Peace & Planet Summer: A Call to Commemorate the 70th
Anniversaries of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki A-Bombings
“It is
because of nuclear weapons that the human race continues to be threatened. That
is why, ultimately, the one thing that we atomic bomb survivors are calling for
is the elimination of every last nuclear weapon.” – Chieko
Watanabe – Nagasaki Hibakusha
“The
release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking … the
solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I
should have become a watchmaker.” – Albert Einstein
As we
approach the 70th anniversaries of the August 6 and 9, 1945 U.S. atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have a unique opportunity to impact people’s
thinking, to educate them about the crime of the A-bombings and the continuing
dangers of nuclear weapons, and to build the popular movement needed to
eliminate the threat they pose to human survival.
The need
to abolish nuclear weapons is as urgent as ever. The hands of the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock stand at 3 minutes to midnight. The U.S.,
which has driven the nuclear arms race since its beginning, plans to spend $1
trillion to “modernize” its nuclear bombs, warheads and delivery systems and
maintain them well into the 21st century, while children go hungry and the
country moves into relative decline for lack of infrastructure investment.
Every other nuclear-armed state is modernizing its nuclear arsenal. And recent
scientific studies demonstrate that even a limited exchange of 50-100 nuclear
warheads will lead to global cooling, famine, and the deaths of up to 2 billion
people across the planet. Nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons, 94% held by the United
States and Russia, pose an intolerable threat to humanity and the global
environment.
Nuclear
weapons have again taken center stage in confrontations between the United
States, its NATO allies, and Russia. These countries have turned a civil
conflict in Ukraine into a violent proxy war. The tensions engendered by this
confrontation have been intensified vastly—potentially catastrophically—by the
brandishing of nuclear arms by both sides. This has included forward
deployments of strategic bombers to Europe by the United States, positioning of
Russian strategic bombers in Crimea, and an accelerated tempo of military
exercises and patrols both conventional and nuclear. And the confrontation in
Europe is but one of several potential nuclear flashpoints, with new tensions
and arms-racing from the Western Pacific to South Asia.
BREAKING
SILENCES – TAKING ACTION
We urge
people of conscience everywhere to initiate 70th anniversary commemorative
events to awaken their communities to the imperative of creating a nuclear-free
world within our lifetimes. These anniversaries are an occasion to organize
educational forums, to arrange photo and poster exhibitions, to circulate
petitions, put on cultural or political events, publish op-eds, launch
resolutions (including in parliaments and city councils), and to support
specific nuclear abolition initiatives such as the Nuclear Zero case in the International
Court of Justice, the Humanitarian
Pledge “to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons,”
demands for negotiation for a nuclear weapons convention, criminalizing nuclear
weapons through the International Criminal Court, prohibiting nuclear weapons
through national legislation, slashing spending on nuclear weapons (in nuclear
armed States), prohibiting investments of public funds in nuclear weapons
corporations (in non-nuclear States), and ending our personal investments in
nuclear weapons, including the Don’t Bank on
the Bomb campaign.
Recognizing
that nuclear weapons abolition will not be won without broad and powerful people’s
movements, we urge organizers of 70th anniversary Hiroshima-Nagasaki events to
engage with people working to address other critical issues, including bloated
military and nuclear weapons spending, the new era of confrontation between the
USA/West, Russia and China, racism, cultures of violence, environmental
protection and climate change, proliferation of small arms, poverty, human
rights violations, civil conflicts and militarization of police, weaponization
of space and cyberwarfare.
Commemorations
can also be used to prepare for the next “Global Wave 2015” being coordinated
by UNFOLD ZERO on the occasions of the U.N. General Assembly during the week of
September 21 (International Day of Peace) to September 26 (International Day
for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons). See www.unfoldzero.org.
HIROSHIMA
& NAGASAKI
Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were two of the five cities that met the official criteria for
possible U.S. A-bomb targets: cities with (albeit limited) military functions,
and “densely packed workers’ homes.”
At 8:15
a.m. on August 6, 1945 the Little Boy atomic bomb was detonated over Shima
Hospital in Hiroshima. Its fireball equaled the heat of the sun and was 1,200
feet in diameter. In the first second everyone within a two mile radius was
exposed to a deadly radioactive wave. This was followed by a massive blast wave
which destroyed nearly every building in the city. Then came the heat wave
which ignited fires across the region. People in the hypocenter, including
children and students, were instantly vaporized. Survivors recall a nuclear
Hell with the dying crying out, “Give me water”, people so badly burned that
their eyeballs and skin hung from their bodies, severely burned people drowning
as they climbed into cisterns or the city’s rivers in a futile effort to ease
their pain. In the days that followed, thousands who initially appeared
to have survived began dying from radiation poisoning. By year’s end an
estimated 120,000 people had died from the single A-bomb.
