Hiroshima Remembrance on 58th Anniversary

Hiroshima Mayor Hits Out at U.S.
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Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Posted: 11:36 AM EDT (1536 GMT)
Associated Press

Doves released at the Hiroshima memorial mark the 58th
anniversary of the bombing.

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — The mayor of Hiroshima has
criticized the U.S. for pursuing new nuclear weapons
technology, as he marked the 58th anniversary of the
world’s first atomic bomb attack.

Tadatoshi Akiba said Washington’s apparent worship of
"nuclear weapons as God" was threatening world peace.

"The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central
international agreement guiding the elimination of
nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse," Akiba
said during the annual ceremony held Wednesday at the
Peace Memorial Park.

"As the U.S.-British-led war on Iraq made clear, the
assertion that war is peace is being trumpeted as
truth."

At 8:15 a.m., a bell tolled, marking the minute on Aug.
6, 1945 when the U.S. atomic bomb’s explosion
devastated this city, 429 miles southwest of Tokyo. For
60 seconds, tens of thousands of survivors, residents,
activists and officials from around the world bowed in
silence to commemorate the 160,000 people who were
killed or injured in the blast.

Reminding the crowd of the "blazing hell fire that
swept over this very spot 58 years ago," Akiba called
all nuclear weapons "utterly evil, inhumane and illegal
under international law."

This year’s ceremony comes less than a week after North
Korea agreed to U.S. demands for six-nation talks to
resolve the standoff over the isolated communist
regime’s nuclear programs. China, Russia, Japan and
South Korea were expected to take part, though no
timeline for the meetings has been decided.

Akiba didn’t directly criticize Pyongyang’s nuclear
ambitions. But he urged North Korean leader Kim Jong
Il, President Bush and the heads of other nuclear-armed
countries to visit Hiroshima and confront the nuclear
attack’s aftermath.

Some 160,000 people were killed or injured in the
bombing.

The Bush administration wants Congress to approve $68
million for research into advanced nuclear weapons
technology, including research on a ground-penetrating
nuclear warhead, known as a bunker-buster, and smaller,
so-called mini-nukes, of less than 5 kilotons.

The United States has had a self-imposed ban on nuclear
testing since 1992.

During Wednesday’s ceremony, Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi reaffirmed Japan’s policy banning the
production, possession and transport of nuclear weapons
within its borders.

"Our country’s stance on this will not change," Koizumi
said, adding that Tokyo would push for countries to
ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would
impose a moratorium on nuclear explosion tests.

Afterward, thousands of people lined up in the
sweltering heat to burn incense, pray and shoot
photographs at the arch-shaped stone memorial, which
contains the names of hundreds of thousands of people
who were in the city on the day of the bombing.

Hiroshima city added to the cenotaph 5,050 names of
those who have died from cancer and other long-term
ailments over the past year, raising the toll to
231,920, city official Yukiko Ota said.

Ceremonies will be held Saturday on the anniversary of
the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, on the southernmost
main island of Kyushu. About 70,000 people were killed
by an atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki from a U.S.
aircraft, three days after the one that leveled
Hiroshima.

Six days later, on Aug. 15, 1945, Japan’s surrender
ended World War II.

=======================================================

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day
August 6, 2003

The Living Myths About Nuclear Murder
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
By DAVID KRIEGER

At 1:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a US B-29 bomber, named
Enola Gay, took off from Tinian Island in the Mariana
Islands. It carried the world’s second atomic bomb, the
first having been detonated three weeks earlier at a US
test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Enola Gay
carried one atomic bomb, with an enriched uranium core.
The bomb had been named "Little Boy." It had an
explosive force of some 12,500 tons of TNT. At 8:15
a.m. that morning, as the citizens of Hiroshima were
beginning their day, the Enola Gay released its
horrific cargo, which fell for 43 seconds before
detonating at 580 meters above Shima Hospital near the
center of the city.

