Madelyn Hoffman

Madelyn Hoffman

Executive Director of NJ Peace Action
No Nukes! Women’s Forum 2015

I am deeply honored to be asked to address the Women’s Conference today as part of this year’s activities marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wasn’t alive in 1945 when the atomic bombs were dropped, but was born 11 years later into a world that was dominated by the politics behind the use of those two atomic bombs and the horrible consequences of their use.

Despite clear evidence of the damage caused by these very powerful bomb – what the founders of SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) said in 1957- “nuclear weapons present a danger unlike any that has ever before existed.” In 1957, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union were racing one another to see who could build the largest nuclear arsenal. As Albert Einstein once said (and I paraphrase) — It was be even more difficult to deal with the politics of the atomic bomb than it was to develop the formula for creating one.

And we’re still in the same place today, trying to navigate our way through the politics of who has a nuclear bomb, who doesn’t and who has the right to decide whether or not a country without nukes can have them. Or who has the responsibility under international law to move toward nuclear abolition or to compensate people for conducting nuclear tests in such a way that their lives and livelihood were affected. Nuclear weapons have added to international tension ever since they were dropped on August 6th and August 9th – and today, nearly 70 years late, it seems the politics are as messy as ever.

First, there’s Iran. After years of negotiations, a deal was struck on July 14th. No sooner had the ink dried on the page than Republican members of the U.S. Congress – along with some Democrats – decried the deal – saying it would make the U.S. or anyone else safer – showing that the only language they know is one of violence.  6 countries negotiated this deal with Iran in the hopes of creating a more secure and peaceful world and yet the U.S. Congress alone can scuttle the whole deal. Peace Action is doing everything it can to persuade the U.S. Congress to approve the deal, not reject it. By approving the deal, we’ll all take one big step forward – and we can take our time to resolve any outstanding issues because this deal will be in place.

Then there’s the recent Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT). For the first time in years, the conference adjourned without any kind of international agreement. In 2010, the whole world supported a U.N. sponsored conference to discuss how to create a nuclear weapons free Middle East. Unfortunately, that conference never happened, with the U.S. and Israel complaining that it was not the right time to hold such a conference because “there was too much tension in the Middle East.” That’s a reason TO hold the conference, if you ask me, but unfortunately no one did.

This year, when the proposal came up again at the NPT Review Conference, the U.S., U.K., and Canada all blocked the proposal at the behest of Israel. So now, despite Israel owning 200 – 400 nuclear weapons and despite the deal with Iran to never obtain one nuclear weapon, the matter goes no further. It’s too bad that international consensus could not be reached and that the deal with Iran hangs by a thread because some seems to want to go to war rather than to allow diplomacy to resolve international problems.

Thankfully, 110 countries have signed onto the Humanitarian Pledge – showing that despite all the broken promises and failure to move closer to global nuclear abolition, many still hear the message of Japanese Hibakusha – and continue to work for a nuclear weapons free world – and, at the same time, attempt to prevent another war.

Women and children suffer disproportionately in war. It’s not just that husbands and sons go off to war and may never come back. It’s that it is most difficult to survive in a world at war. There is always a fear and a sense of dread – but more than that, communities are devastated by war – even if they are not directly affected by a battle or a bomb. The people of Japan know all too well the direct impact of war – mothers and children and thousands of innocent lives lost in an instant when the atomic bombs were dropped. The voices of those who survived should serve as the world’s conscience – to move the world away from war and to specifically keep Japan from becoming a military nation again. The whole world needs an Article 9 – that way, perhaps, once and for all, we can eliminate the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

This quilt of solidarity was made by one of our New Jersey Peace Action members who is from Japan. It has messages from children of Iraq and people of the United States to the people of Japan that we need to live in a world without nuclear weapons.

In the words of Hibakusha who traveled to New Jersey on many occasions – “nuclear weapons are on a collision course with humanity.” Citizen activism and all of you here are one way we can prevent that collision from happening!