Remembering Hiroshima today
"The struggle of people against power," wrote Milan Kundera, "is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Washington dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima 62 years ago today, resulting in the deaths of over 140,000 people, almost all of them civilians.
In his speech at the Peace Memorial Park this morning the major of Hiroshima criticized America for failing to disarm it's nuclear weapons, and warned his own government to keep to the "no war" tradition enshrined in Article 9 of Japan's Constitution.
Though the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock says it's five minutes to midnight, there are also some signs of hope. A friend now working in Greenpeace in Japan wrote to say that the documentary “White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki” made by Steven Okazaki will be shown on prime time television in the United States this week. Significantly, this is the first time such a large U.S. audience will be exposed to such an in-depth recount of experiences of living and dying under the atomic clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Meanwhile peace activists around the world continue exposing and disrupting nuclear weapons sites with the same creative confrontation Greenpeace earned it's name for.
The beautiful photo of floating umbrellas was taken at the 50th commemoration of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. The river was used by victims to try to cool their burns.
Comments
Hiroshima, Nagasaky would have never happen if the Japanese People at the time did not enter into a war against everyone massacring and torturing millions of peoples all across asia in some of the most gruesome manner,in retrospect it was all over within milli second for the peoples who died in the bombing,the peoples tortured by the japanese forces endured starvation and weeks long torture,honestly the Japanese in both City got off easy.The American should have oblitarated from the favce of the earth that puppet Emperor and his palace. how many japanese died during that war and how many Philipino,Chinese, Vietnamese,American died needlessly for the Japanese stupidity. If it was today anywhere in the world I would be the first one to press the button .
Posted by: joel | August 8, 2007 12:31 PM
Joel, I can't think of anyone who would disagree with you about the horrors of Japan's war crimes.
I think you're applying double-standards: Surely it's wrong for anybody to do those things, and especially wrong for anybody to deliberately kill and cause extreme suffering to civilians.
If you can't agree to that statement -- i.e. if you won't hold yourself and the country/state/religion/whatever to at least the same standards you apply to others -- then you have no business talking about right and wrong.
Posted by: Eoin | August 8, 2007 12:33 PM
Japanese should reflect on their dehumanization
Posted by: Dalia | August 9, 2007 6:08 PM
how long did it take Hiroshima and Nagasaki to recover from the
bombings.
Posted by: sck | April 23, 2008 3:32 PM