Hiroshima

Nuclear Future?

U.S. warns would-be attackers: Response could include nuclear weapons - The Associated Press Dec. 11, 2002.

WASHINGTON -- In a warning to Iraq and other hostile countries, the United States says it is prepared to use "overwhelming force" -- including nuclear weapons -- in response to any chemical or biological attack.

The threat was contained in a White House document, called the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction," to be delivered to Congress on Wednesday.

This boy had thermal burns on more than one-third of his body, and his chest and the left side of his belly were seriously injured. He managed to leave the hospital after 3 years and 7 months. This person, who miraculously recovered, is now a father of two children, and recollects what happened then; "At that time I was riding a red bibycle on the streets of Sumiyoshi township (about 2 kilometers from the hypocenter). I was 16 years old, and it was my second year as a telegram messenger. The moment of face, I was blinded by the flash and thrown 3 meters away by the blast that came from my rear left, and my bicycle was twisted and bent. It was strange that I was not bleeding and did not feel any pain until I reached an underground shelter 300 meters away. The moment I reached the shelter, I felt severe pain in my back, which ran through my whole body. From then on, for three days and three nights, I kept on groaning in the shelter, and on the fourth day I was finally rescued and sent to a first-aid station."

"In the early stages, the only treatment I received for my burns was the application of a mixture of ash and oil as a substitute for medicine. I do not know how many times I yelled "kill me!" because of the severe pain and desperate feeling."

"Thereafter, as a result of the several operations I underwent, I escaped death and returned to work. Since I have once given up my life, I wish to dedicatemy new life to the struggle against atomic bombs."

He is continuing to devote his efforts to the prohibiton of atomic and hydrogen bombs.

America is fighting a "War on Terrorism"...right!

"If I earn your confidence, my job will be to prepare the military to fight and win war." - George W. Bush, Presidential Election Debate in 2000

The fact is that no other single act of terrorism against a civilian population in history using a SINGLE device and in one SINGLE shot killed more people in ONE INSTANCE than the horrific American attack on the two cities in Japan, the first of which happened today, 57 years ago. Total City destructions were a hobby of both the Allies and the Germans during World War II. But no other attack on a civilian population was so TOTAL, so INSTANTANEOUS, and having ENDURING CONSEQUENCES as the attacks on Japan. And the weapons used to destroy cities in Germany by the allies were not weapons of mass destruction anyway. Rather, they were "conventional" weapons used in massive amounts. The nuclear weapons are, on the other hand, the obvious "king" of all weapons of mass destruction.

This boy, who was burned to death with his hands placed on his chest, leaving an impression of agony, is believed to have been a mobilized student exposed to the A-bomb in Iwakana township, which is about 700 meters from the hypocenter.

Besides being horrifying, totally and enduringly destructive, these attacks were even militarily totally UNNECESSARY. Japan was reportedly ready to surrender even before the first attack. Or maybe Truman was trying to impress the Soviets as is speculated. Still even if we ignore our humanity and decide America had the right to warn the Soviets that it had the bomb, the attacks on these cities will still remain exceptionally horrifying. Harry S. Truman could have decided to throw the bomb on an uninhabited island somewhere in the world, and let the Soviets watch the island's destruction. That would have served the need of warning the Soviets just the same. But the real warning Truman was giving Moscow -- in my opinion -- wasn't just that "we have the bomb", or "it works" or even "look at what it can do" but rather he wanted to warn them that "we have enough cold-bloodedness to use it on any CIVILIAN population without a single hesitation or remorse -- and twice". That is what makes that particular attack so frightening: Truman's cold-bloodedness. That's what makes its also the greatest terrorist attack in history. Ever!

Citizens who were able to escape from hell on earth that day evacuated to the suburban areas of Hiroshima City and took refuge at first-aid stations set up in public buildings. However, this provided only momentary relief. They started to die one after another at the first-aid stations, and cremation could not catch up with the rate of death, so many of them had to be buried togeter.

To me no man is more cold-blooded or horrifying than Harry S. Truman, not even Hitler! And so long as the American political establishment takes no step to apologize for these attacks, the guilt will endure through the successive generations of US administrations, Republican or Democrat!

Let me provide you my friends with the essay I wrote on 9/11. Please read it carefully and please think a little bit for yourselves were the truth is. Without emotions or bias. PLEASE.

In light of many recent and past events; wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and an attack on the US cities of New York and Washington, DC, one has to ask this important question: are civilians a legitimate target of war? Is killing a civilian to promote a cause always to be deemed as terrorism? Or can there be justification by which the killer can claim that there was no other way to get his rights?

The question may seem rude and inhuman to many New Yorkers who lost loved-ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center. But, just as equally, the question would seem completely as rude and inhuman to the thousands of individuals that were and still are affected by the US nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II. In that case, America did find justification for the instant loss of thousands of civilian lives. America claimed it was bringing Japan to a quick surrender. In reality this may have been an attempt to catch the attention of the would-be cold war rival: the former Soviet Union. In attacking the World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden [if it was really him who did it] has committed a grievous crime against US civilians; but he too has his own justifications. He sees the US army presence in the Persian Gulf ten years after the end of the Second Gulf War as unjustified. He calls it an occupation of Muslim land and a control over its oil resources.

