Fukushima Clouds Hiroshima Anniversary, John Pilger on his first visit to Hiroshima

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/04-7

Fukushima Clouds Hiroshima Anniversary

by Suvendrini Kakuchi

Inter Press Service: August 4, 2011

TOKYO - Matashichi Oishi, 78, a radiation victim from Bikini Atoll, the site of a U.S. hydrogen bomb test in 1954, will make his annual lone visit this week to commemorate the Aug. 6 anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima 66 years ago.

This year, says the former sailor, battling lung cancer from exposure to high levels of radiation at Bikini Atoll, his message at Hiroshima will go beyond a routine call to end nuclear weapons.

"Against the backdrop of the disastrous Fukushima nuclear plant accident, I will speak of the absolute need for Japan to not only work to ban nuclear weapons but also to completely eradicate dependence on nuclear energy," he told IPS.

Oishi’s planned speech echoes the emergence of nuclear energy as an equal threat to peace. It gains credence from the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Fukushima and the northeast coasts of Japan on Mar. 11, severely damaging the nuclear plant located there.

Hiroshima became the world’s first atom-bombed city when the United Stated dropped a uranium bomb that exploded and killed almost its entire population instantly in 1945.

The atomic bombing anniversary has long made Hiroshima and Nagasaki city, that was similarly devastated within three days, potent symbols of world peace. The cities are unrivalled leaders in the nuclear disarmament movement.

Like Oishi, the thousands of peace activists, officials and politicians who will rally at Hiroshima to declare their commitment towards a world without nuclear weapons, will also call for a ban on nuclear energy.

A press release by the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui and his Nagasaki counterpart, Tomihisa Taue, makes the agenda clear.

Drafts of their speeches, released to the media, refer to the catastrophe faced by the people in Fukushima, and appeal to the government to promote renewable energy sources.

Matsui is quoted in the Japanese press as saying: "The central government should take responsibility to deal with the nuclear power generation issue."

Indeed, Oishi points out that a ban on nuclear power has been his lonely cry for the last six decades. He was 19 years old and sailing on a tuna boat when the U.S. carried out the bomb test that radiated his crew and forced the massive evacuation of residents from the surrounding islands.

The incident created an uproar in Japan, but given the political sensitivity at that time - the Cold War and a race to develop nuclear weapons development between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. - Oishi and his colleagues were forced to abandon the pursuit of justice.

Fourteen of the 23 Japanese crew on board the ‘Lucky Dragon’ contracted cancer, and ten died of it.

For Ayako Ooga, who lives in a temporary shelter in Aizu, 150 km from the damaged reactors in Fukushima, her former home, the upcoming Hiroshima anniversary is a time for solidarity.

"We must join hands with other victims like Oishi because we ourselves have become radiation victims," she said.

Prof. Michiji Konuma, who heads the Japan-based World Peace Appeal group, explained that the Fukushima disaster has reinforced the importance of raising public awareness about the dark side of nuclear energy.

Konuma, a physicist, has long campaigned to highlight the risks to human health posed by radiation. To him, the sobering lesson of Fukushima is that it is the fourth nuclear disaster to hit the Japanese people, counting Bikini Island, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"The human tragedy of the past disaster that included fatalities, cancer and other radiation induced diseases, as well as the widespread discrimination faced by the survivors, illustrate the hidden and lingering problems of nuclear power," he said.

"We must sustain the awareness raised by Fukushima and speak out about the dangers we face if we continue to pursue nuclear energy," he added.

Konuma represents a panel of intellectuals in Japan that issued a notice to the government in July, calling for a shift away from dependence on nuclear energy.

The group is also spearheading a public movement to bring in a long-needed debate on the safety aspects of nuclear power in Japan with the aim of creating deeper understanding at the citizen level.

"The difficult aspect of sustaining an anti-nuclear energy public mood can only be met if more stakeholders - from intellectuals to radiation victims - get together. We must not repeat the mistake of forgetting again," he said.

Oishi agrees. "My own story shows how lonely the struggle is in Japan to get the authorities to listen to victims who stay silent for fear of being discriminated against," he said.

© 2011 IPS North America

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http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0815-06.htm

 

August Marks Another Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Japan, the

Ultimate Act of Terrorism in Which 231,920 People Have Now Died,

the Latest, the Children of 1945, from a Plague of Cancers 

 

by John Pilger

Common Dreams: Friday, August 15, 2003

 

 

I first visited Hiroshima 22 years after the atomic bombing. Although the

city had been completely rebuilt with glass boxes and ring roads, its

suffering was not difficult to find. Beside the river, less than a mile from

where the bomb burst, stilts of shacks rose from the silt, and languid human

silhouettes searched pyramids of rubbish, providing a glimpse of a Japan few

can now imagine.

 

They were the survivors. Most of them were sick, impoverished, unemployed

and socially excluded. Such was the fear of the "atomic plague" that people

changed their names; most moved away. The sick received treatment in a

crowded state-run hospital. The modern Atomic Bomb Hospital, surrounded by

pines and overlooking the city, which the Americans built and ran, took only

a few patients for "study".

 

On 6 August, the anniversary of the bombing, the Mainichi Shimbun reported

that the number of people killed directly and after exposure to radiation

had now reached 231,920. Today, in the same hospital wards I visited, there

are the children of 1945, dying from a predictable plague of cancers.

