 Roedd ychydig i ysgolwr i'n bach yn cyfnogi'r LPSC, dywed diolch i'r LPSC y gallwch chi ar y centa ar y stodol i fynd i'r gwahanol. Y gallwch chi gael bod nhw'n gweld gennym, dywed wedi'u gwahanol eich hwn ar reall, y gallwn i gydych chi'n gweithio étrwydau Llans, yn ystyried llaw arles, ac yn gyflawni, ac yn meddwl i'r ffordd, ac yn ystod i gynnig ffnwysgol, ac rwy'n rhaid i'r ffordd yma, a'r dynnal sy'n amlion. A'n gyflawni'r ddweud o'r ffordd yma yn rhaid i'r maen nhw, ond rwyf ni'n gweithio'r dweud o bobl CISD yw'r ysgol wedi cyflawni'r ddech chi'n gweithio'r dweud, maen nhw'n rhan i gyda ffordd sydd y cyllidebeth a gwelio bwysig ein cyllidebeth hynny i'r rhan ond weithio gyda'r rhaglen i gylau'r ddweud sydd yn cyfath CISD a yna'r rhaglen i'r rhaglen i cyllidebeth o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, ond, o'r CISD, a o'r dr Dan Pleche, y dyfodol yng Nghymru, sy'n gwybod hynny'n gweithio. Fawr iawn, ac rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn fawr i'r gwirio. Rwy'n ddigon. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, Richard. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn ydym ni'n gweithio, ond rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn yr ysgol, rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn ysgrap ymrwyllt. Ysgrap is a student-led disoamon project developed by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, and it's been supported by an eminent group of academics and civil society leaders. It's been a very exciting couple of years for the Sgrap project, because we managed to get our project presented at the UN, and, following that, the UN and Sgrap jointly produced a report on general and complete disoamon. This led a couple of states to take a very serious look at the issue of general and complete disoamon, and I'm pleased to say that now we have managed to form a group of like-minded states, and with them we're working to push for a UN resolution, maybe this year or next year. The next step for the Sgrap project is to launch a global campaign to ask the UN Security Council to consider Article 26 of the UN Charter, which calls for the UN Security Council to develop a system for the regulation of armaments. So, after the cluster munitions campaign, the landmine campaign, the nuclear ban campaign, we hope that the Sgrap will be the next big campaign, and that you will help us make it happen. Thank you. Also a warm thank you for the introduction, and a warm welcome to the event that has been organised by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy. My name is Griselda Skirsch. I am kind of on loan tonight here because I am actually in the Department of Japan and Korea, researching contemporary Japanese culture with particular respect to war memory in Japan, and I have been tasked with introducing both Setsco and the event as such. So, Setsco Thurlo was 13 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and she found herself one mile away from the epicenter of the bomb. She now lives in Toronto with her family and is committed to keeping the memory of the event alive as more and more survivors of the bomb die, and also she is touring to keep the warning as the memory of the event alive as such, as a warning to present and future generations about what horrors the atomic bomb can create. The city of Hiroshima has asked her to act as a peace ambassador throughout the world, and on the other side of the Pacific, the Canadian government has given her the order of Canada, which is the highest order to be awarded to a civilian. She has also received numerous U.S. honours, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry has also given her a commendation for her work as peace ambassador. Before I pass over to her, I will just say a couple of words about the war and its Asian brand, because I might not be well known in Europe. So forgive me for reading, but I have a very sore throat and I might not cough as much if I read. When we in Europe talk about the Second World War, Europeans by and large immediately think about the war in Europe, the Atlantic and North Africa having started in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. From Warsaw to Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain and the invasion of the Soviet Union on the one side to the Holocaust on the other, what happened between 1939 and 1945 has become a shared European memory that differs in nuances only. Crucially, in popular imagination, the Second World War also generally tends to end with the German surrender in May 1945. What is a lot less known in Europe is what happened in Asia at that time. That there was also a war that started neither in 1939 nor did it end in May 1945. Thanks to Hollywood, most people would have heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and perhaps about the Japanese invasion of Burma and the Cersand Bridge on the River Kwai. People would know about the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki mainly because these were the first and only times, thankfully, that these weapons were deliberately dropped on fellow human beings, releasing horrors hitherto unknown. But the war in Asia did not start with the attack on Pearl Harbour nor did it start with the invasion of Burma. Neither is there a greed set of narratives when it comes to the war and it is an immensely volatile subject on which there is little agreement across Asia but also within Asia as well. For that reason, it may indeed be sometimes safer to heed Basil 40's words. Don't mention the war. The Asian theatre of the Second World War has different causes than the European one. It