When will poverty eradication trump nuclear proliferation?
Mass destruction some can never forget
A thousand people set out in early May on three-month peace march that would take them from Tokyo to Hiroshima. ETA two days
ago. Among the thousand was 74-year-old Yasuo Shiose, orphaned at age 7 when he lost
his parents and two older brothers in the bombing of Hiroshima (Japan Times).
The peace marchers called for the abolition of nuclear
weapons and nuclear power generation. Banners and stickers read:
‘Let’s abolish nuclear weapons’
YES PEACE’
‘We don’t need nuclear weapons’
‘We don’t need nuclear power’
Mass destruction some must always remember
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n the United States we too must remember. Remember the suffering
we caused and still cause. Work together to correct the character and ethos;
end the destruction.
1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima: “On this day in 1945, the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The blast killed more than 70,000 people and destroyed most of the city.” [Britannica]
Today in London Hundreds of protesters gathered in Tavistock
Square to remember those killed and otherwise affected in the U.S. nuclear
attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the
Second World War.
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ast Asian Studies Professor Christine J. Hong spoke with
Press TV and this is some of what she said about U.S. hostilities against the Far
East then and now.
“The bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August
9) were not justified by any military necessity even though Secretary of State
Henry Stimson retroactively tried to impute a military rationality to these
actions.
They were just an act of terror.
In fact, the propaganda value of
the United States’ being the first user decimating a civilian population has
served the United States’ purposes in terms of terrorizing the rest of the
world, and especially its historic foes.
“When you have the United States flexing its nuclear might
and when it has a history of creating massive civilian causalities, keep in
mind that North Korea sustained an estimated 3.5 million deaths at the hands of
a U.S. bombing holocaust and the United States has threatened North Korea ─ more
than nine times ─ with a nuclear first-strike.
“Against that kind of record, as well as U.S. opposition to conditions
of the armistice agreement, nuclear weapons in South Korea from the late 1950’s
until the 1990’s ─ North Korea has seen very little other alternative than to
develop nuclear self-defense as a means of guaranteeing its sovereignty.
“…You see the same thing in Iran and other places around the
world that … stand as targets of a possible U.S. intervention.”
Professor Hong concludes
Indicated in today’s remembrance of Hiroshima is the message
that “in the interest of responsible, rational and sane coexistence,” the people
of the United States must “have a very vivid and very embodied sense of what it
means to be on the devastating receiving end of U.S. foreign policy.”
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ampaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) General Secretary Kate
Hudson told the press that documents recently declassified by the United States
National Archives and Records Administration show that “London played a key
role in Washington’s decision to carry out the nuclear attacks” on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in whose wake more than “340,000 people have died.”
CTBTO:
Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization (CTBTO Preparatory Commission or CTBTO Prep Com) is an
international organization based in Vienna, Austria, that is tasked with
preparing the activities of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization
The
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a multilateral treaty by
which states agree to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for
military or civilian purposes. It was adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly on September 10, 1996; but it has not entered into force due to the
non-ratification of eight specific states.
UN remembers, urges disarmament
CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki remind us “of what horrors nuclear weapons can inflict.”
However, key states have failed to ratify the treaty. Of 195
UN General Assembly Member States: 183 have signed the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, 159 have ratified it.
Standing in the way of the treaty’s entry into force are “Annex
2 States,” which have failed to ratify:
China
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Egypt
India
Iran
Israel
Pakistan
United States of America
UN General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, speaking at the
Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima, said he hoped for “a significant step
forward in fulfilling our goal to excise atomic weapons so that the suffering
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of sixty-eight years ago may never repeat.”
In his message to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon reminded the gathering of the obvious: that disarmament means life;
it frees up resources better channeled to address world poverty, hunger,
disease. Nuclear disarmament, he said, “can contribute to our efforts to reach
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and support the realization of a
sustainable future for all humankind.”
A Requiem
Those days in August all those years ago, “I felt very sad,”
author and broadcaster Allen L Roland writes. “A deep soul-connected part of me
innately knew that the world would never be the same,” he said.