Three
days later, at 11:02 a.m., the Nagasaki A- bomb was detonated over the Urakami
Cathedral, the largest church in Asia. Exploding more than a mile from its
target, portions of the city were shielded from the most devastating impacts of
the bomb, but most could not escape the second nuclear holocaust. By year’s
end, more than 70,000 had perished.
To this
day Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb survivors (“Hibakusha”) continue to die from
radiation and other A-bomb-related illnesses, and with their children and
grandchildren continue to suffer from the physical and psychological effects of
the bombing. With uranium mining, nuclear weapons fabrication and testing, and
nuclear weapons accidents, there are nuclear weapons victims – global Hibakusha
– in many countries, including but not limited to the nuclear-armed states.
The
Hibakusha, witness/survivors of the A-bombs, who have repeatedly been nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize, warn that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot
coexist.” It is their fervent hope that nuclear weapons can be abolished
in their lifetimes so that human beings never again suffer what they have
endured.
THREE
MYTHS
Three
myths and institutional interests provide the foundation for continuing U.S.
preparations for nuclear war.
Many still
believe that the atomic bombings were necessary to end the war with Japan and
accept President Truman’s lie, designed to distract attention from the bombs’
indiscriminate mass murder of civilians, that the atom bombings saved the
lives of half a million U.S. troops. In fact, the consensus among
historians is that the A-bombings were NOT necessary to bring an end to the
war. The historical record demonstrates that the Japanese government was
attempting to surrender on terms that the United States ultimately accepted;
that U.S. Secretary of War Stimson advised Truman that Japan’s surrender could
be negotiated on terms acceptable to the United States; and that other U.S.
military leaders, including General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy, thought, “It
wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
There
were numerous factors including electoral calculations, vengeance, racism, and
institutional inertia that contributed to Truman’s decision to devastate the
two cities. However, the determinative reasons were both to bring the war to an
immediate end, so that the United States would not have to share influence with
the Soviet Union in Northern China, Manchuria and Korea, and to intimidate
Moscow’s leaders by demonstrating the apocalyptic power of nuclear weapons and
the United States willingness to use them – even against civilians. The people
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the first victims of the Cold War.
It is
popularly believed that “Mutual Assured Deterrence” (MAD) guarantees nuclear
security and ensures that no nuclear power would ever engage in a nationally
suicidal nuclear attack. Yet the former head of U.S. Strategic Command, General
Lee Butler, warns that “The first victim in a nuclear crisis is
deterrence.” If a nation has a mortal enemy, he recently explained, “you
probably don’t have a very close relationship with them, which means you
probably don’t understand how they think…how they will respond under very
threatening circumstances. The Soviets never bought into [deterrence]. For them,
one warhead on the motherland, and that was it.” Eric Schlosser, the
author of Command and Control, has documented dozens of nuclear weapons
accidents and miscalculations, concluding that we are alive today more as
consequence of luck than policy. And deterrence relies on the false assumption
that those with their fingers on the nuclear button will always be rational.
Most
people believe that nuclear weapons have not been used since the Nagasaki
A-bombing. Former senior U.S. nuclear war planner Daniel Ellsberg has
told us otherwise, testifying that the United States has repeatedly used
nuclear weapons “in the way that you use a gun when you point it at someone’s
head in a confrontation….whether or not you pull the trigger…[and] You’re also
using it when you have it on your hip ostentatiously.” During wars and
international crises, the United States has prepared and/or threatened to
initiate nuclear war on at least thirty occasions. Each of the other eight
nuclear weapons states has made such threats at least once.
TOGETHER
WE CAN PREVAIL – NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION IS POSSIBLE!
From the
adoption of the first United Nations General Assembly resolution in 1945,
through the promulgation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968,
to the recent International Conferences on Human Consequences of Nuclear
Weapons and the Humanitarian Pledge signed by over 100 nations this year, the
vast majority of the world’s nations have demanded that the world’s nuclear
weapons be eliminated. The International Court of Justice has issued an
authoritative interpretation of NPT Article VI, unanimously concluding: “There
exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion
negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and
effective international control.” Non-governmental organizations have developed
a model nuclear weapons abolition treaty which has been circulated by the
United Nations as an official document. And this spring, the Peace &
Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World
brought thousands of activists from around the world and nearly eight million
petition signatures to New York and the United Nations demanding immediate
commencement of negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons – with a timeline.
These actions were reinforced by a Global Wave 2015 of more than 100 actions in
fifty nations.
Please
join us in commemorating the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s long past time to change our thinking,
and to build the international movement for a nuclear weapons-free world.
United
For Peace and Justice Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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