Toyoda Soemu later testified: “I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atomic bombs did more to hasten the surrender.”²¹
From Monopoly to Proliferation
The American nuclear monopoly lasted just four years. The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, followed by the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960, and China in 1964.²² The Cold War arms race reached its terrifying peak in 1986 with approximately 70,300 nuclear warheads globally—over 40,000 Soviet and 31,000 American.²³ Today, nine nations possess an estimated 12,241 nuclear warheads, with approximately 2,100 maintained on high alert status, ready to launch within minutes.²⁴
Throughout this period, humanity has repeatedly skirted nuclear catastrophe through a combination of luck and individual courage. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet submarine B-59 nearly launched a nuclear torpedo, prevented only when deputy brigade commander Vasily Arkhipov refused to agree to the launch.²⁵ On September 26, 1983, Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov prevented potential nuclear war by correctly identifying a false alarm in the early warning system that showed five incoming U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles.²⁶ That November, the NATO exercise Able Archer 83 was so realistic that Soviet leadership placed nuclear forces on high alert, believing an actual first strike was imminent.²⁷
The Australian Peace Movement
Whilst an activist for many years prior, my involvement with People For Nuclear Disarmament in Australia’s anti-nuclear movement was during the late 80s and early 90s which followed a critical period as concern for nuclear catastrophe peaked in the 80s before the fall of the Berlin Wall. PND emerged in 1981 from earlier peace organizations, building on the foundation laid by the Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament, which had been active since 1960.²⁸ As NSW State Coordinator, I worked with a network of local groups, coordinating protests against nuclear warship visits, organizing educational campaigns, and mobilizing opposition to French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
The movement’s greatest achievement came with the Palm Sunday rallies, which peaked in 1985 with 350,000 participants across Australia—one of the largest peace demonstrations in our nation’s history.²⁹ A dual structure, combining individual members with affiliated organizations, created unprecedented grassroots mobilization. In Victoria alone, PND had 1,500 individual members and 150 affiliated organizations.³⁰
The campaign against French nuclear testing in the Pacific demonstrated the power of sustained activism. When France announced the resumption of testing at Moruroa Atoll in 1995, the Australian public response was overwhelming—polls showed 92% opposition.³¹ The protests, combined with international pressure, contributed to France’s decision to end testing in 1996 and sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Pnd’s work connected with global movements. The Nuclear Freeze campaign in the United States mobilized up to one million protesters in New York’s Central Park on June 12, 1982.³² Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament saw membership soar to 90,000 during the cruise missile deployment crisis.³³ The women’s peace camp at Greenham Common in England, which lasted from 1981 to 2000, inspired similar camps worldwide, including at Pine Gap in Australia in 1983.³⁴
Current Nuclear Dangers
As I write this in 2025, the nuclear threat has evolved in ways we could not have imagined during those Cold War protests. China’s nuclear arsenal has grown to approximately 600 warheads and is expanding by 100 annually, with projections of 1,500 warheads by 2035.³⁵ For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, we face a three-way nuclear competition between the United States, Russia, and China.³⁶
New technologies multiply the risks exponentially. Hypersonic weapons that can evade missile defenses are being deployed by Russia and China, with the United States racing to develop its own.³⁷ The integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command and control systems shortens decision-making time and increases the risk of accidents or miscalculation.³⁸ Cyber vulnerabilities in nuclear weapons systems create unprecedented dangers of unauthorized access or false warnings triggering catastrophic responses.³⁹
The Doomsday Clock’s current setting of 89 seconds to midnight reflects these compounding dangers. When the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved it forward on January 28, 2025, they cited not just nuclear risks but their intersection with climate change, biological threats, and disruptive technologies.⁴⁰ As the Science and Security Board’s statement noted: “Every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”⁴¹
