Hiroshima Bombing Anniversary Brings Surge of Hope in Obama

During the memorial ceremony, a moment of silence was observed at 8:15 am, the time the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima 64 years ago, killing about 140,000 people instantly and sickening thousands of others, some of whom still suffer the effects today.

In Hiroshima for the memorial, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso signed an agreement with people suffering from radiation-related illnesses due to the bombings of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki.

Paper lanterns released on the Motoyasu river beside the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima to mark the 64th anniversary of the atomic bomb blast. (Photo by Happy Chan)

Prime Minister Aso told journalists after the signing, "Considering that the plaintiffs are aging and they have fought this legal battle so long, we have decided to introduce the new policies to bring relief to them swiftly." Many of the plaintiffs now are in their late seventies and early eighties.

The two bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end and led to post-war Japan adopting three non-nuclear principles, including a ban on nuclear armament of Japan.

At the memorial today, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba delivered a peace declaration, calling for the global abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.

Akiba said he is hopeful that this aspiration can be realized after President Barack Obama in April called for "a world without nuclear weapons."

During a speech April 5 in Prague, President Obama said the United States must lead the way to a world free of nuclear weapons. “As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” Obama said.

"We call on the world to join forces with us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020, said Akiba. "We have the power. We have the responsibility. We are the Obamajority. And we can abolish nuclear weapons. Yes, we can," said the mayor.

President Obama will pursue his nuclear weapons free policy next month as chair of a high-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament on September 24, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday.

Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters invitations have gone out to leaders of the 14 other nations on the Security Council, including Russia, China, Britain and France, which all possess nuclear weapons.

Rice said the President wants to focus on the issues he raised in the Prague speech - the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, adoption of the treaty banning all nuclear testing, and negotiations on a new treaty that "verifiably" ends the production of materials used to make nuclear weapons.

The atomic bomb blast that leveled Hiroshima, Japan. August 6, 1945. (Photo credit unknown)

"The Security Council has an essential role in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons and is also the world’s principal multilateral instrument for global security cooperation," said Rice.

"The session will be focused on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly and not on any specific countries," she said.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Defense is conducting a "Nuclear Posture Review."

On the grassroots level, in Tokyo, the nonprofit Citizens' Nuclear Information Center says it is convinced that Japan's security concerns are being used to block progress towards nuclear disarmament.

On July 17, Dr. Gregory Kulacki, of the U.S. nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists, held a meeting in Tokyo "to inform the Japanese public of the way in which their government is obstructing progress on nuclear disarmament and to urge the nuclear disarmament movement to take action," says the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center.

Kulacki told Japanese nuclear disarmament activists that U.S. officials opposed to modifying America's nuclear posture are focusing on Japan's concerns over U.S.extended deterrance - the idea that the U.S. nuclear umbrella covers Japan.

Kulacki told ENS in an interview, "It is the position of the security experts in the Japanese Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs that any new U.S. nuclear posture should not include limitations on when the United States should use nuclear weapons or what targets it should use them against. Without those limitations, it will be hard for the United States to realize any of the objectives set forth by the President in his speech in Prague."

A U.S. resident, Dr. Kulacki traveled to Japan to confirm that officials in the Japanese government do, in fact, hold those views. While he declines to give names of officials who spoke off the record, Kulacki said officials in both ministries expressed concern about losing the protection of the U.S. nuclear weapons umbrella.

"Unless the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy is reduced, the number of nuclear weapons in its nuclear arsenal will not be drastically reduced. There are too many targets to cover," says the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in a July 27 article on its website encouraging citizen action.

A schoolgirl rings the Peace Bell in the Hiroshima Peace Park. Behind her is the Memorial Mound. (Photo credit unknown)

"But the Japanese government is concerned that reducing the role of nuclear weapons will reduce Japan's national security. This is a dubious presumption, but regardless of the validity of the concern, we have it on good authority that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense are lobbying vigorously against such a change in U.S. nuclear weapons policy," writes the CNIC.

"It is a great irony that the greatest obstacle to taking this key step towards nuclear disarmament is Japan, the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons," say the anti-nuclear activists.

In the United States, a coalition of more than 1,400 local and national groups has declared August 2009 Nuclear-Free Future Month to challenge "the growing global threats posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear power."

United For Peace and Justice says Nuclear-Free Future Month is being launched with a national petition drive commending President Obama for his "courageous and historic statement in Prague" and calling on the President to make good on that commitment by initiating "good faith multilateral negotiations on an international agreement to abolish nuclear weapons, within our lifetimes!"

"President Obama has repeatedly stated that he will pursue the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. But that statement is invariably followed by a disclaimer that as long as nuclear weapons exist, the U.S. will maintain a strong nuclear deterrent," said Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the California-based Western States Legal Foundation and convener of the United For Peace and Justice Nuclear Disarmament Working Group.

"That disclaimer reflects the extraordinarily powerful military-industrial complex which has maintained nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of U.S. national security policy since 1945 - despite the end of the Cold War two decades ago," Cabasso said.

Coalition member Jim Haber of the interfaith nonprofit Nevada Desert Experience said, "From national governments to local activist groups, the world annually commemorates the destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by U.S. atomic bombs. A month of events is called for as the threat of nuclear weapons and war has grown substantially since those first attacks and civilians are increasingly targeted by war-makers. Attention needs to grow beyond the atrocities of World War II, and Nuclear-Free Future Month is about both the chronic war plans of strategic deterrence and the acute operations already killing people and peace on a daily basis."

At the entrance to the Nevada Test site, where U.S. atomic bombs were tested both above and below ground, a Hiroshima memorial vigil was held today from 6:30 to 8:00 am local time. The vigil was organized by Nevada Desert Experience as part of Nuclear Free Future Month and the annual August Desert Witness.

Copyright Environment News Service, ENS, 2009. All rights reserved.