24 Facts About Setsuko Thurlow

Setsuko Thurlow is mostly known throughout the world for being a leading figure of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons and to have given the acceptance speech for its reception of the 2017 Nobel peace prize.

Setsuko Thurlow was born in Hiroshima Kojin-machi in 1932 and is the youngest of 7 children.

Setsuko Thurlow saw a bluish-white flash from the window and remembers floating in the air before she lost consciousness.

Setsuko Thurlow described the acute radiation syndrome that she and many others were victim of months and years after the bombing.

Setsuko Thurlow has several times talked about the fact that months after the bomb, every morning she verified that she was not developing purple spots on her body, a symptom of an approaching death.

Setsuko Thurlow has described the death of her uncle and aunt following those symptoms.

Setsuko Thurlow has revealed that many of her surviving schoolmates wore helmets long after the end of the war to hide their baldness.

Setsuko Thurlow has declared that she was lucky that she and both her parents survived and that they were able to be hosted by family, unlike many others who had to live in the street.

Setsuko Thurlow has denounced the US army's 7 years occupation and its strict censorship, erasement and confiscation of journals, data, visual support, poems and personal diaries of what was related to the drop of the two nuclear bombs.

Setsuko Thurlow's father died due to radiations in 1954, the same year that she went to study abroad and the year of the dropping of the H bomb in Bikini.

Setsuko Thurlow later obtained a master's degree in social work from the University of Toronto.

Setsuko Thurlow's activism began after March 1,1954, after the explosion of the hydrogen bomb of the code name "Castle Bravo" in the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands which had nuclear fallout until Japan.

Setsuko Thurlow is a member of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese confederation of A and H Bombs sufferers formed in 1956, who fought for hibakushas medical rights and social recognition.

Setsuko Thurlow has since travelled in dozens of countries to testify as a hibakusha and raise alert to the existential threat of nuclear weapons, in front of high dignitaries such as Pope John Paul II as much as school students.

Setsuko Thurlow has several times been a crew member of the Peace Boat, a Japanese NGO promoting nuclear disarmement.

Setsuko Thurlow has participated in several school presentations as a member of the project "Hibakusha stories" based in New-York, to testify before all-together several thousands of students.

Setsuko Thurlow has been regularly invited to testify at universities, schools, nuclear and Japanese history centres and other public events.

Setsuko Thurlow is an activist against the peaceful use of nuclear energy due to its existential dangers and has been particularly active as a critic with other hibakushas after the Fukushima humanitarian catastrophe.

Setsuko Thurlow has several times testified and pleaded at the United Nations Organisation and has among other actions participated in the international conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons on December 8,2014, in favour of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Setsuko Thurlow was an active member in the ratification of the United Nations concerning the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, mandated in December 2016, and delivered the closing statement at the nuclear ban conference[1].

Setsuko Thurlow actively participated for its vote on July 7,2017.

Mrs Setsuko Thurlow was a founding member and gave the keynote speech at the international launch of ICAN in Canada in 2007.

Setsuko Thurlow accepted the prize on behalf of the campaign at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10,2017, together with Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN.

Setsuko Thurlow served there as a social worker in the education and health departments.