Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Norfolk CWer Steve Baggarly's Y-12 Sentencing Statement

Supporting Jailed Y12 Resisters - jail & prison addresses:

http://orepa.org/supporting-jailed-y12-resisters/

 

From: Kim Williams <willbaggs2002@yahoo.com>

Date: Tue, Sep 27, 2011

 

Below is the statement Steve Baggarly made last week before Magistrate Guyton.

Please feel free to send it out places.

 

Thanks,

 

Kim Williams <willbaggs2002@yahoo.com>

Norfolk Catholic Worker

Sadako Sasaki House

1321 W 38th St

Norfolk VA 23508

Phone: 757-423-5420

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Steve Baggarly Sept 19, 2011 Pre-sentence Statement - Y-12 Trials

 

     The y-12 plant in Oak Ridge enriched the uranium that is

contained in every nuclear warhead in the United States’ arsenal. It

first produced weapons-grade uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on

Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Kozo Itagaki was one mile from

ground zero on that day:

 

     "Victims of the blast seemed like ghosts, without a vestige of

clothing on their sore and burned bodies and it was hard to

distinguish their sex if you didn’t take a close look. They were

tottering toward the park, avoiding people who had sunk to the ground.

They were asking for help and water in a faint voice, with their arms

held out, with their skin peeled and hung down like potato skins.

Supposedly they thought there must be some remedy if they could reach

the top of the hill. But the next morning those who finally reached

the top were dead, falling one upon another without being able to get

medical treatment.

 

       Together with some relatively healthy soldiers I spent days

relieving injured people in the city, collecting corpses, burying and

incinerating them, putting ashes in order, and so on. At around noon

four days after the incident, when we were at rest, a boy (he looked

like a third grader) came up with tottering steps and said, “Soldier,

please give me water.” I looked at him and saw that the boy had a sign

of jaundice. He also showed signs of dehydration. His hair had partly

fallen out. Everyone there agreed that if he drank water he would die.

I said I would bring him some a little later, and told him to lie down

under the tree for a while. And we proceeded with our conversation.

Suddenly I noticed the boy drinking sewage with his head down deep in

the gutter nearby. He soon died."

 

 

     Now I am a parent of a child and whenever I recall the happenings

I imagine how hard the boy was crying for Father and Mother in his

heart, or if the parents had been on the spot how much they would have

felt frantic; and I regret that I didn’t let him drink water there and

then.

 

     In Hiroshima, 100,000 people were killed instantly and another

100,000 died painful deaths within the next few months. Just the US

nuclear weapons ready for launching right now have over 55,000 times

the explosive power of that first bomb, and there are more in reserve.

As it is, the government is building three new nuclear bomb plants,

including one at Oak Ridge, and is in the process of rehabbing and

upgrading every weapon in its stockpile to make them even more

powerful and to ensure they last into the next century. Through Y-12

nuclear weapons complex the Department of Energy, the US military,

Congress, the Federal Courts, the White House and the American people

conspire daily in preparation and rehearsal for the end of the world.

 

     If the nation doesn’t repent of its nuclear idolatry, we won’t

even have the luxury of feeling regret should anything like the

following words of Jimmy Carter come to be:

 

     "In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than all of

World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon

it would take for the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every

second—more people killed in the first hours than all the wars in

history put together. The survivors, if any, would live in despair

amid the ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide."

 

     That such a possibility exists in a world filled with children is

unspeakable evil. The United States, as inventor of nuclear weapons,

the only nation ever to use them on human beings, and as perpetual

leader in the nuclear arms race, bears the greatest responsibility to

ensure such mass suicide never happens. At this critical time in

history, if there is to be any hope for stopping the proliferation of

nuclear weapons and moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world, the

United States must make good on international commitments to disarm.

It must act in spite of fear. With Manhattan Project-like

relentlessness, we must lead the world in a nuclear DIS-armament race.

 

     If we as a people stop putting our faith in gods of metal, our

trust in superior firepower, seeking salvation in the DEATH OF

EVERYTHING… If we depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue

it, I believe we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the

living.

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