[Aug. 6] Talk given by Jim Albertini on Maui at the Aug. 5, 2013 Hiroshima - Nagasaki Commemoration gathering (Fwd)

[아름드리 나무]

Hiroshima, Fukushima, and the global crisis of violence:

Where do we go from here?

Jim Albertini Aug. 5, 2013 Maui College 6PM

      I commend the Maui College Peace Club, Maui Peace Action, the interfaith communities and everyone involved in putting together this commemoration. You are carrying on an important tradition.

      For many people in the peace movement, remembering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Aug, 6^th and 9^th 1945, are annual peace days of obligation. Our downfall is to forget. May we never forget. And may humanity never again unleash such horror.

     So let us remember together. On Aug. 6, 1945 a B-29 U.S. bomber named Enola Gay after the pilot's mother, dropped a uranium atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded at 8:16AMThree days later the U.S. dropped a plutonium atomic bomb at 11:01 AM nicknamed “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki. The actual amount of plutonium in the Nagasaki bomb was about the size of a softball weighing 14 pounds– it had the explosive equivalent of 22,000 tons of TNT. In two blinding flashes of light, heat and radiation, these cities were leveled. The ultimate toll was more than 200,000 people killed and many more injured who would later die of radiation poisoning.

      It is a commonly believed myth that the bombs were dropped to end the war, but many top U.S. military leaders of the day said that the outcome of the war was clear. Here are some of the military leaders words:

“...Japan was already defeated and...dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary...” General Dwight David Eisenhower (Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pp312-313)

“Use of the bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view.” General Douglass MacArthur (James,The Years of MacArthur, p. 775)

(Before the bombing) Admiral William Leahy said: “Mr. president, this would violate every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all known laws of war. It would be an attack on the noncombatant population of the enemy... (And after the bombing) Admiral Leahy said: "My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” Admiral William D. Leahy (Leahy, I was There, p. 440-441)

      In most American school textbooks there is no hint of controversy regarding the decision to drop the bombs. In the U.S. Army's Leadership, Education,and Training (LET 3) Custom Edition for Army JROTC textbook used by ½ million American high school students enrolled in JROTC classes nationwide, it is stated that atomic weapons were used to forestall an invasion of Japan that would have cost a million American lives. (OpEdNews.com Aug. 2, 2013 by Pat Elder)

Yet today we know:

1. the bombs weren't needed to end the war;

2. the idea that dropping the bombs saved a million American lives was a fabrication;

3. Japan was seeking surrender and simply wanted to retain the institution of the emperor.

4. The atomic bombs were experiments. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was a uranium bomb. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb. The U.S. military had both types and both were used.

5. These bombs were not the last chapter of WWII but the first chapter of the Cold War with the Russians. They were a dramatic show of power to the Russians about who was going to be the world's #1 power after the war.

     Lost in all the power politics were the death and suffering of innocent people --civilians –men, women and children. Today such deaths of the innocent are often referred to as collateral damage. The pattern of warfare in history has been that the distance between killer and victim has continued to increase and the percentage of civilians killed and injured has increased as well. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted murder on an epic scale. We must ask ourselves, what if it was my child who was killed, my wife, or mother or grandfather, or my whole family. Somehow we must all come to realize our interconnectedness as a human family in calling for peace on earth. A call for peace is a call to make our communities safe from violence and the threat of war, conventional and nuclear, and safe for every person's right to life.

      Ann Wright, who many of you know, recently alerted me to the following. It's a remarkable interconnectedness of people tied to Hiroshima but in very different ways. It recently came to light through a discovery of letters in Hiroshima city by Fumie Takahashi, the wife of Mr. Akihiro Takahashi. The exchange of letters were between Mr. Takahashi who worked as a curator of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum from 1979-1983 and died in Nov. 2011 at the age of 80 and Mr. Paul Tibbets who was the captain and pilot of the plane Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Mr. Tibbets died in Nov. 2007 at the age of 92. Mr. Takahashi was an Hibakusha, a Hiroshima A bomb survivor. He was a student in the schoolyard of Hiroshima Municipal Junior High School 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter and lost many friends by the bomb from the plane Mr. Tibbets piloted. Mr. Tibbets and Mr. Takahashi actually met in Washington DC in 1980 and talked at a park near where an exhibition on the atomic bombs was being held. The two men talked for about 30 minutes and held each others hands during the entire time and promised to send letters to each other before saying good by. They exchanged letters for several years with Mr. Takahashi even inviting Mr. Tibbets to come to Hiroshima. Mr. Tibbets declined to go back to Hiroshima due to his heavy burden, or “heavy trouble” as he put it, but said in another letter to Mr. Takahashi (quote) “I pray that your efforts for promoting peace will be recompensed and such days will continue.” (end quote) Mr. Takahashi continued to write to Mr. Tibbets until 2005, a total of 25 years from their first meeting. That's quite a story of interconnectedness and I hope more will be written about their meeting and exchange of letters.

