Several visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and exchanges I had with hibakusha will remain as one of the most remarkable moments since I was appointed head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Japan in 2019.
These visits also reminded me of Dr. Marcel Junod, a doctor for the ICRC, who witnessed firsthand, a little bit more than 75 years ago, the city of Hiroshima having been “swept away by a supernatural power,” as he wrote while delivering assistance alongside the Japanese Red Cross Society.
The doctor quickly concluded that nuclear weapons must be banned outright. “Only a unified world policy can save the world from destruction,” he wrote. By 1950, an estimated 340,000 people had died from the effects of those two bombs.