A Christian Witness for Peace

Setsuko Thurlow

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki during WW2. Tens of thousands of people died immediately, thousands more due to radiation poisoning, and countless more were injured and lost loved ones.

 I didn't plan to write about this because I blogged about the bombing of Hiroshima three days ago but I came upon an article in the New York Times about  Setsuko Thurlow,  the 88-year-old Toronto woman who was a 13-year-old living in Hiroshima at the time of the first explosion.The blast killed her sister and she was knocked unconscious, the family home was destroyed  Her life was upended but by the grace of God she survived, eventually moved to North America, and a few years ago shared in a Nobel Peace Prize for working toward nuclear disarmament.

Ms. Thurlow, with Beatrice Fihn, right, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.Credit...Ntb Scanpix/Reuters

The motivation for me to revisit the subject is discovering that Thurlow is a Christian and as such an advocate for peace. In the Times piece the author writes: 

Just two months after the bombing, Ms. Thurlow returned to her Christian girls school. She also met Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist pastor profiled by the journalist John Hersey in “Hiroshima,” his book about the bombing and its aftermath. 

After the bombing, Ms. Thurlow said, she questioned the God worshiped by so many Americans. But at the school and with Mr. Tanimoto, she was surrounded by Christian adults who supported her emotionally. “Because of them, I was able to deal with that crisis and came out of that trauma,” she said. Three years after the blast, she converted.

This is a powerful testimony, and a reminder that among the thousands of civilians who died in those two horrendous events there were many Christians. Even when we are convinced of being on the side of good war is such a futile human endeavour and repeatedly we here of how the innocent suffer. We demonize the enemy yet they are so often like us in their hopes and aspirations. 

I am sure that I would benefit greatly from hearing Setsuko Thurlow speak but I'll settle with doing my best to follow her example as a Christian. 

Ms. Thurlow, second from right, with her family in Japan.Credit...via ICAN