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Hiroshima

Oppenheimer, American Exceptionalism And Myths About US Nuking Japan

August 20, 2023 Mohamed Elmaazi, YouTube. , , , , ,
Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan wasn't necessary, didn't save lives and did not end WWII, argues historian Peter Kuznick. On the 78th anniversary of the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, Truth Defence spoke to Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, based in Washington D.C. Professor Kuznick discusses how the historical record continues to be distorted to this day and what he feels the new Christopher Nolan film "Oppenheimer" gets right and wrong. Professor Kuznick is the author and co-author of numerous books including co-authoring "The Untold History of the United States" with Oliver Stone.

Japan’s ‘Leadership’ Cannot Name The United States As A War Criminal

August 10, 2023 Saheli Chowdhury, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
Japan’s “leadership” seemed to be suffering from amnesia on the 78th commemoration of the destruction of the city of Hiroshima by a nuclear bomb dropped by the United States, the first nuclear bomb to be used in war, and only one of the two nuclear bombs ever used in war, the second of which was also dropped by the United States, and that too against Japan. Yet, all the political leaders of Japan who participated in the official commemoration of that crime against humanity forgot to name the criminal, the United States. However, all of them, for some unknown reason, mentioned Russia, although it was the United States that was solely responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in that crime in 1945, and perhaps the principal motive behind that bombing was the United States’ intention to threaten the USSR, of which Russia was a part at that time.

Atomic Bombing Of Japan Was Not Necessary To End WWII

August 8, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , ,
It is very common for Western governments and media outlets to tell the rest of the world to be very afraid of North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or to fear the possibility that Iran could one day soon have nukes. But the reality is that there is only one country in human history that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population – and not once, but twice: the United States. On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 200,000 civilians were killed. Today, nearly 80 years later, it is still very common to hear US government officials, journalists, and educators claim that Washington had no choice but to nuke Japan.

Commemorating Hiroshima And Nagasaki Bombings

August 5, 2023 International League of People's Struggle. , , , , ,
On the 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle stands in solidarity with the Japanese people in their fight for justice and continued resistance against US imperialism and its war crimes. On August 6, 1945, during World War II, the world’s first deployed atomic bomb America B-29 was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. The explosion killed an estimate of 80,000 people instantly, 95 percent of them civilians. Another 100,000 died slowly from burns and the effects of radiation. Three days later, a second B029 bomber was dropped over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

#JunkG7: Statement On The G7 Hiroshima Summit

May 25, 2023 International League of People's Struggle. , , , ,
We congratulate all the members of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) and the International Peoples Front, for the Peoples’ Summit to Counter G7 in Kyoto, Japan and accompanying solidarity Global Days of Action held in several countries May 18-20, 2023. Leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union, met in Hiroshima this past weekend. The G7 sought to make the Hiroshima Summit a platform for the US drive against its rivals China and Russia. Moscow dismissed it as a “propaganda show” while Beijing protested Japan’s “smear” and the UK’s “slander”.

Japanese Rally Against G7 Summit In Hiroshima

May 15, 2023 Telesur English. , , , , , ,
Over 200 Japanese people rallied at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in a protest against the upcoming Group of Seven (G7) summit, carrying banners reading "No War Accomplices" and "No G7." "Japan is saying it will send a peaceful message of abolishing nuclear weapons to the world through this summit, but at the same time it is seeking to rely on nuclear weapons to achieve 'national security.' This is contradictory," said Ichiro Yuasa, a Peace Depot spokesperson. Participant Fumi Akiyama said that Japan's use of Hiroshima, which had suffered the atomic bombing during World War II, to hold the G7 summit completely went against the good wishes of the people of Hiroshima to pray for peace.

Activists Mark 77th Anniversary Of Atomic Bombings At Nuclear Sub Base

August 11, 2022 Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Approximately 40 people were present on August 5th at a flash mob demonstration against Trident nuclear weapons at the Bangor submarine base. The demonstration was in the roadway, and blocked traffic entering the Main Gate of the Trident nuclear submarine base during rush hour traffic. Thirteen demonstrators were detained and cited by authorities. Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor is homeport to the largest concentration of deployed nuclear warheads in the U.S. The nuclear warheads are deployed on Trident D-5 missiles on SSBN submarines and are stored in an underground nuclear weapons storage facility on the base. Activists gathered early Monday morning on August 8th at the the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo to remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77 years ago and to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

John Pilger: Another Hiroshima Is Coming — Unless We Stop It Now

August 7, 2022 John Pilger, Consortium News. , , ,
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties. I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell.