goes back to Japanese desires to dominate the Asian continent, commencing in the late 19th century when Japan joined the scramble for colonies after having narrowly avoided colonisation itself only shortly before. This desire to be one of the colonisers rather than being colonised resulted in the annexation of Taiwan and Korea in 1895 and 1910 respectively. In 1931, Maturia, in what is now the northeast of the People's Republic of China, was invaded, which then in turn led to the invasion of the rest of China in 1937. This resulted in an all-out war against China that is characterised by great brutality. The present-day friction between Japan and China has roots in that invasion. At the time, the invasion of China led to sanctions by the international community enthaling an oil embargo by the USA. However, being an archipelago with few natural resources, this was a deadly blow to Japan's colonialist desires and the war it was fighting in China. Only in 1940, with the signing of the tripartite pact between Japan, Germany and Italy and therefore the official formation of the axis, that the two unrelated wars begin to slowly morph into one. As the Japanese were running low on oil, the Central Command decided it would be wise to attack the US unpreparately and eliminate their navy in one go. The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 happened after four years of fighting in China and was a pre-emptive strike to catch the US unawares. It was a serious dent in the pride of the Americans and since the declaration of war arrived too late, after the event, became to be constructed as a treacherous act of infany and served as justification for all that was to come. At the same time, European colonies in Southeast Asia were also attacked, all in the ostensible attempt to free Asia from the colonial yoke. Although it merely meant a handover from one colonial master to a new one. Fighting the war in Southeast Asia and China, the Japanese army was thinly stretched. Similarly, the Japanese navy was no match for the American navy and in February 1945, it had all been annihilated. However, winning back the islands in the Pacific that the Japanese had occupied had proved to be incredibly costly for the Americans as the Japanese would fight back and rather die than to accept defeat. Water and meteorology had taught them that the life of an individual did not matter. There was thus concern about the human cost and invasion of the Japanese archipelago might carry even though the bombing campaign was designed to crumble civilian morale as effective, as is ineffective thus this is. Yet, as Japan is quite far away from the USA, the US bombing campaigns could only start in March 1945 when enough islands had eventually been won from the retreating Japanese. Every major city on the Japanese islands was fire bombed in the following months, often at an enormous death toll among the civilian population. All cities, except for those for which the two new weapons had been designated as potential targets, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto, Kokura, and Niigata. They were kept more or less intact so that the effects of these new weapons could be studied without having to take previous fire-bombing events into account. In 1945, in August 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army was on the brink of collapse. At the Potsdam Conference in July, the Allies had asked Japan to surrender unconditionally. Concerned about the role of the Emperor on whom the entire Japanese political philosophy rested at the time, the Japanese government did not officially react, which was taken as an insult. At that time, it had already become evident that the Alliance against Germany wasn't going to last, and that the USA and the Soviet Union were vying for spheres of influence. What happened at 815 on 6 August in Hiroshima was the beginning of the nuclear age. But it was also a statement of power by the USA towards the Soviet Union as much as it was a weapons testing with great human loss. It was a tool to end the war without having to invade Japan as the popular imagination in the US very often goes. But it is also a great human tragedy on a scale previously unknown. It is against this backdrop that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 must be seen. I now would like to ask Setsko to tell us her story. Thank you very much for coming. And thank you all for being here. And, well, the floor is yours. Setsko, thank you. Thank you for your kind introduction. I just arrived from Toronto, Canada yesterday. And for a specific special event organised here, and for that purpose I came here. But I wanted to have few extra days in London to get to know the city. But instead of getting to know the city, I have the opportunity to get to know you. I hope we can have some meaningful, productive couple of hours together. Well, thank you for your invitation to this place. And thank you for your kind introduction. And well-prepared summary of the end of the Second World War in Europe and even to Japan. You have done good preparation. So I don't have to talk about that. So I will share with you my personal experience, what I think was happening at that time. As she mentioned, the war in Europe was ending up. Germany surrendered on May 8. And Stalin already promised to join the Allies three months, I think, three months after the Germany surrender. And with that kind of agreement, the war in Europe came to an end. And all the forces were focused, to be focused on the Pacific area. And stupidly, the Japanese Navy acted such as Pearl Harbor. And soon after, you see, at the beginning, in