Suffer the children

A nuclear strike or test will inflict great and terrible harm all round, but to children most of all. The following extract from a report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) explains why the smallest victims of these weapons are the biggest casualties.

---

NUCLEAR weapons are designed to destroy cities; to kill and maim whole populations, children among them.

In a nuclear attack, children are more likely than adults to die or suffer severe injuries, given their greater vulnerability to the effects of nuclear weapons: heat, blast and radiation.

The fact that children depend on adults for their survival also places them at higher risk of death and hardship in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, with support systems destroyed.

Tens of thousands of children were killed when the United States detonated two relatively small nuclear weapons (by today’s standard) over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Many were instantly reduced to ash and vapour. Others died in agony minutes, hours, days or weeks after the attacks from burn and blast injuries or acute radiation sickness. Countless more died years or even decades later from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses. Leukaemia – cancer of the blood – was especially prevalent among the young.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the scenes of devastation were apocalyptic: Playgrounds scattered with the dead bodies of young girls and boys. Mothers cradling their lifeless babies. Children with their intestines hanging out of their bellies and strips of skin dangling from their limbs.

At some of the schools close to ground zero, the entire student population of several hundred perished in an instant. At others, there were but a few survivors. In Hiroshima, thousands of school students were working outside to create firebreaks on the morning of the attack. Approximately 6,300 of them were killed.

Those children who, by chance, escaped death carried with them severe physical and psychological scars throughout their lifetimes. What they witnessed and experienced on 6 August and 9 August 1945 and in the days that followed was permanently seared into their memories.

Thousands of children lost one or both parents, as well as siblings. Some ‘A-bomb orphans’ were left to roam the streets, with orphanages exceeding capacity.

Many of the babies who were in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the atomic bombings were also harmed as a result of their exposure to ionising radiation. They had a greater risk of dying soon after birth or suffering from congenital abnormalities such as brain damage and microcephaly, as well as cancers and other illnesses later in life.

Pregnant women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki also experienced higher rates of spontaneous abortions and stillbirths.

In communities around the world exposed to fallout from nuclear testing, children have experienced similar harm from radiation.

Since 1945, nuclear-armed states have conducted more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions at dozens of locations, dispersing radioactive material far and wide.

Among the general population, children and infants have been the most severely affected, due to their higher vulnerability to the effects of ionising radiation. Young children are three to five times more susceptible to cancer in the long term than adults from a given dose of radiation, and girls are particularly vulnerable.

In the Marshall Islands, where the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests, children played in the radioactive ash that fell from the sky, unaware of the danger. They called it ‘Bikini snow’ – a reference to the atoll where many of the explosions took place. It burned their skin and eyes, and they quickly developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness.

For decades after the tests, women in the Marshall Islands gave birth to severely deformed babies at unusually high rates. Those born alive rarely survived more than a few days. Some had translucent skin and no discernible bones. They would be referred to as ‘jellyfish babies’, for they could scarcely be recognised as human beings.

Similar stories have been told by people living downwind or downstream of nuclear test sites in the United States, Kazakhstan, Ma’ohi Nui, Algeria, Kiribati, China, Australia and elsewhere.

We have a collective moral duty to honour the memories of the thousands of children killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as those harmed by the development and testing of nuclear weapons globally. And we must pursue the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world with determination and urgency, lest there be any more victims, young or old.

Under international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, governments have a legal obligation to protect children against harm in armed conflict. To fulfil this obligation, it is imperative that they work together now to eliminate the scourge of nuclear weapons from the world.

Disproportionate harm

So long as nuclear weapons exist in the world, there is a very real risk that they will be used again, and that risk at present appears to be increasing.

In the event of their use, it is all but certain that many thousands of children – perhaps hundreds of thousands or more – would be counted among the dead and injured, and they would suffer in unique ways and out of proportion to the rest of the population.

In a nuclear attack, children would be more likely than adults:

•   To die from burn injuries, as their skin is thinner and more delicate and burns deeper, more quickly and at a lower temperature;

•   To die from blast injuries, given the relative frailty of their smaller bodies;

•   To die from acute radiation sickness, as they have more cells that are growing and dividing rapidly and are significantly more vulnerable to radiation effects;

•   To be unable to free themselves from collapsed and burning buildings or take other steps in the aftermath that would increase their chances of survival;

•   To suffer from leukaemia, solid cancers, strokes, heart attacks and other illnesses years later as a result of the delayed effects of radiation damage to their cells; and

•   To suffer privation in the aftermath of the attacks, as well as psychological trauma leading to mental disorders and suicide.

