The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation & John Hall / The MailOnline – 2016-05-19 01:30:32
http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6357/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=22719
ACTION ALERT:
Urge President Obama to Take Action in Hiroshima
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
(May 18, 2016) — The White House has announced that President Obama will visit Hiroshima on May 27, 2016, while he is in Japan for the G7 summit.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to rely heavily on nuclear weapons and is planning to spend at least $1 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize” all aspects of its nuclear arsenal, including the warheads, submarines, missiles, bombers, production facilities and command and control infrastructure.
It is an encouraging sign that President Obama will be the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima. Actions speak louder than words. That’s why we are encouraging President Obama not to come to Hiroshima empty-handed.
ACTION: Send a message to President Obama today and encourage him to make significant substantive contributions to nuclear disarmament while he is there. Such actions could include:
* Removing the US nuclear arsenal from high-alert status, and encouraging all other nuclear-armed nations to do the same;
* Initiating negotiations for global nuclear disarmament as required by Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT);
* Announcing further nuclear reductions with Russia, as use of even a fraction of the current arsenals could cause nuclear winter, resulting in severe climate change leading to global famine;
* Canceling the $1 trillion, 30-year plan to completely overhaul the US nuclear weapons complex.
THE LETTER
I am pleased that you will be visiting Hiroshima on May 27. Secretary Kerry’s words during his visit last month indicate that he was very moved by the experience, calling it “gut wrenching” and “a stark, harsh compelling reminder . . . of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons.”
It is important that you do not come to Hiroshima empty-handed. You have the opportunity to make significant substantive contributions to nuclear disarmament while you are there.
Such actions should include:
* Removing the US nuclear arsenal from high-alert status, and encouraging all other nuclear-armed nations to do the same;
* Initiating negotiations for global nuclear disarmament as required by Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT);
* Announcing further nuclear reductions with Russia, as use of even a fraction of the current arsenals could cause nuclear winter, resulting in severe climate change leading to global famine;
* Canceling the $1 trillion, 30-year plan to completely overhaul the US nuclear weapons complex.
The Nightmare Aftermath of Hiroshima:
Lost photos taken during the days after atomic bomb killed 140,000 people captured images of parents carrying burned children past corpses and rubble.
The unknown photographer is believed to have died shortly before his camera went on sale, as nobody could have survived the radiation levels in the area so soon after the bombing
John Hall / The MailOnline
(August 6, 2015) — Haunting images have been released showing the immediate aftermath of the American atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 70 years ago today.
Horrifically injured locals are pictured wandering along flattened streets strewn with corpses in the western Japanese city only hours after the nuclear bomb, nicknamed ‘Little Boy’, was dropped.
Radiation in the city was so intense that everybody pictured in the chilling images would have died of exposure poisoning in the weeks, months and years that followed the August 6, 1945 attack.
As Japan today commemorates the loss of 140,000 people killed in the initial blast, as well the countless numbers who died later, the incredibly rare images have now gone on display together for the first time at Scotland’s Secret Bunker museum in a small town in Fife.
The images taken shortly after the attack 70 years ago today show mothers cradling their injured babies while covered in blood, as well as survivors picking through the rubble of the city.
Wrapped in bloodied bandages, families pose for photographs seemingly unaware that they’ll almost certainly have been exposed to fatal levels of radiation poisoning in the aftermath of the blast.
The collection of photographs were discovered 10 years ago, but their display at Scotland’s Secret Bunker museum is believed to be the first time they have been shown together.
It is thought the images found their way to Scotland after Scottish RAF pilot Clifford Fern purchased a second hand camera in Iwakuni — 15 miles outside Hiroshima — just six months after the bombings.
The unknown photographer is believed to have died shortly before his camera went on sale, as nobody could have survived the radiation levels in the area so soon after the bombing.
Mr Fern took the camera back to his home in Coaltown of Balgonie, Scotland where they were forgotten until his son John recently agreed for them to be put on local display to mark the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing.
As well as displaying the harrowing images, Scotland’s Secret Bunker are also showing the critically acclaimed 1965 film, ‘The War Game’, which depicts the fictional aftermath of a nuclear event.
Although it was commissioned by the BBC and directed by Peter Watkins, the organisation banned it for over 20 years. The film did appear as a cinematic release, however, which earned it an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1966.
The film was eventually broadcast in 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
Japan marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing this morning, with Mayor Kazumi Matsui renewing calls for U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders to step up efforts toward making a nuclear-weapons-free world.
Tens of thousands of people stood for a minute of silence at 8:15am at a ceremony in Hiroshima’s peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 attack, marking the moment of the blast. Then dozens of doves were released as a symbol of peace.
The U.S. bomb, ‘Little Boy,’ the first nuclear weapon used in war, killed 140,000 people.
A second bomb, ‘Fat Man,’ dropped over Nagasaki three days later, killed another 70,000, prompting Japan’s surrender in the Second World War.
The U.S. dropped the bombs to avoid what would have been a bloody ground assault on the Japanese mainland, following the fierce battle for Japan’s southernmost Okinawan islands, which took 12,520 American lives and an estimated 200,000 Japanese, about half civilians.
Matsui called nuclear weapons ‘the absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity’ that must be abolished, and criticized nuclear powers for keeping them as threats to achieve their national interests. He said the world till bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons.
He renewed an invitation to world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see the scars themselves, during the G-7 summit in Japan next year.
‘President Obama and other policymakers, please come to the A-bombed cities, hear the hibakusha (surviving victims) with your own ears, and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings,’ he said.
‘Surely, you will be impelled to start discussing a legal framework, including a nuclear weapons convention.’
The anniversary comes as Japan is divided over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to pass unpopular legislation to expand the country’s military role internationally, a year after his Cabinet’s decision to loosen Japan’s war-renouncing constitution by adopting a new interpretation of it.
‘We must establish a broad national security framework that does not rely on use of force but is based on trust,’ Matsui said. He urged the Japanese government to stick with ‘the pacifism of the Japanese Constitution’ to lead the global effort of no proliferation.
Abe, also addressing the ceremony, said that as the sole country to face a nuclear attack, Japan had a duty to push for the elimination of nuclear weapons. He pledged to promote the cause through international conferences to be held in Hiroshima later this month.
With the average age of survivors now exceeding 80 for the first time this year, passing on their stories is considered an urgent task. There were 5,359 hibakusha who died over the past year, bringing the total death toll from the Hiroshima bombing to 297,684.
U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and representatives from more than 100 countries, including Britain, France and Russia, attended the ceremony.
‘Little Boy,’ dropped from the Enola Gay B-29 bomber, destroyed 90 percent of the city. A ‘black rain’ of radioactive particles followed the blinding blast and fireball, and has been linked to higher rates of cancer and other radiation-related diseases among the survivors.
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