SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—The friendship of Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger was honored on March 12 and 13, 2025, by those gathered at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, to discuss the urgent, lifelong concern of both men: preventing nuclear war.
Hosted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) and Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the Choose Hope Symposium brought together an array of perspectives, from doctors, scientists and filmmakers to students, journalists, professors, activists and more.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen kicked off the event with a lecture on her recent book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, which chronicles a potential U.S. response to a “bolt out of the blue”—a surprise nuclear attack. Hailed as an instant classic, the book distinguishes itself from others of its kind by its unusual sourcing—former top security and intelligence officials.
“These are not the twirling mustache bad guys you might think,” said Jacobsen. “They’re very human people [who were operating] in a ‘system of systems.’ Speaking with them, I sensed a desire to move off the cliff.”
Her talk was followed by a video recording of Masako Wada, a survivor of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, recounting her mother’s memories of the days and weeks that followed. Masako was 1 year old at the time.
A panel of distinguished guests then took the stage to discuss humanity’s future.
Melissa Parke, president of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), noted that “Nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created by humans that have the capacity to destroy all complex life on Earth.” Speaking of Jacobsen’s book, she went on, “It makes clear that we are one accident, one miscalculation, one unhinged leader away from that outcome.”
Affirming this, Peter Kuznick of American University briefed the audience on a series of close calls—when the world came within a hairsbreadth of all-out nuclear war, averted in most cases by “sheer dumb luck.”
All expressed their admiration, even awe, at the atomic bomb survivors who, in spite of the horrors they’d experienced, never lost hope, never went silent, never stopped struggling toward a ban on those bombs.
The following day began with poems—Daisaku Ikeda’s and David Krieger’s—read by Santa Barbara poet laureate Perie Longo.
Where voices of survivors led the way.
Panelists then delved into key issues addressed in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a legally binding instrument that entered into force in 2021, outlawing the possession, manufacture, distribution and use of nuclear weapons.
Recalling the U.N. conference that negotiated the Treaty and over which she presided as president, Ambassador Elayne White emphasized one of its most uncommon and exemplary features—that its drafting was led by those with most at stake. The leaders of small nations and civic groups, many of whom were women, worked powerfully together at the helm.
Filmmaker Andrew Davis spoke about the power of film in shaping public opinion, and journalist Mary Dickson shed light on a rarely acknowledged casualty of the Cold War—the ordinary U.S. citizen, “downwinders” exposed to fallout from domestic nuclear tests.
Emphasizing Dickson’s testimony, Anna Ikeda, U.N. representative for the SGI, recalled the first States Parties Meeting to the TPNW in 2022, where the testimony of nuclear weapons survivors shifted the discussion away from abstract language and toward human realities.
“Survivors … of nuclear weapons are the foremost experts, because they really know what it means to survive [their] use, and their voices must be recognized the most,” she said. “We owe it to them that we have this Treaty.”
Alexander Harang, co-president of International Peace and Understanding, emphasized the shared vision of Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger on the need for a cultural shift. Peace, they argue, is not merely a political or diplomatic matter but a deeply human one, and thus calls for a fundamental transformation of consciousness. In closing, Professor Harang shared the following from Daisaku Ikeda, in conversation with Krieger: “As history teaches, movements whose leaders lose their resolve stagnate and ultimately decline. In contrast, though it may take time, movements ultimately attain their goals as long as their leaders’ minds are aflame with their convictions” (Choose Hope, p. 42).
Viktoria Lohk
“A single [nuclear] detonation could cause tragic humanitarian and environmental consequences. Even a small nuclear exchange can bring us to a nuclear winter. In a nuclear winter, in 3 months, you could have the temperature drop 6 degrees Celsius, which would cause mass famine worldwide.
“It sounds scary, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. And we need to make world leaders face the potential consequences of nuclear weapons. This is not a matter of when— it is a matter of now. Both Dr. Ikeda and Dr. Krieger emphasize our shared humanity, and this is what we need to cultivate in folks.”
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