Posted on 08/05/2004 5:58:18 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
Friday, August 6, 2004 at 08:51 JST
HIROSHIMA — Hiroshima on Friday morning marked the 59th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city. An estimated 40,000 people attended the ceremony that started at 8 a.m. at the Peace Memorial Park in the downtown part of the western Japan city that was devastated in the world's first nuclear attack Aug 6, 1945, three days before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
In his peace declaration, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba voiced serious concern over the "egocentric worldview" of the United States and moves in Japan to revise the country's pacifist Constitution.
"The egocentric worldview of the U.S. government is reaching extremes," Akiba said, criticizing the United States for its nuclear policies.
"Ignoring the United Nations and international law, the United States has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and more usable," Akiba said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also attended the memorial service.
Akiba demanded that the United States strive with other nuclear powers toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In the declaration, he also demanded that the Japanese government reject moves to revise the war-renouncing Constitution.
"The Japanese government, as our representative, should defend the peace Constitution, of which all Japanese should be proud, and work diligently to rectify the trend toward open acceptance of war and nuclear weapons that is increasingly prevalent at home and abroad," he said.
"We demand that our government act on its obligation as the only nation to suffer atomic bombings," he said.
Article 9 of the Constitution stipulates that the Japanese people "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."
The mayor is a former House of Representatives member of the opposition Social Democratic Party, which is against revision of the Constitution as well as Japan's dispatch of troops to Iraq for reconstruction work there after the U.S.-led war on the country.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly said last month that the article hinders the Japan-U.S. alliance. He apparently backtracked later, however, as the remark drew strong criticism from lawmakers in Japan.
The 59th anniversary comes at a time when concerns over nuclear issues have intensified globally.
Multilateral efforts are under way to deal with North Korea's nuclear ambitions, while Iran has come under pressure from the international community to allow inspections of nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
While expressing hope for the success of the 2005 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Hiroshima also expressed its intention of taking the initiative in achieving the complete abolition of nuclear weapons by bringing together cities, citizens and nongovernmental organizations from around the world.
The initiative, called the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, aims at adopting an action program incorporating an interim goal of "the signing in 2010 of a Nuclear Weapons Convention to serve as the framework for eliminating nuclear weapons by 2020," according to Akiba.
Among those attending the ceremony were Pakistani Ambassador Kamran Niaz and Russian Ambassador Alexander Losyukov.
U.N. Undersecretary General Nobuyasu Abe is also attending on behalf of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The city government of Hiroshima had asked seven nuclear nations — Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States — as well North Korea to send government delegates to the ceremony, but only Pakistan and Russia accepted.
The U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its aftereffects killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945.
This year, the names of 5,142 more people recognized as atomic-bomb victims by the city since Aug 6 last year were added to a memorial arch, bringing the total to 237,062. (Kyodo News)
This year, the names of 5,142 more people recognized as atomic-bomb victims by the city since Aug 6 last year were added to a memorial arch, bringing the total to 237,062.
The Japanese count every person who was in the city at the time of the bombing as an atomic-bomb victim, no matter what their state of health or cause of death. A perfectly healthy 80 year old woman who got hit by bus while crossing the street would be an "atomic-bomb victim" if she had been in Hiroshima 6 Aug 1945.
Supportive of dropping the bomb ping.
Anyone tell him that we do have more on hand if we need them?
bump not ping.
Mayor-san Tad, why don't you just go sit down and Takeashita?
(I loved it when Takeashita was around in the old Fax days...a little cut-n-paste with his name did wonders)
If you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen. THEY are the ones who attacked Pearl Harbor. THEY are the ones who destroyed American lives all across the Pacific.
Who knows how many lives were saved by those bombs?
As an American I am outraged that they even have the chutzpah to be "outraged." They brought it on themselves.
Funny how peaceful a warring people become after you kick the living s**t out of 'em, no?
This is "National Guilt Day," in Occupied America (liberal-infested campuses) where pious Kumbayists and aging draft-dodger academics cry, hug each other, shake their feathers at the local ROTC, and gravely intone that the US "is the only nation that ever used nuclear weapons."
The rank and file MumiaCong may be unaware of it, but the ringleaders certainly know that this misleading half-truth was originally attributed to Joseph Stalin, as though he would have refrained from nuking Berlin if it had been within his power.
We apologize. We'll have a Do Over without using a nuke. A MOAB or 500 will be far more humane.
Why they didnt' surrender after the bombing of Tokyo.
They can only blame themselves for the senseless loss of life.
Since the Japanese are so big on apologies, how about one for Pearl Harbor, the battles of Midway and Okinawa, the Bataan death march? Better yet, how about some *cash* , like the US paid the US japanese sent to internment camps?
Or, how about a "thank-you" for the billions of US taxpayers dollars spend not only in repelling the Japanese, but later in rebuilding the country?
Perhaps they'd prefer to be the peasant feudal society they were before the war?
Ingrates.
Yeah, and let me guess, they have a memorial to the prisoners of war they tortured to death? Or the Koreans they raped as a [string of expletives self removed] policy? Or the Chinese they butchered?
Mess with the bull and you get the horns. Every single death in the pacific in WWII was Japan's fault...every single one.
Well, the revisionism has been well under way for a while now.
In the next couple of generations, all of the blame for WWII will be laid at the feet of the US.
A people who plays catch with babies and bayonets deserves to die. Instant vaporization was too kind--but effective!
The one thing the students never seem to bring up is that it was a Democrat that used this weapon of mass destruction. I doubt that most college students could tell you what party Harry Truman belonged to.
Oh cry me a freaking river. They got what they deserved.
Huzzah for Fat Man and Little Boy!
"WHAT THE FU@% WAS THAT ????"
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