Ari Beser

Ari Beser was born into a legacy few can imagine: his grandfather Jacob Beser was the only man to fly on both the Enola Gay and Bockscar—the planes that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While many might bury this connection, Ari has spent over a decade traveling between the United States and Japan confronting it. In this emotionally gripping talk, he shares the personal reckoning that transformed him from a descendant of wartime power into a peace advocate. Ari introduces audiences to the hibakusha—atomic bomb survivors—whose stories changed his life, including the incredible tale of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person to survive both blasts. Ari didn’t just meet the survivors—he forged lasting friendships and collaborated with Yamaguchi's granddaughter, Kosuzu Harada, to co-write a book that tells both sides of the bomb through family memory. This keynote fuses generational trauma, survivor testimony, historical truth, and personal transformation to present a powerful question: what do we do with the legacies we inherit? The answer, for Ari, is to speak—to listen—and to never stop working for a world without nuclear weapons.