Robert C. Koehler: Learning from the Hibakushas

“They were covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and the flesh was hanging from the bones. Parts of their bodies were missing, and some were carrying their own eyeballs in their hands. And as they collapsed, their stomach burst open.”

But war is necessary, right?

The speaker, quoted recently on NPR, is 88-year-old Setsuko Thurlow, one of Planet Earth’s remaining hibakushas: survivors of the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She was in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Since that day, she has devoted her life to the elimination of nuclear weapons — that