Hiroshima Survivor Hideko Tamura: The World Needs Social Contracts

In Part 1 of this interview series with Dr. Hideko Tamura, we covered her vivid memories of the August 6, 1945, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima (link below). She was 10 at the time, only about a mile from the blast’s ground zero, and lost many friends and relatives, including her mother.

Some of her story is included in the NBC News/Creative Mammals documentary, “To End All War: Robert Oppenheimer & The Atomic Bomb,” released last month.

In Part 2 of our interview series below, we focus on Dr. Tamura’s thoughts on how best to diffuse the world’s precarious nuclear dilemma, a short critique of the documentary she’s in, and her daughter and granddaughter in the U.S. Following are edited excerpts from a recent zoom conversation.

Jim Clash: Your granddaughter was born Aug. 6, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Coincidence?

Dr. Hideko Tamura: Like everybody says, it was my mother returning, because [my granddaughter] was born during the hours in Hiroshima when they float peace lanterns. That feels okay to me, but my mother’s genes are in me. I’ve never felt like she totally left, although I grieved for losing all of my [physical] attachment to her. When your parents die, all we have is what we remember. But they are inside of you. You can’t see them anymore, but they support you.

Clash: What do you think of the Oppenheimer documentary you are featured in?

Dr. Tamura: It took some doing to get what they wanted me to be. I was very impressed with the director, Chris Cassel, whom I worked with. We talked for quite some time. What’s in the film is their edited version of what I said. I’m almost 90 years old now, so my immediate memory is fading. Some of it is news to me watching myself, and hearing what I said [laughs]. But they did a tremendous job!

Clash: The big question: How can we stop a nuclear war in the future? There are many theories, none of which have been put into place except downright deterrence, but I want to hear your thoughts.

Dr. Tamura: The United Nations needs to understand that it’s too dangerous now. We need to extinguish these weapons. It may take hundreds of years, because everybody seems to think they are a deterrent power for defending their own country.

A long time ago, an historian named Ctesias wrote the first chronicled history of the Greeks and the warring countries. If you follow him, you’ll see that we’ve been doing this forever. We didn’t have nuclear bombs then, but we’ve been fighting wars since the Stone Age.

Another outstanding philosopher, from the 16th Century, Thomas Hobbes, saw the state of nature as being very nasty and foolish. It’s almost impossible to get along. Therefore, we need social contracts. Men have to get together. You take for granted when you’re driving that on green we go, on red we stop. That’s a social contract.

To protect yourself with such constraints – do’s and do-not’s — they can’t be too difficult to follow. We need to make them very simple, in everyday common terms.

One nuclear bomb, and one guy like Mr. [Vladimir] Putin going around saying, “If we don’t do well, we will resort to a nuclear bomb,” is dangerous, of course. If he’s serious and his generals don’t stop him, that’s a disaster.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, who is alive must be aware there is great peril in the making today. Be aware of the presence of the nuclear threat, and that peace in not just one person trying to make harmony with everybody. It’s collective action, and that includes the citizens of the world. All need to participate in some way.