The United States’ Nuclear Discourse and Invisible Hibakusha

抄録

This thesis questions how and why the international community clings to its nuclear weapons as a deterrent under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while leaving the global hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) invisible and abandoned. Specifically, as a journalist, I explore a postwar myth embodied in the idea that the United States’ use of atomic bombs against Japan saved a million American lives and that that myth persists as the main justification for their use.

Japan has experienced three major nuclear disasters: the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; many fishermen’ s mysterious deaths and diseases of the Lucky Dragon No.5 and a thousand fishing boats near the US nuclear test area at Bikini Atoll through the late 1940’s to 50’s; and the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant meltdown, caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. These nuclear disasters have created many hibakusha who have suffered from various diseases such as cancer and leukemia. However, it is still unclear whether there is a definite cause-and-effect relation between those diseases and radiation exposure.

I found that such invisible hibakusha also exist in the world’s largest atomic power — the United States. Thousands of “down winders” at the Hanford nuclear site, and hundreds of soldiers who worked for the Operation Tomodachi off the devastated Fukushima coast in 2011, have suffered diseases, and are being left behind.

In order to end the Atomic Age, I believe we must make use of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which was adopted in 2017 at the United Nations. The treaty reminds us of the unacceptable suffering of hibakusha and the victims of nuclear tests. In spite of denials by the US and Japanese governments, the treaty seems to be gradually changing the mindset on nuclear weapons, reminding the international community that the nuclear weapon is not “a necessary evil” but “the ultimate evil.”