REMARKS BY CONGRESSMAN HANK JOHNSON
(D) GEORGIA
“EVERYTHING YOU TREASURE: FOR A WORLD FREE FROM NUCLEAR
WEAPONS”
EXHIBITION AND BRIEFING
2226 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC
April 4, 2017
DANNY HALL, SGI-USA (end of welcoming remarks):
The vision for a world free from nuclear weapons is one shared by today’s special guest,
Congressman Hank Johnson. When I last met with Congressman Johnson, I was deeply
moved as he spoke to me about this issue for over an hour and articulated his deep
passion for peace and his conviction that our long-term aim as a nation must to be to
achieve a world free from nuclear weapons. We are truly honored to have him here with
us today. Please join me in welcoming Congressman Hank Johnson.
REMARKS BY CONGRESSMAN HANK JOHNSON
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It’s my pleasure to be here. Thanks to the Soka
Gakkai International for putting this event together.
My friend Danny Hall and I are both members of the SGI.
I’ve been a member since May of 1976. I was 22 years old at that time. I was a very
ideological guy, a philosophical guy. I used to think about things like how could we have
slavery?
How could people enslave others? How could we so dehumanize another person simply
because of the color of his skin? I used to think about things like that, and I’d think about
religion and democracy.
I ran into a young lady who was an SGI member and she mentioned to me about world
peace through human revolution. That was a concept that really struck me as
revolutionary – world peace through human revolution.
So my 40 years as an SGI member have been the pursuit of the human revolution of
myself, and winning over all of the negative impulses that exist within me. And I being
no different than you, learning to accept myself for all of those impulses as being equal to
everyone else, starting to feel good about myself instead of devaluing myself because of
these inner tendencies that we all have.
Concepts like life conditions I’ve learned about as a member of SGI and I’ve learned so
much that I can kind of translate it away from just myself. I’m just a microcosm of the
macrocosm. To look at the macrocosm as a bunch of micro-Hank Johnsons, imperfect
human beings, and to see what we are capable of doing. I am in awe of the destructive
power of humanity – as a human being, the destructive power that we have been able to
come to – human beings having the ability to extinguish themselves from the face of the
earth. And if you don’t think that that’s possible, all you have to do is go back and read
about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which are the only two places where nuclear weapons
have been utilized in the history of humanity.
It was about 8:15 am in the morning of August 6 of 1945. The conclusion of World War
II which was the amalgamation of leaders and egos attacking and trying to grab power for
themselves. Emperor Hirohito in Japan, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany –
these madmen thinking that they could control the world.
Now I have that same inclination within me, as you do. Actually we can look right now
at America and we can look around the world and we can see where powerful men who
are charismatic and egotistical and self-centered can come to power based on the
ignorance of the people.
The people of Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 am on that morning in August 6, 1945, they were
probably apathetic, just like us, thinking that politics and all that doesn’t matter, talking
about my country – it’s all about Japan – and if I’m fine, it’s okay, I don’t care about
anything else or anybody … and so at 8:15 am, “Little Boy” fell.
Now Mussolini had been subdued, Hitler had been subdued. Japan and the Pacific were
still fighting this war. They had been given the ultimatum a day after the order had been
signed to drop the bomb. We had been engaged in the Manhattan Project since 1940 and
we were rushing to respond to a discovery that the Germans had made about nuclear
power. To harness that power into a bomb became our quest as a nation because we
wanted to beat Germany. We also were looking over our shoulder at the Soviet Union,
too. They were on their way towards this, too, so we wanted to be the first and we were
the first to detonate a nuclear bomb on earth and that took place on the 16th of July, 1945.
And then on July 25th, nine days later, the order to drop the bomb on Japan was signed.
But then the next day, on the 26th, the Allies issued an ultimatum to the Japanese to
surrender unconditionally immediately or else face “prompt and utter destruction.” And
so Japan in its ignorance and its willfulness and its arrogance, having seen the conclusion
of the war with Hitler and Mussolini, they were going to trudge on, so they did not
respond. So that order that had already been signed was effectuated on August 6 on
Hiroshima.
“Little Boy” which weighed 9,000 pounds was dropped on the center of Hiroshima,
which was a flat land, no hills, full of wooden structures where people lived and worked.
There were a number of military units in that area which were the target, but there were
350,000 people who lived and worked and played in Hiroshima, as you can imagine
yourself doing at home one day, oblivious to all of the politics and ultimatums, and all the
development and research and all of that stuff that had been going on, while you’re just
paying attention to going to work every day and trying to feed your family – and bam!
