Nuclear deterrence "cannot save humanity," a senior member of a group of hibakusha atomic bomb survivors said in a video speech at a meeting of scientists in Chicago on Wednesday.
In the speech delivered in English, Masako Wada, assistant secretary-general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, urged policymakers around the world to "take the leadership ... toward human society free of nuclear weapons."
Wada stressed that members of Nihon Hidankyo, which won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, will work to stimulate public opinion by talking to young people and sharing their own experiences.
She criticized the emerging idea of nuclear sharing, in which U.S. nuclear weapons would be deployed in Japan, saying that it may make Japan, the only country to have been attacked with atomic bombs, "become an aggressor."
Professor David Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, said that Wada's speech was very moving and made him realize that what he and other scientists are discussing is a matter of human life.
The meeting was attended by prominent scientists. Many of them voiced concern about the increasing risk of nuclear proliferation, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Iran-Israel conflict.
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