BALTIMORE HOLDS 35th ANNUAL HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS.

HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE, 325 East 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218 Ph: 410-323-1607 Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] Comcast dot net

PRESS RELEASE-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 4, 2019

CONTACT: Max Obuszewski 410-323-1607 or 727-256-5789 or mobuszewski2001 at comcast.net

                        Janice Sevre-Duszynska 859-684-4247

BALTIMORE HOLDS 35th ANNUAL HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS.

IT IS THE 74th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF JAPAN.

WHO:   For the 35th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed some 220,000 people.  Other organizations involved in the commemorations are the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Prevent Nuclear War Maryland and Homewood Friends Meeting.

WHAT/WHEN/WHERE: On Tuesday, August 6 at 5 PM, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima will be commemorated with a demonstration at 34th & N. Charles Streets against Johns Hopkins University’s weapons contracts, including research on killer drones. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center has a strategic partnership with JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

At 6:30 PM at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, an update will be presented on the Back from the Brink movement and how to be involved with Prevent Nuclear War/Maryland. Then Ms. Michiko Kodama, a Hibakusha who was 7 years old when she experienced the Hiroshima bombing, will do a presentation. As the Assistant Secretary General of the Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), she will appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

At 8 PM the group will depart for a community dinner at 18-8 Sushi, 727 W. 40th St., Suite 138, Baltimore 21211. This is an opportunity for dialogue with Ms. Kodama.

WHAT/WHEN/WHERE:  On Thursday, August 9 from 5 to 6 PM, the bombing of Nagasaki will be commemorated outside Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles Street.  At 6:15 PM, there will be a potluck dinner with members of the peace and justice community in the basement of Homewood Friends Meetinghouse.   

At 7:15 PM, Les Bayless of the Silver Spring Three will speak on the 50th anniversary of a remarkable draft board raid. Then Patrick O’Neill, a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares, will discuss the current legal situation for the seven Roman Catholic activists, including Elizabeth McAlister, arrested at a Trident Submarine Base in Georgia on April 4, 2018. McAlister has been imprisoned since the arrest. The evening will be dedicated to showing the link between an earlier time’s draft board raids and today’s anti-nuclear Plowshares movement.  

 WHY: These are very dangerous times. In May 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement.  This was followed by the imposition of heavy U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, as well as thinly-veiled threats by Trump to use nuclear weapons to destroy that country.  

  More recently, the Trump administration withdrew from the Reagan era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty―the historic agreement that had banned U.S. and Russian ground-launched cruise missiles.  Then the 2010 New START Treaty, which reduced U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, is unlikely to be extended after it expires in February 2021.  If the treaty is allowed to expire, it would be the first time since 1972 that there would be no nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States.

The U.S. and Russian governments, which possess approximately 93 percent of the world’s nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads, have abandoned negotiations.  And the U.S. intends to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years modernizing its nuclear weapons production facilities and adding new, improved types of nuclear weapons to its arsenal.    

Because of this dire situation, we must resist and speak out.  Prevent Nuclear War/Maryland, for example, has been organizing a campaign with others for a national grassroots initiative seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear weapons policy and lead us away from the dangerous path we are on. On August 6, 2018, the Baltimore City Council passed such a resolution.

The Call lays out five common-sense steps that the United States should take to reform its nuclear policy. We want to build a safer world for the children to inherit. Let us show respect for Mother Earth by remembering what the Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, say -- Never Again.  As long as these awful and immoral weapons exist, they may be used.  We must reduce the risk of nuclear war which will ultimately require the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will continue its work to rid the planet of nuclear weapons.

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“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