August 6, 1945. 8:15. Hiroshima.

August 9, 1945. 11:02. Nagasaki.

Eighty-one years on, the survivors are still teaching us.

The least we can do is act on what they say.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in an instant by two US atomic bombs. Tens of thousands more died in the weeks, months and years that followed, from burns, from radiation and from cancers that took decades to arrive.

The survivors have a name. Hibakusha.

For eighty-one years the Hibakusha have carried what happened and have also done something more. They have testified, organised and educated by standing before the world and refusing to let it look away. 

The Hibakusha will never be a footnote to history as they are its witnesses, they have led and inspired the movement for nuclear abolition from the start.

This nuclear harm did not stop in 1945. Through explosive nuclear tests, harms were carried across Pacific Islands, across the Steppe Plains of Qazaqstan, through the deserts of the United States and Algeria, into waters, lands and skies of people who were told nothing and who never gave consent.  The lands of Indigenous Peoples, marginalised and colonised people. Far from foreign capitals. The  governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea conducted over two thousand tests after 1945.

This one arc of nuclear harm is not a set of separate tragedies. This is not a closed history. It remains the present with lands and waters still poisoned, illnesses that are still arriving, and with the clean-up and care that has been promised still owed.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) makes these weapons illegal. It also does something no treaty had done before, it names the people who have been harmed and who continue to talk about nuclear harm and seek nuclear truth and justice. Article 6 of the TPNW obliges states to assist the victims of nuclear use and testing and to remediate contaminated land. Article 7 obliges them to help one another do it. Assistance, remediation and reciprocity, written into international law.

However, obligation is not the same as repair, turning these words into action is work that belongs to all of us.

The First Review Conference for the TPNW is scheduled to take place from 30 November to 4 December 2026 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Nuclear Truth Project will be there with our Reclaim Fellows.

Marking the 81st anniversary of the nuclear bombings of New Mexico, Hiroshima and Nagasaki means more than remembrance. It means welcoming affected communities as experts and rights-holders, and holding states to the commitments they have made. 

This week we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki by listening to the people who survived the first atomic bombs, and by standing with every community the nuclear age has harmed since.

We ask three things of you.

1. Listen to affected communities.
2. Learn about the Nuclear Truth Project Protocols, our shared commitment to Rights, Respect and Reciprocity in all work with affected communities. You can find them at: 
3. Challenge the narrative that any of this nuclear harm is finished.

Rights. Respect. Reciprocity.