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)
Put some ice on it. Oh, that's right, we melted all your ice.
Is Jeffin Japanese?
The Japanese people are pretty nice now but back then... the bomb was not big enough!!!!
Don't forget Nanking and the whole rest of their beloved "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere".
The world has forgotten what bloody butchers the Japanese were during their invasion and occupation of S.E. Asia.
Animals is too nice a term to use to describe the actions of their military at that time.
I'd like to be around the Arizona Memorial when Japanese tourists take "thumbs up" pictures....I'd blow a fuse if I saw that.
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Richard Frank's "Downfall" for an excellent account of the last days of the war. He makes an interesting point that addition to the bombs saving American lives, we owed it to the people of the Japanese occupied nations to end the war as quickly as possible. The civilian deaths in The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere were much greater than most people are aware of.
See my #30.
Nuke 'em til they glow -- remember Pearl Harbor.
FMCDH(BITS)
Sounds like the way the antiwar movement has been tallying "900 deaths in Iraq". They have included people who died of industrial accidents in Kuwait, heartattacks in Germany, and even being hit by a truck in Kansas as long as they were "deployed" in Iraq. In the case of the woman in Kansas, she was hit while on leave; she has since been purged from many of the lists but not all.
There are inflated figures in the "Bush's fault" list because they are after bigger numbers (probably hoping for 1000 dead by election day). There is no government count as to how many died in Iraq, just articles that run when someone dies. Even out of those who died "in Iraq", over 1/3 of them did not die in combat, but rather industrial accidents, vehicular accidents, drownings, pneumonia, etc.
Japan still has difficulty dealing with the issues of "comfort women" and Camp 731's medical attrocities.
id say they are looking to be smacked down again.
In the next couple of generations, all of the blame for WWII will be laid at the feet of the US.
Just as we are blamed for 9/11 because of "imperialism" and fighting "the Jews' wars".
Japan made the same imperialism claims over Hawaii and Lord Haw Haw and Axis Sally made the same antisemetic comments.
The future is now.
I doubt that most college students could tell you who Harry Truman WAS.
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