Dear Progressive Reader,

The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots group of Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The organization of survivors, who are known as hibakusha, received the award for “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

Between 110,000 and 210,000 people were killed in the two bombings or died of the radiation in the months that followed—the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in a war. Today, of the 540,000 hibakusha listed on the memorials at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 106,000 are still living, almost all above the age of eighty. These survivors, victims of this unimaginable weapon of war, remain as witnesses to why nuclear weapons must never be used again. As the Nobel Committee said in announcing this year’s award, “These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. The hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”

Not only have these survivors been witnesses to this horrific event, many have been dedicated activists in numerous movements for world peace. In 2008, I was in My Lai, Vietnam, for the fortieth commemoration of the massacre there. Also in attendance were four hibakusha from Japan who joined in the commemoration ceremony, but also assisted in planting trees and helping to break ground for a new primary school for the children of My Lai. Professor Hiroshi Fujimoto of Nanzan University, who accompanied them, told me at the time, “their goal here is to bring the message of peace, the importance of peace. The hibakusha have the idea, the message, that the same thing [the deaths of innocent civilians] should not be repeated again.” Other hibakusha projects have included a peace boat, exhibitions of art, photos, and stories, presentations to schools, and work to support a world ban on nuclear weapons.

As William Henry Chamberlin wrote in The Progressive on September 3, 1945, “The terrific destructive power of this formidable scientific discovery makes it highly probable that the next great war would leave in its wake not the victors and vanquished of the relatively humane wars of the past, not even the frustrated and impoverished winners and the bomb-wrecked losers of the recent struggle [of World War II in Europe], but only the exterminated and the survivors in a sad new world of cave-burrowers.” And in the June/July 2019 issue, Ira Helfand, past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, noted in an article titled “Ban the Bomb—Before Our Luck Runs Out”: “We are closer to a nuclear war than we have ever been. . . . To erase the threat of unparalleled catastrophe that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age, we must articulate a clear strategy to eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.”

October 7 marked the grim anniversary the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas which claimed 1200 lives and still leaves more than one hundred hostages unaccounted for and unreleased. But it also marked the beginning of Israel’s retaliation on the people of Gaza (which has now spread to the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran). In that war about 42,000 Palestinians have been documented as killed, and more than 96,000 injured. The majority of these deaths, on both sides, are civilians, not connected to the attacks in any way. Samer Badawi presents a moving indictment of these killings, speaking with Palestinians and Palestinian Americans, all of whom have lost family members. And now this war threatens to escalate with possible attacks on Iran’s nuclear and energy infrastructure. As the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen reported last night, the one person who might be able to use his leverage to stop this, President Joe Biden, has chosen not to.

Elsewhere our website this week, Jeff Abbott reports on the first week of Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum; incarcerated writer Kevin Light-Roth looks at a potential increase in the prison population should the Republicans win in November; Robert McCoy reviews the new book Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy; and Matt Minton reviews the new film, Will & Harper, about Will Ferrell’s transformative road trip with colleague and friend Harper Steele. Plus we feature an article by Arizona State University students on obstacles to voting for Native Americans, it is the first in a series we will present called Fractured on election issues in 2024; and Miranda Jayne Boyd pens an op-ed on a new study that details the dangers of anti-trans legislation.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S, - If you are in or near Madison, Wisconsin, during the week of October 14, The Progressive is helping host two important films you should see before Election Day. On Tuesday October 15, we are welcoming a screening of the new documentary Bad Faith which tells the story of the rise of ChristianNationalism and its impact on politics. This one-night-only screening will be followed by a Q&A with scholar Nancy MacLean. Then on Thursday October 17, we will welcome the Madison premiere of Vigilantes, Inc.: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen by investigative journalist Greg Palast. The film will be followed by a Q&A with Palast. Both events will take place at The Barrymore Theatre, 2090 Atwood Avenue in Madison. More information is available at barrymorelive.com.

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