Photo/Illutration Sunao Tsuboi, center, shakes hands with then U.S. President Barack Obama in Hiroshima in May 2016. (Asahi Shimbun file photo/ pool)

When reading accounts of the immediate aftermath of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I often come across scenes where survivors vent their unbridled animosity toward the United States.

Sunao Tsuboi, then a 20-year-old Hiroshima resident who was severely burned over his entire body, was no exception.

He recalled cursing the "dastardly America," vowing, "I'm going to get even some day, so you'd better watch out."

But he would soon become furious with the army of his own nation, too.

An Imperial Japanese Army soldier, who came to the rescue by truck, yelled: "(We are picking up) only young men now. Everyone else stay where you are and wait."

Tsuboi later noted that the army was triaging everyone based on their usefulness to the war effort.

He died on Oct. 24 at age 96, after devoting decades of his life to leading an anti-nuclear movement in Hiroshima.

After World War II, he became a teacher and preached the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and the horrors of war. Upon retirement, he started giving talks overseas as the representative of a hibakusha organization.

With Tsuboi's passing, the world has lost one more person who thoroughly understood the evil of nuclear weapons by experience and crusaded against it.

When U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, Tsuboi took the president's hand, leaving a lasting impression.

"Whatever happens, you must hold hands," he stressed during an interview with Hiroshima Home Television Co. last year. "You may disagree with someone, but you must at least hold your hand out."

That must have been the fundamental principle of his activism and how he led the movement forward.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), ratified by 56 countries and territories, was born from anti-nuclear movements in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and around the world.

But the nuclear powers that continue to refuse to even sign this treaty are still competing on the efficacy of their nuclear weapons.

It is as if they are existing in a parallel universe.

Still, if Tsuboi were to go on living, he would continue saying, "Never give up!"

As he famously said, "Because nuclear weapons were created by human guile, only human sanity can destroy them."

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 29

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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