Canada Must Ban Nuclear Weapons & apologize for complicity in atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Written by: Charlotte Akin
August 2020 marks 75 years since two nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ultimately caused over 210,000 deaths by the end of 1945. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual events for peace and nuclear disarmament are planned across Canada for the anniversary of the atomic bomb tragedies. Seventy-five years on, nuclear weapons regrettably continue to be a threat to peace and security around the world.
The use or testing of nuclear weapons has catastrophic consequences for human survival. Ratifying the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a 2017 international agreement that aims to totally eliminate nuclear weapons, would be a crucial step towards a nuclear-weapon-free world. Given Canada’s current “Feminist Foreign Policy” objectives, ratifying the TPNW would be a key move if Canada wants to assert itself as a major player in international affairs.
Nuclear war and disarmament are uniquely feminist issues. Women survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings faced almost double the risk of developing and dying from cancer due to ionizing radiation exposure. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, girls were considerably more likely to develop thyroid cancer from nuclear fallout compared to boys.
Although women experience disproportionate effects of nuclear weapons, they are under-represented at forums where decisions about these weapons are made. For example, between the years of 2010 and 2014, only a quarter of official country delegates at nuclear forums were women.
Women also play a crucial role in peace and disarmament activism. In 1962, Dr. Ursula Franklin partnered with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) to collect samples of baby teeth to test for radioactive substances and map potential nuclear fallout patterns. In 2017, Japanese Canadian activist and Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, jointly accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and is currently calling on Canada to sign the TPNW in her letter to Prime Minister Trudeau.
Canada has recently recognized that sustainable peace is only possible when women are involved in resolution efforts. In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Jacqueline O’Neill as Canada’s first Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security to advance Canada’s “Feminist Foreign Policy” goals. But Canada’s second consecutive loss of a U.N. Security Council seat in June signals that the international community may think differently about Trudeau’s “Canada is back” declaration. By contrast, Ireland, who won the seat over Canada by a margin of 20 votes, had nuclear disarmament as a cornerstone of its foreign policy since 1968.
Canada has ratified a few key treaties that limit countries from acquiring and testing nuclear weapons. But these do not go far enough to prevent another nuclear catastrophe from happening again. While 122 countries voted to adopt the TPNW in 2017, Canada boycotted these negotiations along with all nine countries in possession of nuclear weapons. Canada refuses to sign onto the TPNW because of our membership in NATO, an organization that champions nuclear deterrence as a defence strategy.
Little known to many Canadians, Canada played a critical role in developing the nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Canadian scientists directly contributed to the research of the Manhattan Project, the American-led project which developed the uranium and plutonium bombs dropped on the Japanese cities. In 1942, The National Research Council of Canada began designing and manufacturing nuclear reactors at its laboratory in Montreal – the findings of such experiments were forwarded to American scientists on the Manhattan Project.
In 1943, Prime Minister Mackenzie King helped steward the Quebec Agreement, a secret agreement between the United States and United Kingdom that merged the two nuclear weapons programs. While Canada did not sign the Agreement, they were given representation on the Combined Policy Committee that oversaw the joint project.
Three years prior to the bombings in Japan, Prime Minister King’s Cabinet approved Order in Council PC 1486 that authorized the expulsion of some 21,000 “persons of Japanese racial origins” from their homes. Japanese Canadian families, of whom 77 per cent were Canadian citizens, were forcibly separated, detained, and sent to labour camps. Upon learning the first bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, King wrote a characteristically racist note in his diary, “it is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.”
In addition to scientific contributions, Canada also provided much of the materials used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs. Mining sites in Canada extracted, refined, and exported the uranium required to manufacture the weapons. At Great Bear Lake in Délı̨nę, the Port Radium mining site supplied tons of uranium ore to British and American scientists building nuclear bombs. Workers unwittingly transported the key ingredient in the atom bombs as they carried sacks of radioactive ore on their backs before it was shipped south. Many members of the Dene Nation, who worked unprotected at the mine in the Northwest Territories, died of cancer due to their exposure to the uranium ore.
While members of the Dene Nation travelled to Hiroshima in 1998 to apologize for their complicity in the creation of the bomb, the Canadian government has never acknowledged their contribution to the destruction of the Japanese cities.
If Canada is serious about shifting its foreign policy objectives to become truly “feminist”, then they must rethink their relationship to nuclear weapons — both past and present. Canada should be a leader among NATO-allied nations and take the first steps toward ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as part of its “Feminist Foreign Policy”.
Momentum is building in the way of total nuclear disarmament. Six countries ratified the Treaty in 2020 including Botswana, Fiji, and Lesotho bringing the total number up to 40 — with 50 nations required before it becomes legally binding. Canada must join these trailblazing nations spanning from across the African continent to the Asia Pacific and commit to a world without nuclear weapons. Ratifying the TPNW will show that Canada really is “back” in international diplomacy.
The world’s arsenal of over 15,000 nuclear warheads is nearly 3,000 times more powerful than the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A simulation developed by researchers at Princeton University estimated that within the first few hours of a nuclear conflict, more than 90 million people would be dead. Canada is in no way prepared to deal with a nuclear weapon attack that, within a millisecond, produces a ball of plasma more than two kilometres wide and is hotter than the surface of the sun. We were ill prepared to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and will be woefully ill prepared for a nuclear attack.
Amplify the call from Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, and send a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau urging that Canada acknowledge its crucial role in the creation of nuclear weapons, express a statement of regret for the deaths and suffering they caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and announce that Canada will ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons here.
Charlotte Akin is the Research & Advocacy Intern at the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW).
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