Current flashpoints span the globe. Russia’s revised nuclear doctrine, announced in November 2024, explicitly lowers the threshold for nuclear weapons use.⁴² The war in Ukraine has seen attacks on nuclear facilities and repeated nuclear threats. In May 2025, an India-Pakistan crisis saw the first exchange of ballistic missiles between nuclear-armed states, with U.S. intelligence detecting “alarming escalatory signals” before last-minute diplomatic intervention.⁴³ Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 brought the Middle East closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.⁴⁴
Treaties and Disarmament Efforts
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force on January 22, 2021, represents the most significant disarmament achievement in decades. As of December 2024, 73 states have ratified the treaty, which comprehensively prohibits nuclear weapons’ development, testing, production, possession, use, and threat of use.⁴⁵ The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which led the treaty effort, received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for this achievement.⁴⁶
Yet the nuclear-armed states unanimously oppose the treaty, and the broader arms control architecture is collapsing. Russia suspended participation in New START—the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control treaty—in February 2023 and withdrew its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.⁴⁷ The United States had previously withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019.⁴⁸ When New START expires in February 2026, it will mark the first time since 1972 that no treaty limits the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.⁴⁹
The breakdown of arms control occurs alongside new proliferation risks. The A.Q. Khan network demonstrated how nuclear technology could spread through black markets, providing uranium enrichment technology to Iran and North Korea and complete weapons designs to Libya before its exposure in 2004.⁵⁰ Current concerns focus on terrorist acquisition of nuclear materials and the potential for cyber attacks on nuclear facilities.⁵¹
Lessons from Eight Decades
After eighty years living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, what have we learned? The testimonies of hibakusha have been crucial in maintaining the nuclear taboo—the norm against nuclear weapons use that has held since 1945. The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese confederation of atomic bomb survivors, recognized their role in “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”⁵² Their message gains urgency as the last survivors reach their eighties and nineties, taking with them the living memory of nuclear warfare.
The humanitarian consequences movement has definitively established that no adequate medical or humanitarian response is possible to nuclear weapons use. Studies show that even a “limited” nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would kill 27 million people directly and put 2 billion at risk of starvation from nuclear winter effects.⁵³ A full-scale nuclear war would end civilization as we know it.
Deterrence theory, while credited with preventing great power war during the Cold War, shows dangerous limitations in our multipolar world. The Ukraine conflict demonstrates that nuclear weapons don’t prevent conventional aggression or dangerous escalation.⁵⁴ Multiple nuclear actors increase the complexity of deterrence calculations exponentially. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry warns: “We are on the brink of a new nuclear arms race… This arms race will be far more dangerous than the Cold War arms race.”⁵⁵
The Path Forward
Standing at this eighty-year marker, I see both unprecedented dangers and reasons for hope. The dangers are clear: expiring treaties, new weapons technologies, multiple nuclear flashpoints, and the intersection of nuclear risks with climate change and emerging technologies. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists specifically calls for the United States, China, and Russia to “commence serious dialogue about each of the threats imperiling humanity.”⁵⁶
Yet civil society continues to push back. Contemporary movements connect nuclear and climate threats as interrelated existential risks requiring urgent action. Youth activists are bringing new energy to disarmament efforts, with groups like “Reverse the Trend” educating their generation about nuclear dangers.⁵⁷ Digital organizing reaches global audiences instantly, though it must complement the patient community building that made movements like PND effective.
Australia’s role remains crucial. As one of the world’s largest uranium exporters and host to U.S. intelligence facilities at Pine Gap that are integral to nuclear targeting, we cannot claim to stand apart from nuclear issues.⁵⁸ The success of nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific demonstrates that regions can reject nuclear weapons despite great power pressure.⁵⁹
Personal Reflections
After more than fifty years in the peace movement, I’ve learned that progress comes in waves—periods of intense activism and achievement followed by seeming dormancy, only to surge again when conditions align. The 1980s saw massive global mobilization against nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War brought dramatic reductions. Now, as we face a new arms race, I sense another wave building.
