In October 2025, the 24th IPPNW World Congress will be held in Nagasaki, 36 years since it was last held there in 1989, and I am glad to address you on behalf of Japanese Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. In 2025 we will mark the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The after-effects of the radiation from the bombs has affected the victims’ entire lives and still persists today in forms including cancer, leukemia, and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and the inhumane outcome that nuclear weapons impose on humanity has become clear. The surviving victims of the bombings are growing older, and their average age is now over 85. At the end of March 2024 there were fewer than 110,000 left, and one analysis has shown that over the past decade an average of 8,600 atomic bomb victims has died each year.

Under these circumstances, the 24th IPPNW World Congress to be held in October 2025 will take as its theme “A World Without Nuclear Weapons – Nagasaki as the last A-bombed city,” and the program will not only include an overview of the past 80 years, dialogues with atomic bomb victims, security guarantees, and environmental issues, but will also bring together four Nobel Peace Prize-winning organizations: the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024, IPPNW, the Pugwash Conference, and ICAN. I hope it will be helpful in considering nuclear issues from a range of standpoints.

This World Congress is being described as the last chance to hear directly from atomic bomb victims about the situation at the time and their experiences after the bombings. I would like to ask for your support and cooperation in making it a success, so we can learn about the reality of the atomic bombings. I very much hope that many people from around the world will take part in this IPPNW World Congress in Nagasaki, a city that has suffered directly from nuclear weapons.

I would like to conclude by expressing my sincere respect for all of you who, based on our mission as doctors to protect human life and health, have taken every opportunity to speak out from a medical standpoint about the devastating, irreversible impact that nuclear war would have on humanity, and have worked for many years for the prevention of nuclear war.