      Immediately after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning. It was insisted that people were killed or injured from the bomb's blast. The NY Times ran a front page headline that said “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin.” Thus began the cover-up of the entire nuclear cycle and its poisonous consequences at each step along the way. From the mining and milling of uranium, to the enrichment process, to the testing of nuclear weapons, to the deadly consequences of nuclear power generation at places like Chernobyl, Three Mile island, and of course Fukushima. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are directly linked. They do not represent the seeds of peace, but rather disease, suffering and death for present and future generations.

      Nuclear testing: Nearly 300 atomic and hydrogen bombs have been exploded in the Pacific by the U.S., France, and Great Britain. French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands have paid the heaviest price though Hawaii appears significantly impacted from the 12 tests and 2 aborted tests at Johnston island located 500 miles southwest of Hawaii. A U.S. Atomic Energy Commission study done to determine plutonium 239 fallout from atmospheric testing found that of 65 randomly selected soil samples taken worldwide, Hawaii had the highest concentration of plutonium of the sites tested.

     Fukushima reactor units One, Two, and Three, not only melted down but exploded in March 2011 after decades of assurance that commercial nuclear reactors could not explode. Unit Four's structural integrity has been undermined. The nightmare at Fukushima is far from over. The owners of the Fukushima reactors --Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) has admitted that radioactive water has been leaking into the Pacific ever since the the disaster began on March 11, 2011. A report of 40% rise in thyroid irregularities among young children in the area is causing a growing concern about widespread health impacts from Fukushima’s fallout. And perhaps the greatest threat comes from a spent fuel pool containing many tons of highly radioactive used fuel suspended 100 feet in the air, within an unstable structure. Should this fuel pool collapse there’s a high likelihood the fuel rods could catch fire. According to long-time nuclear watchdog and writer, Harvey Wasserman, in the event of a fuel pool fire, “the radioactive emissions could be catastrophic. Intensely lethal emissions could spew for a very long time, eventually circling the globe many times, wrecking untold havoc. Meanwhile TEPCO is moving to restart other reactors around the country while it is dealing with the ongoing crisis at Fukushima far from under control, and in fact getting worse.” Radiation being released into the environment within the last few weeks have been the highest levels measured at Fukushima since the initial disaster in March 2011, When will the world respond collectively to deal effectively with this global emergency? It appears efforts are to downplay the crisis to protect the nuclear industry instead of people's health and safety and the planet's environment. (See The Progressive, July 23, 2013 “You Think the Fukushima Disaster is Over? Think Again” by Harvey Wasserman)

      The entire global nuclear power and weapons complex will keep on killing generations far into the future because of the long killing power of radiation. At Hanford, Washington, and at other places throughout the vast industrial nuclear complex that extends across the U.S. and the globe, dangerous radioactive contamination is taking place.

     Hawaii is not exempt. The Navy acknowledges discharging 4,843,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste into Pearl Harbor between 1964 and 1973. The Navy stopped releasing such data after 1973. So much for transparency. But the Navy has also admitted dumping over two thousand 55-gallon steel drums of radioactive solid waste onto the ocean floor off Oahu's southern shore. The waste included contaminated tools and clothing from the refueling of nuclear submarines at Pearl Harbor. What effects such pollution may have on marine life and, in turn, the health and safety of Hawaii's people is simply not clear. But it is commonly accepted that there is no safe level of radiation, and even low-level doses of radiation accelerate our aging process. (Albertini, “The Dark Side of Padadise,” p. 18) (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 4, 1979 Nuclear Waste)

     Pearl Harbor is a major nuclear force installation and has been officially designated a toxic superfund site, duet to a wide range of military toxins contaminating the base. Up to 23 nuclear-powered and armed submarines have been homeported at Pearl Harbor at any one time along with other nuclear warships that frequent the harbor. In addition, the West Loch Naval Ammunition depot located inside Pearl Harbor includes nuclear weapons storage and maintenance facilities. Over the years nuclear weapons have been stored at the Lualualei Naval Ammunition Depot and the former Waikele Naval Ammunition depot and trucked through, and helicoptered over, civilian residential neighborhoods, between military bases on Oahu. I have been told of nuclear weapon accidents having occurred on Oahu and in Hawaiian waters where radiation has been released, but officially all such accidents are classified top secret.

      Besides Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is home to the overall command and control centers for U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines forces in the Pacific and over 100 military installations. The CINCPAC (Commander in Chief Pacific) is based at Camp H.M. Smith in Aiea Heights above Aloha Stadium and includes a several story underground nuclear command cen

(Fwd by Kyle Kajihiro)