We should lose our imperial arrogance, apologize, negotiate to destroy all nuclear weapons worldwide and shut down the Military-Industrial Complex, once and for all.
Advertisement
Witnessing the destruction, Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the U.S. bomber Enola Gay later wrote, “My God what have we done?” Three days later, “Fat Boy” killed around 40,000 more people in Nagasaki, and in the weeks that followed, thousands more died from grotesque injuries that resulted from radiation poisoning.
Joshua of Morrisville remembers first learning about the bombings when his fourth grade class read Sadako’s Thousand Paper Cranes.
Kawasaki said he was about 2 miles away from the epicenter of the bomb, in the hospital seeking treatment for a ruptured appendix when he heard the blast of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
He had “first-hand experience of battlefield during World War I and valued soldiers’ lives“, said Daniel.
Abe laid a wreath at the ceremony attended by US ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and other officials. With China’s military prowess growing, the allies updated their defense guidelines in April and Abe is pushing unpopular security bills through parliament to enable Japan’s armed forces to defend other countries.
2,000: Height in feet (600 meters) at which the bomb exploded 43 seconds after it was dropped.
About 55,000 people attended a peace memorial ceremony at the city’s Peace Memorial Park that began at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, including survivors of the atomic bombing, their descendants, peace activists and representatives from about 100 countries and regions. “We need to scrap Trident and begin to finally rid the world of nuclear weapons“. “Now is the time to start taking action”, he said in his annual speech.
Abe is now trying to reinterpret, and eventually revise, Article 9 of that constitution, the part that renounces Japan’s right to engage in war.
The scars of 70 years ago have been paved-over in the rebuilding of the bustling, modern city of Hiroshima, but the pain is still there.
“It’s a commemoration of the atomic bomb dropped in 1945”, explained organizer Nancy Dickeman.
At the time, and ever since, in the U.S. the bombing has largely been seen from a utilitarian point of view: The bomb was a tool to end a bad war and save American lives.
Advertisement
Activists held a rally at the Place de la Republique in Paris to mark the devastating atomic attack. The day was marked by adding of names of survivors of the explosion called the hibakusha, who died in previous 12 months, on the cenotaph of the Peace Memorial Park.