Japan was very successful, powerful, thinking American battleships and so forth. But it didn't last long. Pretty soon, Japan started going downhill. It was just a matter of time when Japan surrendered. By 1945, Japan was losing badly, and after the U.S. captured islands in the South Pacific, in Tinian and Saipan, then American could start those strategic points at the point to attack Japanese cities. So starting on, I think it was the April 1, 1945, U.S. started the carpet bombing of urban centres in Japan. Starting with Tokyo, with hundreds of B-29s warming over, and tons and tons of incendiary bombs would drop, and overnight, over 100,000 people perished. And that was the beginning of that indiscriminate attack on Japanese cities. In Nagoya, Osaka, not Kyoto, about 60 to 70% of the urban centres had been wiped out. What Hiroshima happened to be, the 10th largest city of Japan at that time. So we started wondering, my goodness, even smaller cities had been bombed, but we haven't. What plan, what special secret plan U.S. has for us? All kinds of rumors spread. Anyway, little did we know that the United States had already selected Hiroshima as a target city, and had warned the military not to attack Hiroshima, keep Hiroshima intact, while 60, 70% of the urban centres had been already attacked and ended up with a pile of ashes and rubbles. So you can imagine we were living with anxiety and fear, just waiting for the attack. So day after we heard the siren, the B-29 was flying over us practically every day, but they just came and made circles and then went away. It was a very spooky experience for us. I better tell you what had already been explained. I was a 13-year-old grade 8 student in the girls' school, and about three weeks prior to that date, we had been recruited to work as a volunteer for the Army headquarters. We were to be trained as secret message decoders. On August 6, 1945, that very day happened to be Monday, the very first day to work as a full-fledged decoding assistant. I met about 30 other girls in my group in front of the Hiroshima Station. I led the group, left, right, left, like in March, that kind of mentalistic thing at the century. I had to go something like that. But anyway, at eight o'clock, we were on the second floor of the wooden building, and the assembly started. Major Yonai, who was responsible for us, said that you girls spent three weeks to get the decent training and such and such. This is the day you start proving your patriotism and loyalty to the emperor. We said, yes, sir, we will. At that moment, I saw the bluish-white flush outside the window. And I still have the sensation of flying up in the air. You see, by the strong blast generated by the bomb, all the buildings were collapsing. Obviously, the building I was in was collapsing. And together with that building, my body was falling down. I don't know how long I was unconscious, but when I regained the consciousness in the total darkness and silence, I found myself incapable of moving. I was pinned under the collapsed building. So I knew I was faced with death. This is it. Americans finally got us. That thought crossed my mind. I was faced with death, but I was not panic-stricken. It's strange to look back, to think back, that how calm and serene I was facing possible death. Then I started hearing faint voices of the girls. Mother helped me. God helped me, so I knew I was surrounded by the girls. Then all of a sudden, the strong male voice said, I'm trying to free you. Keep pushing, keep moving, keep kicking. And you see the sun ray coming through that opening, escaped toward that direction as quickly as possible, crawl, and he was touching my left shoulder from behind. So this man, obviously the soldier at the headquarter, somebody who rescued my life, I never saw his face. It was just a voice in the darkness. By the time I came out of the building, or the rubble, shall I say, the rubble was on fire, I looked back and for a second I thought about other girls, but I could not get back. But I did see two other girls who managed to escape. So three of us were together. And although it happened in the morning, it was dark when I came out, perhaps because of the smoke and particles in the air which was rising together with the mushroom cloud. And as my eyes got used to the darkness, I started seeing the moving dark objects nearing me. Then the soldier said that you girls, join that group of people and escape to the nearby hills. I waited and see some more people coming closer to me. And I called them, procession of ghosts, they were slowly shuffling from the centre part of the city to where I was and to the further out. The woman's hair was standing straight up, they were burned, blackened and swollen, and skin and flesh were hanging from their bones and they were just walking like that, walking not just simply shuffling slowly. And some were carrying their own eyeballs and as they collapsed, their stomach burst open and intestine stretching out. We three girls joined this procession of ghosts. As the soldier told us, we learned to step over the dead bodies and dying people and escape to the nearby hill. At the foot of the hill, there was an army training ground about two football fields put together, quite a large space. By the time we got there, the place was packed with the dead bodies and seriously injured people. In a situation like that, you would imagine perhaps people screaming for help, running, shouting, but that's not what I remember. It was eerie stillness of silence. All I heard was just whistling voices. Water please, please give me water. Every single person