[ let me note that I have always had my doubts about the official US story of who done it in 9/11. In writing this essay, I put my doubts aside and went along with the official story. Since then, mounting evidence suggests a possible covert link between the US government and the perpetrators of 9/11, and a lot of questions have risen about the truth behind the incrimination of bin Laden, including the authenticity of that confession tape allegedly found in Afghanisitan. I see no reason that I must accept the official Bush clan story anymore]

In retaliation for the murder of US civilians in New York and Washington, America has launched a fierce attack on Afghanistan, killing many Afghani civilians as collateral damage in revenge. For ten years the US-lead sanctions against Iraq has caused a slow genocide of Iraqi citizens (especially its children); justified by the fact that the US is fighting the Saddam regime it once helped create. Is the price of slowly murdering an entire civilian population worth it? Former US secretary of state Malden Albright certainly thought so.

In Palestine, desperate Palestinians fighting for their lives and an end to occupation blow themselves up in civilian areas where Israeli civilians live. They are fighting daily humiliation and death by Apache Helicopters and American-made F-16 fighter jets. But Hey&..why should an occupied and desperate people oppressed by a brutal apartheid army deserve their own version of justification? If the Palestinians were a global power like the US, they could find eloquent words for what they are doing and a media to back them up. But they are not.

Killing New York and Washington civilians is terrorism, but the collective punishment of the Afghani populous is not? Killing Israelis in desperation to remove oppression is terrorism, but killing thousands of civilians slowly in Iraq or suddenly in two Japanese cities is not? I wonder if the current US administration is willing to apologize to the Japanese people for the murderous actions of Harry S. Truman. I am sure they will find justification as to why they should not!

In all these cases, as I see it, killing a single civilian is wrong. Islam taught me that killing one innocent man is like killing all of humanity. At war we are instructed never to cut a tree, kill a child, a woman, an old person, or a man in his temple (i.e., not fighting). But things must be put in perspective. For, while America as a world power will always have other options when at war, the Palestinians have none. They have been abandoned by everyone; their Arab bothers (who do nothing but talk), and the biased US government. Whats more, Palestinians are fighting an occupation to gain back only 22% of their historical land, not in fact asking for all that they deserve. What more can they negotiate away, when in fact 53 years Jaffa and Haifa were just as Palestinian as Tolkurm and Ram Allah are today?

Where are 5 million Palestinian refugees to go other that to their homes that have become Israeli cities and villages? Or are they to be given only limited reservations as was finally done to Native Americans?

Who has the bigger burden to stop the violence anyway, the occupier or the occupied? Isnt occupation in itself terrorism? Why doesnt Israel just get out of land that isnt its own?

And, I ask you --if you agree with me-- to protest all symbols of such terrorism. Equally. Ask for the removal of the Enola Gay --the airplane that dropped the nuclear bomb in World War II-- from the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, now and today! Demand that America start its war on terrorism properly: by putting to trial all those responsible for civilian deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki--- in person or in name. Tell the US politicians to stop supplying Israel with F-16s and Apache helicopters which it uses to attack Palestinian cities and civilians. Ask for an end to the inhuman slow genocide of the PEOPLE of Iraq. Demand that medications not be blocked from being sent to Iraq under the pretext that they may be used to make chemical weapons. Remind US politicians that many of the world leaders America now befriends for its own needs are no less oppressors or dictators than its former ALLEY Saddam Hussein is. And please insist that attacking Iraq now will only add to its civilian misery and suffering!

America wants to put an end to Iraqs attempts to threaten its neighbors (a.k.a. Israel) with weapons of mass destruction. The US is acting as the champion of good against evil. But America forgets that the reality is that no other nation used weapons of mass destruction against CIVILIAN populations as the US did to Japan. Is this not terrorism? America politicians should set an example by attempting to repent for Americas past wrongs.

They should attempt to deter weapons proliferation EVERYWHERE in the Middle East. The US should also ask Israel to rid itself of its 100 or so estimated stock of nuclear warheads. Already one of the right wing politicians who recently resigned from the Sharon government suggested using them against the High Dam in Aswan, Egypt. That would kill many in the CIVILIAN population of Egypt. Terrorism, do you think?

American politicians need to rethink their foreign policy, and act in a more just and fair way. They need to see causes and results as they really are, not as they wish the rest of the world to see them. For then, and only then, will America have any right to define terrorism as it wishes, or fight it as the worlds policeman, judge and jury, as it is attempting to do now&. unchecked and unabated!

A soldier about to die. This serviceman survived the war, but fell a victim to the A-bomb inside a wooden house (about 1km from the hypocenter). Bleeding from the skin, red specks, stomatitis and hair epilation were observed. The soldier died two hours after this photograph was taken. (Photo by Gonichi Kimura)

Kimono pattern. Burned areas on the back and on the dorsal portion of the upper arm show that thermal rays penetrated the black or the darkcolored parts of kimono she wore. (Photo by Gonichi Kimura)

Trace of a hat. The exposed part of the face was badly burned by thermal rays. The hat protected the head from a burn.

The right photograph shows an eyeball of an A-bomb victim who got an atomic bomb cataract. There is opacity near the center of the eyeball. It has been known for some time, through that radiation causes cataracts in animals. But cataracts developed in human beings after the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to a clinical report of 128 cataract cases in Hiroshima during the four years from 1957, 38.3% had atomic bomb cataracts or suspected atomic bomb cataracts. It is reported that 70% of those were within 1 kilometer from the hypocenter, and 30% were within 2 kilometers.

A-bomb survivors, as well as a great number of people from domestic and abroad, attend the ceremony performed with the utmost solemnity on August 6 every year. They, each and all, pray for the repose of the A-bomb fallen victims and call out to the entire world for peace. The Mayor reads the "Peace Declaration" embodying this appeal.