 

The first Allied journalist to reach Hiroshima following the bombing was

Wilfred Burchett, the Australian war correspondent of the London Daily

Express. Burchett found thousands of survivors suffering mysterious symptoms

of internal hemorrhage, spotted skin and hair loss. In a historic despatch

to the Express that began, "I write this as a warning to the world", he

described the effects of radiation.

 

The Allied occupation authorities vehemently denied Burchett's reports.

People had died only as a result of the blast, they lied, and the "embedded"

Allied press amplified this. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" was the

headline in the New York Times of 13 September 1945. Burchett had his press

accreditation withdrawn and was issued with an expulsion order from Japan,

which was later rescinded. Japanese film shot in the hospitals was

confiscated and sent to Washington, where it was classified as top secret

and not released for 23 years.

 

The true motive for using this ultimate weapon of mass destruction was

suppressed even longer. The official truth was that the bomb was dropped to

speed the surrender of Japan and save Allied lives. Today, as the public

becomes more attuned to the scale of government deception, this was probably

the biggest lie of all. As the historian Gar Alperovitz, among others, has

documented, US political and military leaders, knowing that Japan's

surrender was already under way, believed the atomic bombing was militarily

unnecessary. In 1946 the US Strategic Bombing Survey confirmed this. None of

this was shared with the public, nor the belief in Washington that the

atomic bomb "experiment" in Japan, as President Truman put it, would

demonstrate US primacy to the Russians.

 

Since then declassified files have shown that the United States has almost

used nuclear weapons on at least three occasions: twice in the 1950s, during

the Korean war and in Indo-China (against Ho Chi Minh's forces, which were

then routing the French), and during the 1973 Arab/Israeli war. During the

1980s, President Reagan threatened the use of "limited" nuclear weapons,

until huge demonstrations in Europe curtailed the American short-range

missile program. Under George W Bush's essentially Reaganite administration,

the US (and British) military's love affair with nuclear weapons is on the

rise again. In 2001, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic

Missile Treaty, the landmark agreement with the Russians signed in 1972.

This was the first time in the nuclear era that Washington had renounced a

major arms control accord.

 

The most important official behind this is John Bolton, the under-secretary

of state for arms control and international security: an ironic title,

surely, given the extraordinary stand Bolton has taken and the threats he

has made. A former Reagan man who is probably the most extreme of George W

Bush's "neo-cons", Bolton had his appointment endorsed by Senator Jesse

Helms, one of America's greatest warmongers, with these words: "John Bolton

is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon...for the

final battle between good and evil."

 

Bolton is Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's man at the "liberal" State

Department. He is a strong advocate of the blurring of the distinction

between nuclear and conventional weapons. This is described vividly in last

year's leaked Nuclear Posture Review, in which the Pentagon expresses its

"need" for low-yield nuclear weapons for possible attacks on a shopping list

of "enemies of the United States": Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The inclusion of Iraq is significant. During the long charade about Saddam

Hussein's elusive weapons of mass destruction, no mention was made in

Washington of US willingness to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. It was

left to Britain's Defense Secretary, the caustic Geoff Hoon, to disclose

this. On 26 March 2002, Hoon told parliament that "some states" - he

mentioned Saddam Hussein by name - "can be absolutely confident that in the

right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons". No British

minister has ever made such an outright threat. As Hoon himself later

admitted, British policy is merely an extension of US policy.

 

As for John Bolton, there is little doubt that he has been assigned to lead

the charge against North Korea, which has nuclear weapons. Bolton has been

traveling the world trying to assemble a "coalition" that will send warships

to "interdict" North Korean vessels. Two weeks ago he was in Seoul, where he

unleashed a remarkable stream of abuse against the North Korean dictator Kim

Jong-il who, he said, ran "a hellish nightmare". (In reply, Pyongyang

described Bolton as "human scum".)

 

Last month I interviewed Bolton in Washington and asked him: "If you stop

ships, isn't there an echo of what happened in 1962, with the threat of

nuclear war? Won't the North Korean regime be moved to defend themselves

with the nuclear weapons they have?" He replied that a North Korean ship had

already been stopped and "the regime did nothing in response".

 

"But if you take action, the nuclear risk is there, isn't it?" I asked. He

replied, "The risk is there if we don't take action... of them blackmailing

other countries." He quoted Condoleezza Rice, Bush's closest adviser: "We

don't want to wait for the mushroom cloud."

 

Two weeks ago, on the 58th anniversary of Hiroshima's incineration, a secret

conference was held at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, the

base where, 24 hours a day, the United States keeps its "nuclear vigil". (It

was the setting for Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.) In attendance were

cabinet members, generals and leading scientists from America's three main

nuclear weapons laboratories. Members of Congress were banned, even as

observers. The agenda was the development of "mini-nukes" for possible use

against "rogue states".

 

The mantle of the greatest rogue state of all cannot be in doubt. Since the

end of the cold war, the United States has repudiated, rejected or subverted

all the major treaties designed to prevent war with weapons of mass

destruction, especially nuclear weapons. This is the rampant power to which,

says Hoon, we are inexorably tied.

 

That, not an establishment brawl between the government and the BBC, ought

to be our most urgent concern.

 

© CARLTON INTERACTIVE 2000/JOHN PILGER

 

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