The People In Hiroshima Didn’t Expect It Either

August 5, 2022 David Swanson, World Beyond War. , , ,
When New York City recently released a grotesque “public service announcement” video explaining that you should stay indoors during a nuclear war, the corporate media reaction was principally not outrage at the acceptance of such a fate or the stupidity of telling people “You’ve got this!” as if they could survive the apocalypse by cocooning with Netflix, but rather mockery of the very idea that a nuclear war might happen. U.S. polling on people’s top concerns find 1% of people most concerned about the climate and 0% most concerned about nuclear war. Yet, the U.S. just illegally put nukes into a 6th nation (and virtually nobody in the U.S. can name either it or the other five that the U.S. already illegally had nukes in), while Russia is talking about putting nukes into another nation too, and the two governments with most of the nukes increasingly talk — publicly and privately — about nuclear war.

Where We Stand On August 6 And 9, 2022

August 5, 2022 H. Patricia Hynes, Portside. , , ,
August 6 and 9 mark the 77th year since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, annihilating instantly an estimated 170,000 women, men and children and sentencing tens of thousands more to eventual death from radiation poisoning and injuries. American military leaders from all branches of the armed forces strongly dissented from the decision to use the bombs, some before August 1945, some in retrospect, for both military and moral reasons.  On Armistice Day 1948, Army General Omar Bradley captured the soulless militarism ruling the US government: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

Atomic Bomb Survivors—A Model For Us In COVID-19 Era

August 13, 2021 Robert Jay Lifton, The Bulletin. , , ,
Survivors of Hiroshima are a dying population. People who were 20 years old at the time of the bomb would now be 96. The survivors still alive were mostly children then, and they too are dying out. Does this suggest that the message of hibakusha, the original survivors, has come to an end? I do not think so. Consider the message that Hiroshima survivors have brought to the world. A history professor I interviewed during my 1962 study of hibakusha — “explosion-affected people” — described how, soon after the bomb, he looked down at the city from a high suburb: “Hiroshima had disappeared. … I was shocked by the sight. … Hiroshima didn’t exist — that was mainly what I saw — Hiroshima just didn’t exist.”

Hiroshima Is A Lie

August 6, 2021 David Swanson, World Beyond War. , ,
In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped her into a picture with Mussolini and Hitler. Somebody made an image of a sunbather viewing troops rushing onto a beach. But could an 18-year-old in 2015 be expected to know that most of the victims of WWII were civilians — men and women and children alike? Who would have told her that? Certainly not her text books.

‘Black Rain’ Victims Finally Win In Court

August 6, 2021 Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear International. , , ,
Just weeks before the 2021 commemoration of the August 6, 1945 US atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima, a Japanese court ruled that victims of the radioactive “black rain” who were living beyond the officially recognized contamination zone at the time, should be included in the group considered bomb “survivors” or “Hibakusha” and receive the same benefits. A Hiroshima high court acknowledged in its July 14, 2021 ruling that many more people suffered as a result of exposure to “black rain” than have hitherto been recognized as victims. “Black rain” was described in a CNN story as a “mixture of fallout particles from the explosion, carbon residue from citywide fires, and other dangerous elements.

Hiroshima-Nagasaki: The Story They Want Us To Forget

August 5, 2021 Bruce K. Gagnon, Organizing Notes. , , , ,
The world's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto (day of the dead). US President Harry Truman ordered the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Days later (August 9) Washington dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. Official figures of those killed by the atomic bombs is well over 150,000 from the two cities. More than 100,000 were injured with most likely dying. Then over the years many thousands have died from the initial radiation poisoning.

Why We Can’t Give Up On A World Free From Nuclear Weapons

February 2, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
Nine countries of the 193 member states of the United Nations possess nuclear weapons. Two of them—the United States of America and Russia—have more than 90% of all the 13,410 warheads. Four countries—the US, Russia, the UK and France—have at least 1,800 warheads on high alert, which means that they can be fired at very short notice. To compare the warheads currently deployed with the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima is enough to make the heart stop: the yield from the “Little Boy” used on Hiroshima is estimated at 15 kilotons, whereas the yield from one W88 warhead that is deployed on a Trident II submarine is estimated at 475 kilotons.
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