6 and 9 August 2025 mark 80 years since the US government dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 140,000 people perished in Hiroshima, and another 70,000 lost their lives in Nagasaki, with countless others experiencing enduring health issues and trauma.
Survivors of the bombings, known as hibakusha, which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people,” faced not only unimaginable pain on the days of the bombings but also lifelong challenges, including radiation-related illnesses and birth defects. Furthermore, the bombings caused severe environmental damage, impacting the affected regions for generations to come.
Crimes Against Children
Tens of thousands of children were killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear (ICAN) found that many were instantly reduced to ash and vapour. Others died in agony minutes, hours, days, or weeks after the attacks from burn and blast injuries or acute radiation sickness. Countless more died years or even decades later from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses. Leukaemia—cancer of the blood—was especially prevalent among the young.
Ahead of the 80th anniversaries of the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, ICAN has launched an online memorial honouring the estimated 38,000 children killed in the attacks.
Continuing Nuclear Violence
The US began the nuclear age with these bombings, and its detonation in New Mexico before that. Today, there are nine-nuclear armed states—China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States. Collectively, they possess more than 12,200 nuclear weapons. Each of these states is modernising their nuclear arsenals, spending more than 100 billion dollars a year. In the midst of rising threats to use nuclear weapons and military confrontation among nuclear-armed states, the use of nuclear weapons is a horrifyingly real prospect.
In addition, as ICAN has explained, “The insidious reality is that the manufacturing of these weapons, their maintenance and their eventual disposal all cost the earth, even without any direct use. These weapons displace people and communities from cradle to grave, diverting funds and scientific knowhow from pressing global needs.”
The theory of nuclear deterrence is used by nuclear-armed states to justify their possession of these weapons of terror. But more and more states have been questioning this logic, as was seen earlier this year in the meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). At this meeting, states and civil society, including WILPF, highlighted that nuclear weapons do not guarantee security, and that feminist perspectives are necessary to challenge this harmful notion and bring new approaches that center the wellbeing of people and the planet.
Honouring Survivors Through Abolition
As we mark the tragic anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, we carry the weight of history and the obligation to make a difference. Understanding the past empowers us to shape a better tomorrow. Acknowledging the devastating consequences wrought by these deadly weapons is not only a duty to the past but also a responsibility to shape a safer future for generations to come.
This is not a time for despair; it’s time for action. In 2017, most of the world’s governments voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). They worked with activists, affected communities, and academics to craft a treaty that banned the bomb and established systems for disarmament, accountability, and assistance to those harmed by nuclear violence.
Today, the TPNW is one of the few spaces where any real work for denuclearisation is underway. TPNW states parties are engaged in work on nuclear disarmament verification, universalising the treaty, developing a gender analysis, amplifying complementarity, and establishing a trust fund to provide for victim assistance and environmental remediation. The TPNW Scientific Advisory Group worked with states to establish a new UN panel on the effects of nuclear war. This panel will help advance knowledge about nuclear weapons based on lived experience, not theoretical concepts.
Actions for Abolition
Nuclear weapons are tied to many other forms of violence we experience in our world today. States threaten to use force, engage in war and genocide, put people in cages, and deliberately use starvation, torture, and gender-based violence as tactics of war. Private companies and the people that run them profit from this violence, as was recently so well investigated by Special Rapportuer on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories in her report on the economy of genocide.
The theory of change used by abolitionist movements is “dismantle, change, build”. In the case of nuclear weapons, this means dismantling the nuclear-industrial complex and nuclear deterrence theory. It means changing resource allocation and public opinion away from nuclear weapons. And it means building practices, skills, relationships, and resources that address the needs of our communities and our world.
There Are Actions Everyone Can Take, Including:
- Demand and end to, and reparations for all those impacted by, nuclear weapon tests, bomb development, uranium mining, and radioactive waste;
- Call on nuclear-armed states to immediately cease their nuclear weapon modernisation programmes and redirect that money towards nuclear disarmament, decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, and a just transition for workers to socially and ecologically safe industries;
- Call on your government to join the TPNW, which prohibits all nuclear testing as well as the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, and all other related activities (Read the letter sent by WILPF Japan to the Japanese governement);
- Urge your local city or town council to join ICAN’s Cities Appeal in support of the TPNW;
- Ask your parliamentarians, senators, or congressional representatives to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge and work for nuclear disarmament;
- Get involved in ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb initiative to remove your money from nuclear weapons and compel your bank, pension fund, or financial institution to stop funding nuclear weapon production; and
- Find out if the universities in your area are helping to build nuclear weapons and campaign to end those contracts.