Furthermore, babies who were in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the attack would be at greater risk of:

•   Death soon after birth or in early childhood;

•   Microcephaly, accompanied by intellectual disability, given the higher vulnerability of the developing brain to radiation damage;

•   Other developmental abnormalities;

•   Growth impairment due to the reduced functioning of the thyroid; and

•   Cancers and other radiation-related illnesses during childhood or later in life.

These horrifying realities should have profound implications for policymaking in countries that currently possess nuclear weapons or those that support their retention as part of military alliances.

They should also prompt organisations dedicated to the protection of children and the promotion of their rights to work to address the grave global threat posed by nuclear weapons.

While children played no part in developing these doomsday devices, it is children who would suffer the most in the event of their future use – one of the myriad reasons why such weapons must be urgently eliminated.                    

The above is excerpted from the report The Impact of Nuclear Weapons on Children, written by Tim Wright and published in August 2024 by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The full report is available at www.icanw.org/children.

Dead bodies scattered over a playground Fujio Tsujimoto, five years old, was at a school playground with his grandmother when they heard an aeroplane in the distance over Nagasaki. I grabbed my grandmother by the hand and ran towards the shelter. ‘Enemy plane!’ yelled the watchman on the roof of the school building as he struck the bell. ‘Look out!’ People on the playground came running straight for the shelter. I was the first to plunge into the deepest part of the shelter. But at that moment – flash! – I was blown against the wall by the force of the explosion. After a while, I peered out of the shelter. I found people scattered all over the playground. The ground was covered almost entirely with bodies. Most of them looked dead and lay still. Here and there, however, some were thrashing their legs or raising their arms. Those who were able to move came crawling into the shelter. Soon the shelter was crowded with the wounded. Around the school, all the town was on fire. My brother and sisters were late coming into the shelter, so they were burnt and crying. Half an hour later my mother appeared at last. She was covered with blood. I will never forget how happy I was as I clung to my mother. We waited and waited for Father, but he never appeared. Even those who had survived died in agony one after another. My younger sister died the next day. My mother, she also died the next day. And then my older brother. I thought I would die, too, because the people around me, lying beside each other in the shelter, were dying one by one. Yet, because my grandmother and I had been in the deepest part of the shelter, we apparently had not been exposed to [as much] radiation and in the end we were saved.

‘The Boy Standing by the Crematory’ This iconic photograph, taken in Nagasaki one month after the atomic bombing, shows a young boy with his dead baby brother strapped to his back, waiting to dispose of the body at a crematorium. The photographer, Joe O’Donnell of the US Marine Corps, described the scene as such: I saw a boy about 10 years old walking by. He was carrying a baby on his back. In those days in Japan, we often saw children playing with their little brothers or sisters on their backs, but this boy was clearly different. I could see that he had come to this place for a serious reason. He was wearing no shoes. His face was hard. The little head was tipped back as if the baby were fast asleep. The boy stood there for 5 or 10 minutes. The men in white masks walked over to him and quietly began to take off the rope that was holding the baby. That is when I saw that the baby was already dead. The men held the body by the hands and feet and placed it on the fire. The boy stood there straight without moving, watching the flames. He was biting his lower lip so hard that it shone with blood. The flame burned low like the sun going down. The boy turned around and walked silently away.

Intergenerational harm in Ma’ohi Nui Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in Ma’ohi Nui (also known as French Polynesia). Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear campaigner and parliamentarian, has worked to draw global attention to the intergenerational harm wrought by these explosions. She was seven years old when the testing programme ended, and as a young adult was diagnosed with chronic leukaemia. In an interview in 2024, she said that the suffering in her family from the nuclear tests began with her great-grandmother, who had thyroid cancer. Then her grandmother, mother and aunt all developed radiation-related illnesses. Now she is afraid that her young children will become victims of the bombs, too. ‘I really feel that I have poison in my blood,’ she said. ‘So if my kids get sick, I’ll feel that it’s me who poisoned us, you see.’

*Third World Resurgence No. 360, 2024/3, pp 26-28