OPINION: The solution to war is peace

“Duck and Cover” — really? Did Glenn Harlan Reynolds’ Aug. 23 opinion piece actually say that “duck and cover” is still good advice?

I wonder if he ever walked down the streets of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the way I was privileged to do this past Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, thanks to the New Japan Women’s Association (Shinfujin) who afforded me an incredible opportunity to participate in the 70th anniversary World Conference for A and H Bomb Survivors.

Just one person managed to survive within 500 meters of the epicenter of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Everyone else, no matter where they were or what they were doing, was killed immediately.

Duck and cover was bad advice before (remember hiding under our desks or under our arms in the hallway when we were in elementary school?) and it is bad advice now.

Better to do what the Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan, plead with us to do: Work toward a total and global elimination of nuclear weapons and negotiate differences between countries without going to war.

Better to follow the lead of the majority of Japanese today who are working to preserve Article 9 of their constitution, adopted right after World War II to prevent Japan from ever again being an imperialistic nation and to prevent Japan from acquiring or developing a nuclear weapon. Who best to know the terrible devastation caused by nuclear bombs than the only country ever to have experienced them?

Since Aug. 15, 1945, the end of World War II, Japan and the U.S. have headed in opposite directions. One country, Japan, has spent 70 years as a pacifist nation. Their culture of peace is so pervasive that up to 5,000 high school students regularly encircle the Diet building in Tokyo to insist that the Diet oppose Prime Minister Abe’s new “War Rules” because the students don’t see the need for war. These new rules undermine Japan’s constitution and would bring Japan into a war should the U.S. demand it.

Imagine living without war for so long that the prospect of going to war propels you into activism? And think about growing up in the United States, a country that has been at war for 213 years of its 239-year history.

Sure, we always have a reasonable-sounding explanation for every act of war, every bomb that is dropped, or every drone sent surreptitiously into countries with whom we are not formally at war. In every case, we forgive ourselves for the death and destruction because we believe we’ve made the world safer for ourselves and others to live in.

But have we? I am haunted by the testimony of 85-year-old Hibakusha, Sumiteru Tanaguchi, speaking to a crowd of more than 5,000, including 145 international delegates from 23 countries at the World Conference for A and H Bomb Survivors in Hiroshima, “I am sorry I didn’t do more to eliminate nuclear weapons from the world.”

Hibakusha, mangled and burned by the atomic bomb and living in pain for 70 years, apologizing to the world for not doing enough?

I wish that those elected officials now yelling the loudest to “kill the deal” with Iran would apologize to the world for their inability to support efforts, flawed as they may be, to build an international peace.

The world is often faced with the choice to keep talking or blow things up – either literally or figuratively. In 1945, after months of destructive firebombing of Japan, the U.S. took that approach one calamitous step further — and dropped two atomic bombs, a step many military experts have determined was unnecessary to obtain surrender, but done to show the former Soviet Union the military strength of the U.S.

I prefer the risky path of negotiating peace. While this may sound hopelessly idealistic and naïve, I’d rather work hard to sustain the legacy of the Hibakusha (average age now over 80) to create a nuclear-weapons-free world and a world that can resolve its differences without war. Better than to believe somehow that the best way to protect myself is to “duck and cover” and think I can survive.

Is there better advice than duck and cover? Sure there is.

Madelyn Hoffman

Executive Director

NJ Peace Action

BLOOMFIELD