seemed to be asking for water. So when we got to the foot of the hill, we looked around and we looked ourselves and although we were covered with blood and dirt, but we were mobile, we were functioning decently, so we three girls went to the nearby stream, washed off the dirt and blood, and we tore off the blouses and soaked the cloth into this water and then dashed back to the dying people, injured people, and put the wet cloth over the mouth and they just suck in the moisture. Look at you and thank you. And then we kept ourselves busy all day doing that. There were no buckets and no cups to carry the water. That was the only way we could do anything to help dying people. I quickly looked around and see if there were any healthcare professionals. In that huge place, there was no doctor, no nurses. Of course, they themselves, about 80% or 90% of the healthcare professionals were killed, I understand. But the remaining surviving healthcare professionals were helping at other places, not where I was. So hundreds and thousands of people in that training ground where I was, nobody with any knowledge of caring for the injured dying people, nobody was there. Just a little bit of so-called rescue or support work which three girls did, just give them the wet cloth. That was a level of rescue operation we were able to offer. We did that all day when the darkness fell with three girls just sat on the hill together with hundreds of thousands of other people, citizens who escaped to that place. And we girls just sat there all night just watching the entire city burn, feeling numb, stunned from the massive and grotesque kind of death and suffering we had witnessed. There was no emotional reaction as we sat there, as I sat there all night. That's the end of my day, that day. Well, next morning, the soldier came around with a megaphone and said, is there a Setscona camera? Is there a Setscona camera? I said, here I am. Your parents are here to look for you. It was a surprise. Apparently, my father left very early that Monday morning. It was a free day for him. So he wanted to spend enjoying his hobby, which was fishing. So he went out of the city. He went near Miyajima. That's the island in the inland sea. And near there, he was fishing. And he saw the rising mushroom cloud. So he knew something happened in Hiroshima. So he quickly came back, I was told. My mother was doing the dishes after the breakfast. And she too was buried, but she was dug out. And she was able to escape. And she went to outside of the city to her brother's place. I don't know how my father and my parents communicated or how they came to get together. But the next morning, they were together. And they told me, my sister, who came back to the city the night before, with her four-year-old child, was burned very badly. You see, her husband was away to the war. And this child was so important to make sure he's going to be protected from the anticipated air raid. She moved out of the city. But unfortunately, the night before she came back to the city and to see us and next day to keep the doctor's appointment. So at that moment, she and the child were walking over the bridge near the center of the city. And there was nothing to protect them between the explosion themselves. Somehow, it's going to be too long, so I won't tell you all the detail how she escaped. But somehow, she managed to come back to where our house had stood. And from there, she got the help. And she escaped to near where I was. And she was resting at the relative summer house. So we knew where they were. So my parents and I went and joined them. And what a sight. My sister's body was swollen about twice, almost three times larger than normal body. My mother said that she could hardly recognize her by appearance. It was beyond recognition. But she could recognize her voice. And she could recognize her hairpin special, on-aid hairpin she was wearing. Yes, she and the child were both so blackened. And both of them, like other people, just begging for water. But by the time we were ready to give them the water, somehow the jaws and the face, everything was swollen. So we had a hard time to open their mouths to put the drops of water into their mouths. But my sister, they lived for about four days and until the agony was ended by death. And when they're dead and the soldiers came around, they dug up the hole in the ground through the dead bodies and poured the gasoline and they threw the lighted match. And with a bumble pulse, they kept turning the burning body. Hey, stomach is half burned. Brain is not quite burned yet. Such crude remarks as they worked. There was a 13-year-old child just standing, just feeling numbed, not feeling anything. And perhaps this was the most painful memory of all of that day because that was supposed to be a cremation of human beings. There was no dignity of human beings, just like insects or animals or something. But the memory of that stayed with me for a long time. It troubled me. I remember standing there, just standing there, just looking at it, not feeling anything, not having drops of tears. I started wondering what kind of human being I was. What kind of human being am I? My dear sister, but I couldn't even shed any tears. That memory troubled me for a long time until years later when I went to university and started studying psychology and started studying how human beings behaved in the ultimate condition like that. And how any books were written. But then there is American professor Robert Lifton came to Hiroshima and interviewed the survivors. And he did publish a book, Death in Life. I'm sure some of you have