A time-table for peace - Comprehensive Disarmament Programme

A time-table for peace

MOST Japanese over sixty today remember the Second World War with great bitterness.

They remember the agonizing loss of life of their families and other loved ones. They remember with no less regret, although without the same inner suffering, the loss of their precious possessions and livelihoods as well as the destruction of the all-encompassing texture of their cultural values.

The vast potential for death, destruction and evil inherent in war, either in the form of sudden slaughter or of protracted suffering on a massive scale, has grown in the past four decades until the total denial of life-sustaining social and environmental systems is now possible, including the ultimate disruption of the environment on a global scale.

To some extent this was perceived by wise observers forty years ago, but today it is a nightmare experienced by everyone.

The war's far-reaching destruction both of mind and matter, and its after-effects which went far beyond those of previous wars, enable us to envisage for the future a vast, comprehensive human suffering reaching its ultimate dimension.

In view of the immensity of the scourges of war, we, the people of the United Nations, developed a common conception of a time when international security should no longer be sought in the accumulation of armaments, through the doctrine of alignment and strategic superiority, or through a precarious balance of deterrence, but in disarmament. This conception has been transformed into a historic human consensus set forth in the Final Document of the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament, 1978.

We Japanese are unable to forget even for a moment the results of a hurried wartime experiment in societal destruction wreaked on two medium-sized cities, each with a population of 400,000, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One reason why the experiments were performed was to compare the results of different fissile matters: Hiroshima was destroyed with a bomb whose fissile material was uranium equivalent to 12.5 kilotonnes of TNT, Nagasaki by 25 kilotonnes of TNT equivalent of plutonium.

It has been calculated that 150,000 died at Hiroshima, and 75,000 at Nagasaki within six months of the bombs being dropped. Even today there are scientists who claim that less casualties were caused by the effects of radiation than was once believed. They have tried and are still trying to lay more emphasis on blast effects than on the effects of radiation, at a time when Japan's Hibakusha, the atom-bomb survivors, are engaged in the final stages of a struggle for a State Reparation Law, before the last witnesses have disappeared.

There must be renewed efforts on the part of all the world's nation-States, whether or not they are members of the United Nations, to reconfirm the agreed Principles of Disarmament unanimously adopted in the First Special Session on Disarmament in 1978. There must be disarmament negotiations and a timetable leading to General and Complete Disarmament, with nuclear disarmament being given the highest level of priority.

Our fellow Buddhists, under the guidance of the late Sage the Most Venerable Nichidatsu Fujii, have travelled all round the world in a World Peace March. In support of a Time-Limited Comprehensive Disarmament Programme, they travelled over five continents via five routes, starting from the venue of the World Assembly of Religious Workers for General and Nuclear Disarmament held in Tokyo in April 1981, and ending at the Second Special Session on Disarmament held in New York In June and July 1982. How can the disarmament time-table be arranged? How should we bind the behaviour of all States? Here I should like to plead that all nation-States should now agree to the Comprehensive Disarmament Programme and complete their implementation of it by the end of this century at the latest. They should, first of all,

Declare the use of nuclear weapons illegal, under any circumstances,

Defuse and abandon on a prorata basis all nuclear war-heads in all carriers and in all arsenals,

Stop production of nuclear fissile material for military purposes.

Stop nuclear explosions at once either for military or "peaceful' purposes,

Stop immediately extra-territorial deployment of nuclear-related weapon systems.

This reiteration of the historic consensus is imperative if this generation of ours, which is responsible for having created the interacting postures for fighting nuclear war on each side of the confronting blocs, not to unleash a nuclear war.

Let us all demand not only the powerful nuclear super-States but all States around the world, to co-operate in the formulation of the Comprehensive Disarmament Programme accompanied by the binding time-table mentioned above, and then let us see!

Photo: A road cleared amidst the devastation of Hiroshima.

Photo: On this bridge at Hiroshima a passerby left a white "atomic shadow' on the pavement which his or her body had screened from nuclear radiation. It is estimated that 60 per cent of the deaths at Hiroshima were caused by thermal rays and fire, 20 per cent were due to injuries caused by the blast, and 20 per cent to physical disorders caused by radiation.

Photo: Fragments of clothing, watches and other accessories shown in this poster belonged to some of those who perished in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. In centre, the school uniform of a boy who died 3 days after the bomb was dropped. The following year the city anounced that the bomb had killed 118,661 people. Today the death toll from the bomb is estimated at over 200,000.

COPYRIGHT 1985 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group