80 Years On: Hiroshima, Geneva And The Global Struggle To Ban The Bomb

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Eighty years after the devastating nuclear attack on Hiroshima, global spending on atomic weapons is surging. As disarmament stalls, one survivor reminds the world what's at stake. This content was published on August 2, 2025 - 10:30 12 minutes

Multimedia journalist reporting for the International Geneva beat and supporting editorial quality control in the English department. Swiss-Chilean multimedia journalist with two decades of reporting experience in the US, Europe and the Middle East, with occasional assignments in South America and Africa. I enjoy investigative and long-form stories, and have also worked in breaking news and every format in between.

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Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Seven-year-old Michiko Kodama was standing close to her desk near the classroom window, torn between going outside or staying put and taking cover under an air raid hood. Then came the flash –“yellow, orange, silver” – something beyond description. The windows shattered. She dived under her desk and blacked out.

Her school was just over four kilometres from ground zero; her home even closer. As her father carried her through a city in flames, they passed scorched bodies.

“That scene is still burned into my memory,” she says in a video interview with Swissinfo.“People were grabbing at our legs and begging: 'please help me, please give me some water.'”

One encounter was particularly traumatic: a girl about her age, likely separated from her family, came running toward them. Half her face and body burned, she pleaded with her eyes as they passed her, unable to help. Kodama looked back.“She had already collapsed to the ground,” she says.“I think she died.”

Eighty years on, Kodama's testimony is a prescient reminder of the devastation unleashed by a single nuclear weapon – the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare destroyed around ten square kilometers of Hiroshima and killed an estimated 135,000 people. Her story also serves as a warning to a fractured world entering a new nuclear arms race, one that experts warn could lead to catastrophe.

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