I also sensed at that exact moment
the collective loss of thousands of Japanese children ─ children like myself ─
who were incinerated, maimed and left homeless by these unnecessary, barbaric
attacks.
“I … had a profound feeling that something very ominous for
humanity had just happened ─ and I was right! We now had the means to completely destroy humankind
─ particularly, evidently, yellow and brown races.”
In constant acts of carnage down to contemporary times, from the
U. S. war on Vietnam through its war on Afghanistan (and other countries), “tens
of thousands of innocent children have been killed and maimed and left homeless,”
Roland observes; and “now drone (unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV) attacks are the preferred American method of killing and maiming the innocent ─ without
having to shoulder the ‘moral’ responsibility for these unnecessary deaths.” Carnage endlessly executed “under the same, now badly frayed American
imperialistic flag of freedom, liberty and democracy.”
Sources and notes
“U.S. nuclear weapons lead to global nuclear competition:
Hong” (Press TV has conducted an interview with UC Santa Cruz assistant
professor Christine J. Hong to discuss the issue of United States’ use of the
atomic bomb on Japanese civilians during the World War II. August 6, 2013,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/06/317455/us-nukes-lead-to-nuclear-rivalry/
Christine J. Hong is University of California-Santa Cruz
Assistant Professor in the Division Humanities Division, Department Literature
Department. Her affiliations are East Asian Studies, History of Art/Visual Culture;
her research Interests: Asian American literature and cultural criticism;
African American literature and black freedom studies; Korean diasporic
cultural production; Pacific Rim studies; postcolonial theory; comparative
critical race studies; human rights; law and literature; narrative theory; film
and visual studies,
http://literature.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=cjhong
“A Statement of Peace, or an Epitaph” (Robert Scheer’s
Columns) August 6, 2013,
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_statement_of_peace_or_an_epitaph_20130806/
“100s will rally in London to remember victims of U.S.
nuclear attacks on Japan, August 6, 2013,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/06/317448/antinukes-activists-to-rally-in-london/
“Requiem for The Children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam,
Iraq and Afghanistan” (Allen L Roland), August 6, 2013,
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/08/06/requiem-for-the-children-of-hiroshima-nagasaki-vietnam-iraq-and-afghanistan/
Allen L Roland is a Freelance Alternative Press Online
columnist. He is also a practicing psychotherapist and author and lecturer who
also shares political and social commentary on his website: AllenRoland.com. He
guest hosts Truthtalk, a national radio show that airs monthly.
“Three-month peace march sets out for Hiroshima” (Kyodo), May
7, 2013, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/07/national/three-month-peace-march-sets-out-for-hiroshima/#.UgFI32zD-1s
CTBTO: Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization
CTBTO Preparatory Commission or CTBTO Prep Com: an
international organization based in Vienna, Austria, that is tasked with
preparing the activities of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization (CTBTO).
The organization was established by the states that signed
the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996 and will cease to
exist upon the entry into force of the CTBT. It builds, certifies and operates
the infrastructure for detection of Nuclear Tests, prepares regulations for the
CTBTO and stimulates entry into force of the CTBT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTBTO
CTBT: The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a
multilateral treaty by which states agree to ban all nuclear explosions in all
environments, for military or civilian purposes. It was adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996; but it has not entered into
force due to the non-ratification of eight specific states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty
“On anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing,” UN officials
urge nuclear disarmament, August 6, 2013, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45574&Cr=nuclear&Cr1=#.UgFd4mzD-1s
Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in the
world to be struck by an atomic bomb, which was dropped by a B-29 bomber of the
U.S. Air Forces.
Most of the city was destroyed, and estimates of the number
killed outright or shortly after the blast have ranged upward from 70,000.
Deaths from radiation injury have mounted through the years.
Nagasaki
In the early 20th century the Nagasaki became a major
shipbuilding center and it was this industry that led to U.S. targeting for the
second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. The bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. It
destroyed the innermost portion of Nagasaki; between 60,000 and 80,000 people
were killed. Exact figures are difficult to come by because many records were
destroyed by the bomb and the overall devastation of the area made accurate
accounting for casualties impossible.
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