heard about it and read about it. Anyway, in his book, he talks about the cessation of emotion in a situation like that. Cognitive function remains. If the fire starts here, I escape that way, I could think. But I could not respond emotionally because of the massive and grotesque external stimuli coming into our psyche. So this was automatically closing off and the psyche closing. Anyway, he termed that terminology. But anyway, often the psychological aspect is hardly any mentioned in the survivors' testimony. But I did feel very kindly about it. So I just mentioned it, but I have to move on. My sister-in-law is still missing. She was a teacher guiding the students' work. At that time, on that day, in the center part of the city, there were several thousand grade seven and grade eight students. They were all mobilized from all the high schools from the city. And they were to do the work for the army and the city government in order to establish the fire break or fire lane. They were there to do the manual labour. And it was a hot morning. Some kids had the top shirts off and so on right below the explosion. Several thousand grade seven and eight students. And they are the one who simply vaporize, carbonize. Actually, I have a list of 351 names of my girls' friends from my school. You see, I'm alive and sitting in front of you because I was not in the center part of the city. I was one mile away and I was inside the building and I was protected by the collapsed building. But those people were just in the open under the 4,000 degrees Celsius heat. And that just vaporized them. And my sister-in-law was there and we could never find her body. The unique way many people died is by the effect of radiation. We rejoiced when we got the news my favorite uncle and aunt were okay. They had no external injury. So after my sister and her child died, my parents went over there to help them. But they found my uncle and his wife just developing purple spots all over the body. That was a sure sign they were going to die. According to my mother's description, their body, their internal organs seemed to be liquefied, rotting and coming out of thick black liquid. She used everything as a diaper. But those are only two individuals of hundreds of thousands of people in the city. That's how they died. So the effects of the blast and the heat, I told about 4,000 degrees Celsius at the ground level, way at the center of the explosion that was over a million degrees, I understand. By the time that fire broke in, descended to the ground level at 4,000 degrees. So the effects of radiation, the heat and the blast, and that killed about 1,440,000 people of Hiroshima by the end of that year. And at that time, about 80% of more of the inhabitants of Hiroshima were non-combatant civilians, children, women, and elderly. Because the able-bodied men were out fighting at the war. So it was an indiscriminate attack of civilians, non-combatant, which was against international law. I'm sure you have read about common symptoms and so on. I'll just briefly say that I lost my hair, not entirely, but many girls became completely bald. They had to come to school wearing the bonnet or hiding with the scarves. Many people who suffered from the burn ended up having a very thick, unsightly scar. It was extremely difficult for them people to go out on the street. They just hid themselves inside. And some women who were pregnant at that time were exposed to radiation. So they produced deformed babies and gossip like that spread fast. So anybody who was in Hiroshima who had been exposed to radiation, they were to be avoided because you get contaminated. Well, we didn't have the words contamination at that time. You don't want to catch some poison those people in the city got. So those people had trouble finding employment and finding a marriage partner, discrimination, all kinds. And the doctors had a very difficult time because nobody knew how the radiation affected the human body. So if people had high fever, some doctors thought maybe that was scarlet fever. They didn't know what to do. And of course, even if they knew there was no medication, no first aid supplies. Well, I must jump all over the place. So Hiroshima happened on August 6. Three days later Nagasaki happened on the 15th. The surrender finally, the surrender took place. You can imagine the kind of psychosocial political chaos we have to go through in addition to the physical devastation caused by atomic bomb. So early in September, General MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces arrived and the Emperor hid himself somewhere. General MacArthur became the all-powerful leader for Japan. He said, I came to Japan with two specific goals. One is to deep militarize Japan and secondly to democratize Japan. And he achieved quite a bit of it. For example, reform in agricultural system, labor movement in the finance and educational system. And by giving women the right to be free, to be able to vote for the first time. By the way, at the first general election, I think it was 47 members of parliament they elected. Anyway, so General MacArthur did some good things, yes? But as far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were concerned, he did something contrary to what he said he was going to do. First of all, the establishment of ABCC, atomic bomb casualty commission. People were so happy, finally we get the supply, the medication. And somebody with medical knowledge. So Japanese doctors looked for support from American specialists. But the only purpose for that agency was, the one in Hiroshima by the way, another one in Nagasaki. The only purpose for that organization was to study the effects of radiation on human body. You can imagine how the survivors felt. Hey, we were guinea pig, not only once, twice. First as a target, second as a subject for medical research. That kind of thing is happening. And another example is that the censorship of media, if the newspaper like that about the human suffering caused by that experience. Well, that was disadvantageous to allied forces, to the occupation forces. Therefore, that had to be suppressed. And not only that, they started confiscating personal things. People wrote diaries. People had correspondence. Some people wanted to express their pains and agony in their hearts, in the form of haiku or Japanese literary style. Photographs, films, even medical information. All those things were confiscated. 