| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| China-Japan-Koreas | ||
| Thousands mark Hiroshima A-bomb 60th anniversary | ||
| 2005-08-07 | ||
| HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people from around the world gathered in Hiroshima on Saturday to renew calls for the abolition of nuclear arms on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city. I'm sure North Korea and Iran will head the call.... Under a blazing summer sun, survivors and families of victims assembled at the Peace Memorial Park near "ground zero", the spot where the bomb detonated on August 6, 1945, killing thousands and levelling the city. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was among those attending the ceremony in Hiroshima, 690 km (430 miles) southwest of Tokyo. At 8:15 a.m., the time when the U.S. B-29 warplane Enola Gay dropped the bomb, people at the park and throughout the city observed a minute's silence in memory of those who perished.
"This August 6 ... is a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the bomb victims to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realisation of genuine world peace," Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba told the gathering. Akiba said in his Peace Declaration that the five established nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- as well as India, Pakistan and North Korea were "jeopardising human survival".
The firebombing of Tokyo killed more... At Saturday's ceremony another 5,375 names were added to the list of Hiroshima's dead, bringing the total to 242,437. Koizumi, in brief remarks, vowed to stick to the principles of Japan's pacifist constitution and its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons. "I am confident that Hiroshima will remain a symbol of peace," he said. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party earlier this week released a draft of proposed revisions to Japan's post-war, pacifist constitution that would allow the military to act not only in self-defence but also to take part in global security efforts. Referring to such proposals, Akiba said: "The Japanese constitution, which embodies this axiom forever as the sovereign will of a nation, should be a guiding light for the world in the 21st century." Although support for revising the core pacifist clause remains short of a majority, public opinion is no longer overwhelmingly opposed to it. Some politicians even talk of Japan having nuclear weapons, long a taboo. I bet that gives the Chi-coms nightmares.... Even some people in Hiroshima for the anniversary said Japan might have to go nuclear to counter the North Korean threat. "The best is if talks with the United States go well and North Korea gives up its weapons," said Yoshiaki Onoue, 45, referring to the talks in Beijing aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. "But Japan may need to have nuclear weapons as insurance," said Onoue, visiting the Peace Memorial Park with his family from Osaka, about 300 km (190 miles) east of Hiroshima. | ||
| Posted by:CrazyFool |
| #18 Seriously? They used to eat the livers? Yuck! It's ok with me, Frank, to use fuckers if you need to. But there were a couple of trolls, and some unnecessary asshatery, and a lot of us were still on edge after the attacks on London on 7/7 and 7/21 (or 21/7 for our cousins across the pond). .com has been quite restrained, on the whole, since. ;-) So have most of the rest of us -- a lot of semi-buried shit burst to the surface that day. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-08-07 22:13 |
| #17 "No word on whether there was a moment in memory of those who died in the Bataan Death March." Wow! From Reuters no less. |
| Posted by: jolly roger 2005-08-07 18:08 |
| #16 The nuclear bomb was the only weapin the bad who didn't involve huge American losses plus millions of Chinese dead plus tens of millions of Japanese dead. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-08-07 17:54 |
| #15 thks for the update lol ;-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-07 15:12 |
| #14 Japan at least learned its lesson about losing a war, ya gotta give um that one. I guess nuking a nation into being a pacifist is good work when they were an imperialist nation that used to eat the livers of their fallen enemies. The last fifty years has shown that our willingness to use these weapons has kept the hostile nations states at bay. Japan is a good arguement that North Korea should heed. With that said they should dummy up the numbers to a million so other nations will understand the cost of fucking with us. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2005-08-07 15:08 |
| #13 Well, there was a brouhaha while you were blissfully enjoying yourself... We had finger waggers ("mom", a repeat offender, and some git calling itself "Puritan" - don't you love the transparency, lol!) and all the Mods and The Sheriff posted stuff. Don't remember the day, sorry, but I'm thinking it's more filling and less tasty, myself. So RB is touchier and feelier than ever before. I could substitute other adverbs, but... So, though it's not in the spirit of the new PC RB, if you feel a hand on your knee - and don't smell Chanel or Shalimar, hey, I'd recommend going ahead and beating the BTW, WELCOME BACK, LOL! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-08-07 14:48 |
| #12 thought I'd missed an RB sensitivity epiphany |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-07 14:38 |
| #11 Heh, made ya blink! Nah, The Bomb was the only tool in the bag that didn't involve huge American losses to end a war Japan started. They asked for it and got it. They have the Moonbat element, replete with historical revisionist specialists and moral equivalence experts, that every civilized society seems to generate and tolerate. I understand the former, there is a social safety net that guarantees survival no matter how moronic people become. The latter, though, I can NOT understand. Personal Rule #3: Be an asset or be gone. The Moonbats fail this test miserably and should NOT be tolerated. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-08-07 14:00 |
