Please Join Aug. 9, 2013 Hilo Peace vigil to Remember Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Aloha Big Island Peace Ohana;
Please come to the Friday, Aug. 9, 2013 Hilo Peace Vigil. We will have an open microphone for sharing memories. Mahalo.
Jim
Remembering
Hiroshima &
Nagasaki
For many people, remembering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Aug, 6th and 9th 1945, are annual days of obligation. Our downfall is to forget. May we never forget. And may humanity never again unleash such horror.
So let us remember together. On Aug. 6, 1945 a B-29 U.S. bomber named Enola Gay after the pilot’s mother, dropped a uranium atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded at 8:16AM Three days later the U.S. dropped a plutonium atomic bomb at 11:01 AM nicknamed “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki. The actual amount of plutonium in the Nagasaki bomb was about the size of a softball weighing 14 pounds– but it had the explosive equivalent of 22,000 tons of TNT. In two blinding flashes of light, heat and radiation, these cities were leveled. The ultimate toll was more than 200,000 people killed and many more injured who would later die of radiation poisoning.
It is a commonly believed myth that the bombs were dropped to end the war, but many top U.S. military leaders of the day said that the outcome of the war was clear. Here are some of the military leaders words:
“…Japan was already defeated and…dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary…” General Dwight David Eisenhower (Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pp312-313)
“Use of the bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view.” General Douglass MacArthur (James, The Years of MacArthur, p. 775)
(Before the bombing) Admiral William Leahy said to President Harry Truman: “Mr. President, this would violate every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all known laws of war. It would be an attack on the noncombatant population of the enemy… (And after the bombing) Admiral Leahy said: “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.” Admiral William D. Leahy (Leahy, I was There, p. 440-441)
In most American school textbooks there is no hint of controversy regarding the decision to drop the bombs. In fact, in many textbooks it’s stated that atomic weapons were used to forestall an invasion of Japan that would have cost a million American lives. (OpEdNews.com Aug. 2, 2013 by Pat Elder)
Yet today we know better: the bombs weren’t needed to end the war; the idea that dropping the bombs saved a million American lives was a fabrication; Japan was seeking surrender and simply wanted to retain the institution of the emperor; the atomic bombs were experiments –the U.S. military had both uranium and plutonium types and both were used; these bombs were not the last chapter of WWII but the first chapter of the Cold War with the Russians. They were a dramatic show of power to the Russians about who was going to be the world’s #1 power after the war.
Lost in all the power politics were the death and suffering of innocent people –civilians –men, women and children. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted murder on an epic scale and the killing in war continues. (See www.malu-aina.org for Hiroshima speech by Jim Albertini given on Maui Aug. 5, 2013)
Let us say together –
War Never Again!
1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc. 5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email ja@malu-aina.org http://www.malu-aina.org
Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (August 9, 2013– 620th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office