Here is a description from a pamphlet published by the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum of what happened
immediately following the explosion:

"The temperature of the air at the point of explosion
reached several million degrees Celsius (the maximum
temperature of conventional bombs is approximately
5,000 degrees Celsius). Several millionths of a second
after the explosion a fireball appeared, radiating
white heat. After 1/10,000th of a second, the fireball
reached a diameter of approximately 28 meters with a
temperature of close to 300,000 degrees Celsius. At the
instant of the explosion, intense heat rays and
radiation were released in all directions, and a blast
erupted with incredible pressure on the surrounding
air."

As a result of the blast, heat and ensuing fires, the
city of Hiroshima was leveled and some 90,000 people in
it perished that day. The world’s second test of a
nuclear weapon demonstrated conclusively the awesome
power of nuclear weapons for killing and maiming.
Schools were destroyed and their students and teachers
slaughtered. Hospitals with their patients and medical
staffs were obliterated. The bombing of Hiroshima was
an act of massive destruction of a civilian population,
the destruction of an entire city with a single bomb.
Harry Truman, president of the United States, upon
being notified, said, in egregiously poor judgment,
"This is the greatest thing in history."

Three days after destroying Hiroshima, after failing to
find an opening in the clouds over its primary target
of the city of Kokura, a US B-29 bomber, named
Bockscar, attacked the Japanese city of Nagasaki with
the world’s third atomic weapon. This bomb had a
plutonium core and an explosive force of some 22,000
tons of TNT. It had been named "Fat Man." The attack
took place at 11:02 a.m. It resulted in the immediate
deaths of some 40,000 people.

In his first speech to the US public about the bombing
of Hiroshima, which he delivered on August 9, 1945, the
day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Harry
Truman reported: "The world will note that the first
atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base.
That was because we wished in this first attack to
avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
While Hiroshima did have a military base in the city,
it was not the base that was targeted, but the center
of the city. The vast majority of the victims in
Hiroshima were ordinary civilians, including large
numbers of women and children. Truman continued, "But
that attack is only a warning of things to come."
Truman went on to refer to the "awful responsibility
which has come to us," and to "thank God that it has
come to us, instead of to our enemies." He prayed that
God "may guide us to use it in His ways and for His
purpose." It was a chilling and prophetic prayer.

By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in
Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki.
Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries.
Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued
over the years due primarily to the effects of
radiation poisoning.

Now looking back at these terrible events, inevitably
our collective memory has faded and is reshaped by
current perspectives. With the passage of time, those
who actually experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki have become far fewer in number. Although
their own memories of the trauma to themselves and
their cities may remain vivid, their stories are
unknown by large portions of the world’s population.
The message of the survivors has been simple, clear and
consistent: "Never Again!" At the Memorial Cenotaph in
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is this inscription: "Let
all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat
the evil." The "we" in the inscription refers to all of
us and to each of us.

Yet, the fate of the world, and particularly the fate
of humanity, may hang on how we remember Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. If we remember the bombings of these cities
as just another point in human history, along with many
other important points, we may well lack the political
will to deal effectively with the challenges that
nuclear weapons pose to humanity. If, on the other
hand, we remember these bombings as a turning point in
human history, a time at which peace became an
imperative, we may still find the political will to
save ourselves from the fate that befell the
inhabitants of these two cities.

In the introduction to their book, Hiroshima in
America, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell write,
"You cannot understand the twentieth century without
Hiroshima." The same may be said of the twenty-first
century. The same may be said of the nuclear
predicament that confronts humanity. Neither our time
nor our future can be adequately understood without
understanding what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there has
been a struggle for memory. The story of the bombings
differs radically between what has been told in America
and how the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recount
this tragedy. America’s rendition is a story of triumph
triumph of technology and triumph in war. It views the
bomb from above, from the perspective of those who
dropped it. For the vast majority of US citizens, the
creation of the bomb has been seen as a technological
feat of extraordinary proportions, giving rise to the
most powerful weapon in the history of warfare. From
this perspective, the atomic bombs made possible the
complete defeat of Japanese imperial power and brought
World War II to an abrupt end.