32,000 items in all were confiscated. They were shipped back to the United States. Those are just a few examples to show how survivors suffered under the occupation. Yes, physical devastation, but psychological, sociological, political, all kinds of stressful situations. You just have to use your imagination. I don't have time to go into that detail. What time is it? OK, OK. I think the important thing I have to say here is that, of course, it was a huge trauma for every one of us who lived in the city, or the people, kindhearted people who came from outside the city to the city, to try to help injured people. And they, too, become the hibachia survivors because they were exposed to radiation by entering into the city. So the number of survivors just expanded. What am I going to say? I think the important thing is that, in spite of all that unspeakable horror existence, somehow survivors, many of them were able to come out of the numb condition and found the meaning in their survival. It was not easy. It took time, and that time depended on the individual strength of the people. But they came to see their purpose in surviving is to speak out to the world about the horror of indiscriminate attack by the weapon of mass destruction. And this kind of inhumane, immoral, and cruel experience should never be experienced by another human being. This was the firm resolve survivors able to gain. So with this conviction, and we started speaking out around the world, we've been doing this several decades from now. Now, my activism, of course, everybody, well, the city became almost pacifist city. Everybody was for peace. After all, we had 15 years of war and fighting, and we rejoiced the peace. And we vowed to the people who perished will do our very best to make sure this would not happen again. That was our vow. Well, I finished university in 1954 and got a scholarship to study social work in United States. And 1954 was a special year for the human calendar. United States were testing even more destructive bomb, hydrogen bomb. And the people in Marshall Islands were suffering the similar condition as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a huge public health program. And the people had to leave the islands, escape to other islands and so forth, because islands became inhabitable. So when I got to the United States, the press interviewed me. And asked my opinion about Hiroshima experience and what was happening then, the people suffering in the Marshall Islands. And fresh out of college, I guess I was very naive. I told them what I thought very openly. And that was not a very good thing for them to hear, I suppose. It was published next day, and I started receiving unsigned hate letter. How dare you? Who is giving you the scholarship? You go home. Kind of threatening letters started coming to university. So the president had to get involved and to protect me. I couldn't go to the classroom. You know, this happened the very first week after arrival to the United States. And they angry at me because I spoke out what I thought was the truth. They didn't see, they had a completely different idea. What am I going to do? Am I going to be able to survive here? Or am I going to pretend I never know anything about atomic bombing? Believe me, it was the loneliest time in a foreign country. But after a week of soul searching, I came out with a stronger commitment, stronger resolve that if I don't speak out about the horror of nuclear war, who can? It is my moral imperative, no matter what the circumstance may be. So I'm glad that happened. Now I wanted to talk about my life in North America, in the United States and Canada, and it was a pretty lonely time. Whatever I say sounded like a long voice in the wilderness. But I would skip that. Well, I have been speaking to a lot of people, thousands, tens of thousands of people in schools, universities, women's groups, church groups, everywhere. It has nothing easy. But right now I am feeling very good. I am euphoric and I want to share that. Catherine, would you like to come up and you quickly tell them why we are so excited about it? I think you can speak faster than me. We have been working together. And this is good news for all of us humanity. I want you to remember this. This is happening on 27th of this month. Can you quickly tell them? Good evening, everyone. My name is Kathleen Sullivan and I have the honor and pleasure of working with Setsuko over many years through an organization called Heba Cusha Stories. We bring atomic bomb survivors into primarily high schools in the New York metro area. And just briefly, we heard mentioned by the representative from Scrap, which sounds like an excellent initiative about the nuclear weapons ban that is upon us next week. Monday starting next Monday at the United Nations, there