Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons: a "Hiroshima Centennial Call"

Remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall,
explosion epicenter from the US nuclear attack on August 6, 1945.

This summer will be the 75th anniversary of the days in August, 1945, when the United States used nuclear weapons against Japan.

It is possible that, considering 2020 is the 75th anniversary, more people will mark this day than in ordinary years. But I fear that it will still only be a "blip" on the screen of most people, and will, in itself, not offer much help in the overall endeavor of ridding the world of these terrible weapons.

Perhaps the best way to make use of the 75th anniversary would be to call attention to something that is perhaps much more sobering: the 100th anniversary. Because there is a very real possibility that the 75th anniversary will give way to the 76th . . . and the 76th to the 77th . . . and on and on, until we find ourselves facing the Hiroshima Centennial -- one hundred years of a world living under nuclear terror --  and realizing we have still been helpless to guarantee that it will never happen again.

Thus, the real question becomes not "how will the anniversary be marked in 2020?" but "are we still going to be in the same situation twenty-five years from now?"

The time is now to issue a Hiroshima Centennial call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons from the world by 2045. And then work as hard as we can toward that goal. That would offer the hope of an anniversary recognition that all of us would be grateful to participate in.