As the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings passed in 2025, the voices and of the survivors of the attacks - the hibakusha (literally, explosion-affected people) bore powerful and tragic testimony to the unthinkable humanitarian cost of nuclear weapons.
In Ireland, Irish CND and Afri (both members of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) were privileged to host Kyoko Gibson, a second-generation hibakusha from Hiroshima, now living in Wales. Kyoko spoke eloquently at a number of events, including a secondary school visit, student talks in TCD and TUD, and an open meeting in the Quaker meeting house in Dublin city centre. She also visited Leinster House to meet with John Lahart TD, chair of the Oireachtas committee on Foreign Affairs.
She described her experiences as a child growing up in the aftermath of the bombing in Hiroshima, and her involvement in the campaign for world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons, in a deeply moving plea to support and continue her campaigning work.
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| Kyoko Gibson speaking in Trinity College, Dublin, in October 2025, with Katie Martin (Afri), Iain Atack (Afri), and David Hutchinson Edgar (Irish CND) |
Kyoko Gibson's address to the No More Hiroshimas event in Trinity College, co-hosted by the School of Religions, Theology and Peace Studies, can be viewed here, along with responses from Prof. Iain Atack and Dr David Hutchinson Edgar, representing Afri and Irish CND.
The message shared with us by Kyoko Gibson, in common with that of other hibakusha, speaks of the utter depravity of such weapons of mass destruction, and the unspeakable horrors of their lasting impact on those affected.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was small compared with the destructive capacity of today's nuclear arms, even the so-called "tactical" weapons in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. The catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any use of a nuclear weapon today do not bear thinking about. As the International Committee of the Red Cross / Red Crescent has pointed out, the destruction of medical and other infrastructure in a nuclear attack would make it impossible to have any kind of organised aid response in the attack's aftermath. The consequent suffering would be enormous.
More than eighty years on, the world faces a polycrisis of war, climate change, biological threat and technological disruption, as noted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in setting the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, symbolically the closest it has ever been to apocalypse.
With Russia, the United States, and Israel all involved in international conflict, and cross-border exchanges between India and Pakistan - all nuclear-armed states - in the past year, it is clear that nuclear weapons do not prevent wars or bring stability to the international order. The presence of nuclear weapons in a volatile and unstable world increases the risk of annihilation.
The witness and warnings of the hibakusha, and of international medical, humanitarian and scientific experts, must be listened to with renewed acuity. It is our responsiblity to magnify their voices and their testimony to a level that can no longer be ignored by world leaders: No More Hiroshimas.
