#news : U.S. nuclear disarmament educator uses unique teaching methods to drive message home

Kathleen Sullivan (Mainichi)

"I believe that if we understand the threat of nuclear weapons, based on what we love instead of based on what we fear, we're more likely to act," says American Kathleen Sullivan, a disarmament educator who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for over two decades.

Sullivan, co-producer of the 2005 documentary "The Last Atomic Bomb," visited Japan at the end of October for a peace workshop in Tokyo. Talking to participants with a beaming smile, she asked them to look back on their lives and think about the people who influenced them and their favorite places. She explained that when people are aware of what is important to them, their motivation to eliminate nuclear weapons, which can take all of those things away, increases.

"When we think about what we love, as threatened, it's a response that can engender action, I believe," Sullivan told the Mainichi in an interview during her visit.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, there are an estimated 22,600 nuclear warheads in the world. Sullivan uses ball bearings to help people visualize the seriousness of the situation. If the detonating power of the atomic bombs used on Japan at the end of World War II were represented by one small ball bearing, then 1,838 ball bearings would be needed to represent the power of a nuclear warhead today.

Sullivan encourages the peace workshop participants to close their eyes and listen to the sound of a large number of ball bearings dropping into a metal container. There seems to be no end to the sound. When thinking of the ball bearings as atomic weapons, it is daunting. It is at this point that an atomic bomb survivor invited to the workshop begins to describe the experience of living through an atomic bomb attack.

When Sullivan was at university, she visited Rocky Flats, a nuclear weapons-related site in Colorado. She couldn't believe that people were creating weapons that annihilated other people. For the past 2 1/2 decades since then, she has been engaged in the nuclear issue. While serving as a United Nations disarmament consultant, she frequently visits Japan to pass on her unique teaching methods. She has invited hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, with whom she has become close during her visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to come to the United States, and has promoted exchange with over 5,000 high school students over the past three years.

Now the remaining atomic bomb survivors are aging, and there is a loud call to underscore the importance of education on disarmament and nonproliferation.

For Sullivan, the first step is clear: discarding the idea that we will never be able to eliminate nuclear weapons.

"We have to learn how to use our moral imagination. We have to learn how to use our ability to extend our compassion to future generations who are going to inherit this earth, and understand that the greatest obstacles to life continuing are nuclear weapons -- and get rid of them," she says. (By Hiroshi Takahashi, Article Review Committee)

Click here for the original Japanese story

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