| #10 Guess I'll have to wear off my rough edges gradually lest I lose all balance completely. Again - those bombs saved the lives of my loved ones then in the USMC, and if it took 200,000 or 60,000 dead to save them from dying in a beach assault on the mainland, then I say damn right it was the right thing to do. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-07 13:46 |
| #9 Such language! RB changed while you were away. It's a gentler, more inclusive, more sensitive RB, now. *sniff* |
| Posted by: .wag wag 2005-08-07 13:41 |
| #8 no f*&king apologies. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-07 13:30 |
| #7 The historical revivionists and the Blame America First crowd will always use August 6th, 1945 as a rallying cry. Yet as awfull as nuclear weapons are they did result in the long peace of the last 60 years that while punctuated by smaller conflicts did not thankfully spiral out of control into a general World War due in part to the common sense shown by both military leaders and their political masters on both sides of the Cold War. But the current generation of staes obtaining nuclear arms are still led by men anchored in the Middle Ages that in my mind really don't understand the power of nuclear arms. |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2005-08-07 12:34 |
| #6 "Who give a shit, it killed a hell of a lot of Japs damned quickly" /Calvin Shipman |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-08-07 12:17 |
| #5 VII, love the quote. Some Japanese have loved the victim game and it has been very good for keeping down Japanese militarism. How bad things are with the ChiComs and Norks is evidenced by the efforts to restore the offensive capability to the JDF. They should really think twice about putting us in a position where we are willing to let the Genie out of the bottle. This time they'll pay and Uncle won't rescue them. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-08-07 09:38 |
| #4 You think this article is BS, then you should have seen some of the shows on yesterday. Harry Truman drinking with sailors and laughing, then cutting straight to survivors telling horror-tales while showing re-anactments of the bombings aftermath. And they had the Truman actor as a fat-southern guy! I just feel like we're now the enemies of that day when the stregnth of American resolve became apparent to the whole world. |
| Posted by: Charles 2005-08-07 09:37 |
| #3 I agree with SP4871, the number of people killed from the Hiroshima bomb was around 65,000 - *much* less than were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo. So this is all so much posturing. All part of the big 'victimology' cult that is so prominent today. I'd prefer to look at why the bomb was dropped - Pearl Harbour, the Bataan death march, US soldiers being beheaded and the projected loss of at least 20,000 US dead in the first month of an invasion on Japan. 30% of the US public wanted the Emperor to be executed with only 7% thinking he should remain in power after the defeat of Japan - which was going to be aftar an unconditional surrender. It was only by the intervention of Secretary of War Stimson (an old-school gentleman who stopped the US secret service decoding messages in the 1920's because "gentlemen do not open other gentlemen's mail") that Kyoto, the cultural heart of Japan, was removed from the target list for the bomb. With all those pressures, it's hardly surprising that the bomb was dropped, and as Verlaine's friend said "Well, I guess you'll never attack the United States again". Deterrence only works if people think you'll actually do it, and the US has shown that it will do it. Basically, if you don't want 65,000 (or the bogus 250,000) dead people, don't start wars... There's a huge amount of information available at Children of the Manhattan Project |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2005-08-07 09:17 |
| #2 At Saturday's ceremony another 5,375 names were added to the list of Hiroshima's dead, bringing the total to 242,437. Again bogus numbers. I guess anyone who was at OKC when the bomb went off can claim to the a victim and be added to the count of killed. This is a union of the Japanese apologist and the anti-American crowd pumping up numbers to cover the horrific killings and destruction of the Imperial Japanese forces. Not only the butchery at Nanking, but also Manilia then a territory of the US. Again, from yesterday, the bomb's development group really wanted to know the full effect of the weapons and did a very indepth analysis. They weren't hiding anything. They found the Japanese rice ration allocations which identified everyone in the city. They then conducted a census, not a statistical sample. The census included interviews which asked each interviewee who lived in their neighborhoods and streets. Very systematic, which the big number people can not show similar methodologies. The final number killed outright and immediately following from various causes was around 65,000, the long term radition numbers tracked both by the US and the Japanese government was an additional 5,000. Now have those citing higher numbers show their methodologies. They can't show anything more than pulling numbers out of their ass. |
| Posted by: Slock Phavilet4871 2005-08-07 08:13 |
| #1 Several things. First, NoKo and the ChiFascists are doing a wonderful job of moving Japan towards a more engaged and serious foreign policy. Second, as you noted in the annotation, equal or greater numbers died in the single Tokyo raid of March 8-9, and of course far greater numbers died cumulatively in all the other city raids of 1945. Third, for a while, some Tokyo official (mayor?) would annually make negative remarks about the Cult of Hiroshima, noting his city's greater losses and lack of memorial activities. Finally, my favorite quote of someone I actually know. A friend was given a tour of the Hiroshima peace park etc. by a foreign ministry guide during a sponsored Japan trip on which he gave lectures on trade policy. Asked by the guide his reaction as they exited the park, he replied "Well, I guess you'll never attack the United States again." |
| Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq 2005-08-07 00:22 |