In the minds of many, if not most US citizens, the
atomic bombs saved the lives of perhaps a million US
soldiers, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
is seen as a small price to pay to save so many lives
and bring a terrible war to an end. This view leaves
the impression that bombing these cities with atomic
weapons was useful, fruitful and an occasion to be
celebrated.

The problem with this rendition of history is that the
need for dropping the bombs to end the war has been
widely challenged by historians. Many scholars,
including Lifton and Mitchell, have questioned the
official US account of the bombings. These critics have
variously pointed out that Japan was attempting to
surrender at the time the bombs were dropped, that the
US Army Strategic Survey calculated far fewer US
casualties from an invasion of Japan, and that there
were other ways to end the war without using the atomic
bombs on the two Japanese cities.

Among the critics of the use of nuclear weapons at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leading US military
figures. General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied
Commander Europe during World War II and later US
president, described his reaction upon having been told
by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that atomic bombs
would be used on Japanese cities:

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had
been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I
voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis
of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that
dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and
secondly because I thought that our country should
avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon
whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as
a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that
Japan was, at that very moment, attempting to surrender
with a minimum loss of ’face’. . . ."

In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist,
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t
necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General of the
US Army Air Forces during World War II, wrote, "It
always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic
bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of
collapse."

Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy,
wrote,

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance
in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already
defeated and ready to surrender.... My own feeling was
that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an
ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark
Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and
wars cannot be won by destroying women and
children...."

Despite these powerful statements of dissent from US
World War II military leaders, there is still a strong
sense in the United States and among its allies that
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified
by the war. There is insufficient recognition that the
victims of the bombings were largely civilians, that
those closest to the epicenters of the explosions were
incinerated, while those further away were exposed to
radiation poisoning, that many suffered excruciatingly
painful deaths, and that even today, more than five
decades after the bombings, survivors continue to
suffer from the effects of the radiation exposure.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in the past.
We cannot resurrect these cities. The residents of
these cities have done this for themselves. What we can
do is learn from their experience. What they have to
teach is perhaps humanity’s most important lesson: We
are confronted by the possibility of our extinction as
a species, not simply the reality of our individual
deaths, but the death of humanity. This possibility
became evident at Hiroshima. The great French
existential writer, Albert Camus, wrote in the
immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima:

"Our technical civilization has just reached its
greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in
the more or less near future, between collective
suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific
conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now
available to humanity, we see even more clearly that
peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no
longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples
to their governments a demand to choose definitively
between hell and reason."

To rely upon nuclear weapons for security is to put the
future of our species and most of life at risk of
annihilation. Humanity is faced with a choice:
Eliminate nuclear weapons or continue to run the risk
of them eliminating us. Unless we recognize this choice
and act upon it, we face the possibility of a global
Hiroshima.

Living with Myths

In his book, The Myths of August, former US Secretary
of the Interior Stewart Udall writes:

"In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant
statements by President Truman and other official
spokesmen for the US government transformed the
inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized
event in American history. These exhilarating,
excessive utterances depicted a profoundly altered
universe and produced a reorientation of thought that
influenced the behavior of nations and changed the
outlook and the expectations of the inhabitants of this
planet."

Many myths have grown up around the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki that have the effect of making
the use of nuclear weapons more palatable. To restate,
one such myth is that there was no choice but to use
nuclear weapons on these cities. Another is that doing
so saved the lives of in excess of one million US
soldiers. Underlying these myths is a more general myth
that US leaders can be expected to do what is right and
moral. To conclude that our leaders did the wrong thing
by acting immorally at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
slaughtering civilian populations, flies in the face of
this widespread understanding of who we are as a
people. To maintain our sense of our own decency,
reflected by the actions of our leaders, may require us
to bend the facts to fit our myths.

When a historical retrospective of the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki which was to include the
reservations of US military leaders such as Eisenhower,
Arnold and Leahy was planned for the fiftieth
anniversary commemorations of these events at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, a major outcry
of opposition arose from veteran’s groups and members
of the US Congress. In the end, the Smithsonian
exhibition was reduced under pressure from a broad
historical perspective on the bombings to a display and
celebration of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the
bomb on Hiroshima.

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