Hiroshima Day: Why scientist Oppenheimer and survivor Setsuko both advocated a world free of nuclear terror

Saturday, 18 February 1967, was a cold day on the East Coast. Nearly ten years after Hiroshima, on 8 January 1955 in an NBC documentary, The Decision to Drop the Bomb, Oppenheimer, who served his country at tremendous personal cost famously quoted the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ describing the first detonation of a nuclear weapon as “the destroyer of worlds”. Nearly two decades after Hiroshima in 1965, an increasingly burdened Oppenheimer was asked about the United States and Russia halting the nuclear weapon race and he said: “It’s twenty years too late … it should have been done the day after Trinity.” The mushroom clouds that the Manhattan Project unleashed remain suspended like a Sword of Damocles over humanity’s existence. The Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, reiterated the committee’s decision for awarding the 2017 Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. In its statement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said: “The organisation is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” Berit Reiss-Andersen, then handed over the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize - a Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma, to Hiroshima nuclear bombing survivor Setsuko and Beatrice Fihn of ICAN.