Thousands recall Hiroshima A-bomb

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Reuters
Saturday, August 5, 2006; 10:44 PM

HIROSHIMA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people from around the world gathered in Hiroshima on Sunday to pray for peace and urge the world to abandon nuclear weapons on the 61st anniversary of the first atomic bombing.

In an annual ritual to mourn the more than 220,000 people who ultimately died from the blast, a crowd including survivors, children and dignitaries gathered at the Peace Memorial Park, near ground zero where the bomb was dropped ...

Lamenting a global trend toward nuclear proliferation, Akiba called for a campaign to free the world of atomic weapons.

"Sixty-one years later, the number of nations enamored of evil and enslaved by nuclear weapons is increasing," Akiba told the crowd gathered under a blazing summer sun ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/05/AR2006080501144.html

[struggle4progress]

1. 8 Arrested in Tenn. Protest of A-Bomb

The Associated Press
Saturday, August 5, 2006; 10:53 PM

-- OAK RIDGE, Tenn. _ Eight protesters were arrested Saturday, a day before the 61st anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack, after refusing to leave the entrance of a nuclear weapons plant.

Much of the work that went into producing the bomb was conducted at the Y-12 plant in the once-secret city for the World War II-era Manhattan Project. The U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

About 300 people participated in the rally and march, in which activists chanted, pinned paper peace cranes to the barricades and fences, and sang while the eight who were arrested sat on the hot asphalt as an act of civil disobedience.

"Today I witness to my trust not in death-making bombs but in the God of life," Erik Johnson, a Presbyterian minister from Maryville, told The Knoxville News Sentinel. "I am outraged at the evil and indifference of those who reap fabulous, obscene profits from the planning, designing, manufacturing, maintenance of these weapons of mass destruction." ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/05/AR2006080501228.html

[phusion]

2. ...

Recommended.

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3. On Hiroshima anniversary, Japan shifts toward militarism

By JOHN FEFFER
Posted: Aug. 5, 2006

Japan is softening its opposition to the use of military force, and the Bush administration couldn't be happier ...

Some Japanese politicians have even broached the taboo subject of Japan acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, much to the horror of a generation that absorbed the "never again" lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The U.S. has done everything to encourage Japan to break out of its constitutional stance of pacifism ...

Tokyo has plenty of nuclear material and the technology to weaponize it. Japan can reportedly produce an arsenal of nuclear weapons in as little as six months ...

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=480146

[struggle4progress]

4. Hibakusha view Enola Gay, urge Bush to visit

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Three survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki visited the museum displaying the Enola Gay B-29 bomber on Friday and urged U.S. President George W. Bush to visit the two cities.

Their visit came two days before the 61st anniversary of the use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It was dropped by the Enola Gay.

The second bomb hit Nagasaki three days later.

The three survivors told a news conference of their experiences and called for the abolition of nuclear weapons. They spoke in front of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The center is in Virginia on the outskirts of the U.S capital ... http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060806a7.html

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5. Survivor of both A-bombs takes message to U.N.

By SEANA K. MAGEE

NEW YORK (Kyodo) As long as there is breath in his frail body, 90-year-old Tsutomu Yamaguchi vows to keep pressing for peace.

And now the survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings has taken his message to the United Nations for the first time.

Arriving by wheelchair but then descending the stairs on foot with a cane to an auditorium at the U.N. headquarters, the lithe, energetic man wowed the audience with his emotional tale of survival.

"What I mean to say here is that as a double atomic bomb survivor I experienced the bomb twice, and I sincerely hope that there will not be a third," he told the gathering Thursday at the Dag Hammarskjold auditorium to watch a screening of "Niijuuhibaku" ("Twice Bombed, Twice Survived"), a 50-minute documentary in which he is featured along with other double atomic bomb survivors ...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060806a8.html

[The Witch]

6. K&R. Lest we forget.

I had the solemn honor of visiting Hiroshima. What I learned about the bomb there changed my life.