World BEYOND War Board Member Alison Broinowski is in this video:

By Ruth Mitchell, green left , August 4, 2026

Dr Ruth Mitchell, a 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winner, doctor and neurosurgeon, delivered the following speech to the Hiroshima Day protest on Gadigal Country/Sydney on August 1.

It’s an honour to be here on unceded sovereign Gadigal land and I want to begin by acknowledging that this always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Eighty one years ago this month, a uranium bomb was detonated by the United States over the city Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. It flattened and burned around 70% of the city and, by the end of that year, at least 140,000 people had died.

Three days later a larger plutonium bomb exploded over Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people by the end of that year. Ground temperatures in Nagasaki reached 4000°C and radioactive rain poured down.

The survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as the Hibakush a, lived with massively increased rates of cancer and chronic diseases, some being passed to the next generations.

As a doctor and neurosurgeon, I am often called upon to treat severely injured people and, apart from the fact that this awful poisonous incineration was entirely preventable, I find it unspeakable that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no meaningful humanitarian response was possible.

In Hiroshima, 90% of doctors and nurses were killed or injured; 42 of 45 hospitals were rendered non-functional; and 70% of victims had combined injuries including, in most cases, severe burns.

All the dedicated burn beds around the world would be insufficient to care for the survivors of a single nuclear bomb on any city.

It takes around 10 seconds for the fireball from a nuclear explosion to reach its maximum size, but the effects last for decades and span across generations.

When people ask for a nuclear weapons expert, they often think of a nuclear physicist, an Openheimer, perhaps.

But I want you realise that the Hibakusha from Japan, and nuclear survivors everywhere, are the nuclear weapons experts we actually need to hear form.

I want to pay tribute to the tireless efforts by Hibakusha to rid the world of nuclear weapons to this very day; their stories are stories of hope and determination that must not be lost. Survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are living witnesses to the horror of nuclear war and when we talk about nuclear weapons, we must talk about the real, unacceptable effects they have on human beings.

Last year, I was fortunate to visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to pay my respects those whose lives were taken and to listen to the H ibakusha . What surprised me, one night as I walked through Hiroshima’s peace park, was to find a small group of people, including some second and third generation H ibakusha , protesting the destruction of Gaza.

The sight of these good people of Hiroshima standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine moved me to tears. A city that has endured so much has found room in their hearts for those currently being targeted and destroyed. We are all connected, and when one city suffers, we are diminished.

Closer to home, we must also grapple with the enormous and terrible legacy of British nuclear testing on unceded sovereign Aboriginal land at Maralinga and Emu Fields in the South Australian desert, and on the Montebello Islands. From 1952-1957, there were 12 major nuclear detonations in Australia in these three locations.

The impact of these tests on First Nations people, military personnel, community members and on the environment continue to be felt. The responses for the affected communities and survivors has been wholly inadequate. There is a terrible responsibility in the hands of those who have performed these “tests” and we call for accountability.

In Australia, it appears we have a gap between taking seriously the way in which First Nations folks and others have suffered as a result of nuclear testing and our nuclear posture as nation.

We have facilities at Northwest Cape, near Exmouth in Western Australia and Pine Gap, near Alice springs, which support the US in early warning, communications and targeting operations, which are essential for nuclear war planning.

Under AUKUS, US Virginia-class attack submarines will start arriving at HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027. Will these be armed with nuclear weapons?

When I was a medical student, the Medical Association for the Prevention of Nuclear War …