The young activists I meet today give me hope. They understand the connections between nuclear weapons, climate change, and social justice in ways my generation took decades to grasp. They see nuclear weapons not as symbols of strength but as relics of a destructive past that threatens their future. Their digital nativity allows them to organize across borders instantaneously, creating truly global movements.
But they need the stories and lessons we carry. They need to know about the morning Hiroshima disappeared, about the hibakusha who spent their lives warning the world, about the close calls that nearly ended everything, about the victories won through persistent organizing. Most importantly, they need to know that ordinary people, working together, have repeatedly pulled humanity back from the nuclear brink.
Conclusion
Today, on this eightieth anniversary of Hiroshima, as the Doomsday Clock stands at 89 seconds to midnight, we face a choice. We can sleepwalk toward catastrophe, assuming that the nuclear taboo will hold forever, that deterrence will never fail, that our luck will never run out. Or we can heed the urgent warning that this anniversary represents.
The hibakusha’s message has never been more relevant: nuclear weapons and humanity cannot coexist indefinitely. Either we will abolish nuclear weapons, or they will abolish us. After eighty years, we know too much to claim ignorance. We know what these weapons do to human bodies, to cities, to the fabric of civilization itself. We know how close we’ve come to using them again—by accident, miscalculation, or design. We know that our current trajectory leads toward catastrophe.
But we also know that change is possible. We’ve seen nuclear arsenals cut by 80% from Cold War peaks. We’ve seen entire regions declare themselves nuclear-weapon-free. We’ve seen a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons enter into force despite opposition from the nuclear-armed states. We’ve seen the power of ordinary people to demand a different future.
As someone who has spent most of my life in this struggle, I know the weight of this moment. The choices made in the next few years—about extending arms control, managing regional crises, controlling new technologies—will determine whether my grandchildren inherit a world free from nuclear weapons or no world at all. There is no middle ground.
On this anniversary, I think of that four-year-old child I was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, terrified of a threat he couldn’t understand. I think of the children of Hiroshima who never had the chance to grow old. I think of children today, growing up under the shadow of 12,000 nuclear weapons, any one of which could end their futures in an instant.
We owe them better. We owe them a world where the only mushroom clouds are in history books, where the resources wasted on weapons of mass destruction are redirected to healing our planet and uplifting humanity. That world remains possible, but only if we act with the urgency this moment demands. Eighty years after Hiroshima, we cannot afford to wait any longer.
FOOTNOTES
¹ “PRESS RELEASE: Doomsday Clock Set at 89 Seconds to Midnight, Closest Ever to Human Extinction,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 28, 2025, accessed August 6, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/01/press-release-doomsday-clock-set-at-89-seconds-to-midnight/.
² “The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” U.S. National Park Service, accessed August 6, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki.htm.
³ “General Description of Damage Caused by the Atomic Explosions,” Atomicarchive, accessed August 6, 2025, https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp9.html.
⁴ Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), 264.
⁵ “The Realities of the Atomic Bombing,” Hiroshima City Official Website, accessed August 6, 2025, https://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/english/peace/1029920/1009857.html.
⁶ “Yoshito Matsushige’s Account of the Hiroshima Bombing,” Nuclear Museum, accessed August 6, 2025, https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/yoshito-matsushige-account-hiroshima-bombing/.
⁷ “Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings,” International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, accessed August 6, 2025, https://www.icanw.org/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_bombings.
⁸ “The Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945,” The National WWII Museum, accessed August 6, 2025, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/bombing-nagasaki-august-9-1945.
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²⁰ Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 298.
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⁵¹ Matthew Bunn and Nicholas Roth, “The Effects of a Single Terrorist Nuclear Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 28, 2017.
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⁵⁵ William J. Perry, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2020), 189.
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⁵⁸ Richard Tanter, “Pine Gap: An Introduction,” Nautilus Institute, Special Report 16-02, November 8, 2016.
⁵⁹ Michael Hamel-Green, “Regional Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones: Lessons for the Middle East,” Disarmament Forum 2 (2011): 13-24.