Nagasaki survivor: ‘The risk of nuclear weapons being used is increasing in Ukraine and the Middle East’

Nagasaki survivor: ‘The risk of nuclear weapons being used is increasing in Ukraine and the Middle East’

Masako Wada is 81 years old. She was born in 1943. She was a one-year-and-ten-month-old baby at the time of the bombing of Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945. She humorously describes herself as “the youngest member of the youth department” of Nihon Hidankyo, the institution awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize in October “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” according to the Nobel Committee. Founded in 1956, Nihon Hidankyo is the only national Japanese organization of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Like Wada, all its members are victims of the most destructive weapon ever used by humans. They pursue the abolition of nuclear arms through words, by recounting their experiences. Wada has taken over as the older survivors have died. She has a lively look and makes herself understood through an interpreter. “The danger of atomic weapons being used is increasing,” she warns in an interview at the end of October in the organization’s small office in Tokyo, two narrow floors filled with boxes, books, and pamphlets. She remembers nothing of the bombing of Nagasaki. She often tells the story of her mother. She unfolds a map of the city to accompany her narration:

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