will be over 100 member states that are meeting to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban treaty. Unfortunately, it's not really been much in the media in nuclear weapons countries. Although there's been some media reports here in the UK, the UK is boycotting the meeting. The US, of course, is boycotting the meeting as well. And the Ban Treaty initiative came out of the humanitarian initiative. Can I just see who in the audience knows about the humanitarian initiative that is leading to this ban treaty negotiations? So, basically, we've been stuck in a narrative about the military industrial complex, about the security doctrine of deterrence, where nuclear powers basically talk about what weapons they have, where they're located, what they can do. And although activists, academics, humanitarians have always been speaking about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, it's only in the last five years that that narrative has shifted at the level of states' parties. So we now, since the first humanitarian consequences conference, which happened in 2013 in Norway, which was hosted by the Norwegian government, it was attended by several member states of the United Nations, where non-nuclear weapon countries started focusing on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. And this primarily arrived from a piece of research that came out of the International Committee for the Red Cross, which said we cannot respond to a city on fire. And to this, I commend you to the research of Lynn Eden, who did very important work around the reality of firestorms resulting from nuclear explosions. The trajectory of the firestorm that is given to us was way below what Lynn's research suggests. For example, if a modern-day nuclear weapon were exploded over London, the firestorm that would ensue would be 50 miles in radius. And I'm sure we all understand that nothing can survive a firestorm and that's only the first ring of destruction that doesn't take into consideration the radiation that Setsuko has been speaking about. So with the conference in 2013, there was a follow-on event in Nayarit in Mexico, which was hosted by the Mexican government. And this was in February 2014, where the chair of that conference said that the Nayarit gathering was the point of no return. And this was really when non-nuclear weapon countries were saying, we are no longer going to be bullied by the nuclear weapon states, who were very happy to sit behind their so-called commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, where under Article 6 of that treaty, nuclear weapon states promised to disarm at an early date. And later in 2014, we had the third conference in Vienna hosted by the Austrian government. And from this, we received what was called the Austrian Pledge, later named the Humanitarian Pledge. And that was signed on by 127 nations. This is a lot of treaty gobbledygoup policy, wonkish talk, but what we're really seeing is a movement that is being led by non-nuclear weapon states and NGOs, specifically the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. And as a result of these three meetings, there came an open-ended working group on multilateral disarmament. And from that came a resolution in the General Assembly to inaugurate this banned treaty process. So it's hugely exciting. Unfortunately, we just learned two days ago that China, one of the only nuclear weapon states that was going to attend the negotiations, will not be on hand. But next week we have the first week, and then the last week of June, and the first two weeks of July are the substantive weeks. So at the end of next week, there will be a draft treaty text for a nuclear weapons ban. So people might say, well, gosh, if you don't have the nuclear weapon states in the room, what difference does it make? But I'm sure that many of you in the room will remember Princess Diana in the mine clearing fields when she was coming out as an activist against land mines. And yes, when the land mines ban was enacted, the countries that were producing and using land mines were not part of that initial process, but it was the stigmatization and the public education that created the impetus for the land mines ban treaty. And now we are mostly in compliance. The production has completely scaled down, although there is still land mines being used in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, but we are really seeing a sea change in disarmament diplomacy. And it is through a collaboration between non-nuclear weapon states and NGOs. And I have to say that Setsuko has been the voice of conscience for this movement and other atomic bomb survivors. So it's been extraordinarily moving to see opportunity such as this arise to create a legally binding treaty for the banning of nuclear weapons while the Hibaksha are still with us. I hope I won't get in trouble by telling you that Setsuko is 85 years old. She is, sorry, she's been working tirelessly the whole of her life. At the end of this week, she will receive the Amadea Muslim Peace Prize for her work, her tireless work for peace and disarmament. And I think that you all can agree that who you see before you is a force of nature and a hugely inspirational person. So the fact that Hibaksha, such as Setsuko, and I would say individually as one of the voices of ICANN, can see something like this happen in her lifetime is exceptional because those of us who work on this issue worry deeply about what will happen if the nuclear catastrophe continues and we lose that first-hand witness. So thank you very much for the opportunity to share that with you.