The bomb was dropped, and immediately 100,000 people vaporized. It hit very close to
where it was aimed, which was the center of the city, and the total deaths were up to
180,000.
A five-mile radius around the blast impact was just totally destroyed. Further out the
destruction was not as total but there was widespread destruction and those people who
did not die at the time of the blast suffered from radiation and all other kinds of diseases
that began to crop up.
90 percent of the doctors had been either killed or badly wounded. 92 percent of the
nurses had been wiped out or immobilized, killed or wounded. People who did not die
immediately ended up dying because of no food, sickness and being weakened.
Just total devastation, not to mention this mushroom cloud that shielded the sun and
rained down all kinds of radioactive poisons on the land. Total destruction, and the
Japanese still did not respond to the demand for unconditional immediate surrender, so
three days later another bomb, an even bigger bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki.
But Nagasaki was hilly so the destruction was not as pronounced around the blast but
right at the blast the destruction was even more severe than it was in Hiroshima. The
number of deaths was not as great but still, tens of thousands of people were killed.
Japan then unconditionally surrendered.
Since then other nations came forth with nuclear weapons.
You’ve go to stop and ask yourself the question: Why do we need nuclear weapons?
Can anybody answer that question? Why do we need them?
I guess probably the military folks would say, well, because the other guys have them and
mutually assured destruction is a strategy that we must employ to keep ourselves safe, but
it still begs the question to humanity, regardless of what nation we live in, why do we
need nuclear weapons?
If you ask a Russian that and he says the same thing that I just said, then it begs the
question, if we need them because you have them, maybe we should talk and see if we
can eliminate them because we know the power to wipe out humanity.
Now at this point the arms race has escalated to where the US has an arsenal of close to
7,000 nuclear bombs, close to 2,000 are deployed. Russia has 7,300 nuclear bombs with
an equal number deployed, about 2,000.
The nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was a mere 16 kilotons, that was
“Little Boy.”
The B83 nuclear bomb has a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons, which is 1,200 kilotons.
So think of that. “Little Boy” was 16 kilotons and a 5-mile radius was totally incinerated,
and now we’ve got the B83 with 1,200 kilotons. 16 versus 1,200. How many times the
firepower of “Litltle Boy” is our biggest nuclear bomb? I’m not a math expert, but I
don’t even want to know. This is the madness that humanity has produced up to this
particular time.
Nine nations now have nuclear weapons, so proliferation is a problem and it’s one that
we must come to grips with. How do we come to grips with it? Do we go in and bomb
North Korea because we want to take out its capacity to do that? Do we want to pre-empt
its ability to utilize its nuclear warheads? Do we attack them with conventional arms?
Should we do that? Is it morally defensible to do that, do you think? If another madman
– from everything we know we can’t deny that Kim Jong-un shows signs of being a mad
man – should we stop him? But violence begets violence so, hey, maybe we give him a
pass this time?
So these are the dilemmas that we face. How can we sit back and let Kim Jong-un
continue to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver
them? How can we sit back and let that happen?
These are big issues that as a member of the Armed Services Committee like I was for
ten years before this year, issues that we wrestled with, and it seems that there has been
a push under previous administrations to negotiate a reduction in the nuclear weapons
between the US and Russia, but those barely passed the Senate the last treaty. This is our
mentality. We, the great America.
So do we have enough sense about ourselves to want to engage in dialogue to get rid of
nuclear weapons?
So I as an SGI member looking to do human revolution, being only just a small person
with not much power, even though I’m one of 435 Congressmen, I feel it is incumbent
upon me to do
as much human revolution as I can to try to make good decisions, to make decisions out
of a loftier life condition as opposed to a lower hellish or arrogant or ignorant life
condition, and so that is why I am here today, to support the SGI. SGI’s president,
Daisaku Ikeda, has dedicated his life to a nuclear weapon-free world. I’m here to support
that vision. It’s my vision, too, and I hope that it’s yours. And together, regardless of
creed, color, nationality, age, how much money you have, your sexual orientation,
regardless of your job, we’re all equal so we can march together to make the world a
better place and then it will translate outward. The more people who do human
revolution the more we can have peace and that’s what it’s all about.
So thank you. I hope you will join us and we’ll join you and we’ll march together and
make the world a better place.
Thank you.
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