Today is 70th anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 11:37 amJapan commemorates 70th anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing
The peace park in the heart of Hiroshima fell silent on Thursday morning as more than 55,000 people marked the moment at 8.15am, 70 years earlier, when the atomic bomb exploded over the city and thrust the world into the nuclear age.
Bells then tolled and white doves were released into skies that were as clear blue as they had been on the morning of August 6 1945 when the US bomber, Enola Gay, flew over Hiroshima and released its historic payload — a weapon that the US argued spared lives by ending the Pacific war quickly, but whose justification remains bitterly debated.
Survivors and local officials approached the memorial close to the bomb’s epicentre with bamboo flasks, and presented the souls of the dead with the water that so many had died pleading for.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who contends with falling approval ratings over what many see as militaristic policymaking, and has faced recent street protests against his controversial new security bills, told the audience that Japan had “an important mission to bring about a world without nuclear weapons”.
Japan, he added, would send a new draft resolution on nuclear disarmament to the UN later this year.
The prime minister’s speech was not delivered to complete silence, however. On the fringes of the peace park, and out of Mr Abe’s line of sight, several hundred pro-peace protesters shouted angry opposition to his security bills, and to the continued presence of US military bases in Japan.
Many see Mr Abe’s policies, which would change Japan’s military posture and allow the country to join an ally such as the US in overseas operations, as a reversal of the pacifism that emanated from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The political torment surrounding the security bills, which are being debated in Japan’s parliament, continues to provoke public outrage. On the day before the Hiroshima memorial, Japan’s defence minister Gen Nakatani faced questions from local media and said he could not rule out Japan’s military transporting the nuclear weapons of foreign forces.
Mr Nakatani rushed to qualify the comment, by saying that it was in reality impossible to imagine that happening because of Japan’s longstanding policy of not owning nuclear arms, building them or allowing others to bring them into Japan. But the remark has enraged peace activists and others already convinced that Mr Abe’s administration is leading the country into a state no longer consistent with its pacifist constitution.
A speech by the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, commemorated the “140,000 precious lives” lost, first in the blinding white flash of the blast, then in the firestorm that followed, and later in the months and years afterwards where those exposed to radiation continued to die.
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was destroyed by a second nuclear bomb. Mr Matsui described nuclear weapons “the ultimate inhumanity and evil” and renewed calls for the US President Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima and step up efforts on nuclear disarmament.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aeb7c318-3be6 ... tml#slide0
The peace park in the heart of Hiroshima fell silent on Thursday morning as more than 55,000 people marked the moment at 8.15am, 70 years earlier, when the atomic bomb exploded over the city and thrust the world into the nuclear age.
Bells then tolled and white doves were released into skies that were as clear blue as they had been on the morning of August 6 1945 when the US bomber, Enola Gay, flew over Hiroshima and released its historic payload — a weapon that the US argued spared lives by ending the Pacific war quickly, but whose justification remains bitterly debated.
Survivors and local officials approached the memorial close to the bomb’s epicentre with bamboo flasks, and presented the souls of the dead with the water that so many had died pleading for.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who contends with falling approval ratings over what many see as militaristic policymaking, and has faced recent street protests against his controversial new security bills, told the audience that Japan had “an important mission to bring about a world without nuclear weapons”.
Japan, he added, would send a new draft resolution on nuclear disarmament to the UN later this year.
The prime minister’s speech was not delivered to complete silence, however. On the fringes of the peace park, and out of Mr Abe’s line of sight, several hundred pro-peace protesters shouted angry opposition to his security bills, and to the continued presence of US military bases in Japan.
Many see Mr Abe’s policies, which would change Japan’s military posture and allow the country to join an ally such as the US in overseas operations, as a reversal of the pacifism that emanated from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The political torment surrounding the security bills, which are being debated in Japan’s parliament, continues to provoke public outrage. On the day before the Hiroshima memorial, Japan’s defence minister Gen Nakatani faced questions from local media and said he could not rule out Japan’s military transporting the nuclear weapons of foreign forces.
Mr Nakatani rushed to qualify the comment, by saying that it was in reality impossible to imagine that happening because of Japan’s longstanding policy of not owning nuclear arms, building them or allowing others to bring them into Japan. But the remark has enraged peace activists and others already convinced that Mr Abe’s administration is leading the country into a state no longer consistent with its pacifist constitution.
A speech by the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, commemorated the “140,000 precious lives” lost, first in the blinding white flash of the blast, then in the firestorm that followed, and later in the months and years afterwards where those exposed to radiation continued to die.
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was destroyed by a second nuclear bomb. Mr Matsui described nuclear weapons “the ultimate inhumanity and evil” and renewed calls for the US President Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima and step up efforts on nuclear disarmament.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aeb7c318-3be6 ... tml#slide0