67th Anniversary of Bombing of Nagasaki

This week marks the 67th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then another on Nagasaki three days later, August 9, 1945. With just two bombs, more than 200,000 people -- mostly civilians -- were instantly incinerated or died from radiation poisoning by the end of 1945. Many more have died since and are still dying from the effects of radiation. The effect on future generations are still unknown.

Memorial in Nagasaki for those who died

Although Nagasaki has been completely rebuilt, powerful reminders of the atomic devastation can be found everywhere. The personal testimonies of the survivors, the Hibakusha, make the tragedy very real. Let us heed their plea:

"Never again!"

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Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who live by the sword will die by the sword. (Matthew 26:50-53)

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Jesus’ Last Words to the Church

By Father John Dear, SJ

We have spent the last 1700 years, denying Jesus’ final command. We have justified warfare, led our crusades, and stamped every bombing raid and nuclear weapon with our blessing.

But the commandment remains: “Put down the sword.” I think one day the church will realize that the just war theory has no place in the Gospel. They’ll realize it was by no means exemplified by the life of Jesus. And the theory will fall into disrepute. One day the church will teach only Gospel nonviolence. And Christians everywhere will quit the military and refuse to join. They’ll obstruct warfare and beat all swords into plowshares.

The unarmed Christ wants his community, the church, to be a community of creative, loving nonviolence, I submit. It’s God’s holy gift to the world. The challenge then is to take him at his word.

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A friend shared the following message with me via e-mail - thought I would share it with everyone so that we can continue to learn.

"Yesterday I was with someone who had been in Japan for several weeks, and she mentioned that everywhere, there is braille, because so many were blinded by the bombings. All along the brass stair rails down into the subway, for example. There are varying feels to the walkways, so that the blind know where to walk. I had never realized that there were so many blind people!

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Imagine a world filled with peace and love.

peacesojourner

Hiroshima, Aug 6, 1945 and Aug 9, 1945, Nagasaki

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945, Nagasaki-

Totals: 105,000 killed and 94,000 injured

As many know, the atomic bomb has been used only twice in warfare. The first was at Hiroshima, Japan. A uranium bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" (despite weighing in at over four and a half tons) was dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945. The Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the target; ground zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 8:15 a.m. , the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 8:16 a.m. , in an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 injured by a 10-kiloton atomic explosion.

The area of total vaporization from the atomic bomb blast measured one half mile in diameter; total destruction one mile in diameter; severe blast damage as much as two miles in diameter. Within a diameter of two and a half miles, everything flammable burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.

Meanwhile in the United States a cartoonist sends a grim message -

I wonder if this was considered amusing at the time.

The New York Times reports to the nation

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Nagasaki

On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki fell to the same treatment. This time a Plutonium bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" was dropped on the city. Though "Fat Man" missed its target by over a mile and a half, it still leveled nearly half the city. In a split second, Nagasaki's population dropped from 422,000 to 383,000. More than 39,000 dead - over 25,000 people were injured.

Japan offered to surrender on August 10, 1945.

Statue in the Hiroshima Peace Park

The Monument to the Mobilized Students remembers nearly 7,000
Hiroshima school students who died in the atomic bomb blast.
They were 'mobilized' to demolish wooden buildings for firebreaks,
to produce food and to work in factories for the war effort.
The statue represents the Goddess of Peace with eight doves.
Thousands of paper cranes are left here by visitors seeking a world
in which children can live without fear of nuclear weapons.
The sign reading 'Peace' is made of folded paper cranes
glued onto a board.

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NOTE: Physicists who have studied these two atomic explosions estimate that the bombs utilized only 1/10th of 1 percent of their respective explosive capabilities.

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To remember the past is

to commit oneself to the future.

To remember Hiroshima is

to abhor nuclear war.

To remember Hiroshima is

to commit oneself to peace.

- Pope John Paul II 1981

First British Nonviolent Protest 1/11/1952

January 11^th, 1952, marks the anniversary of the first British Nonviolent protest against nuclear weapons: 10 persons sat down on the steps of the War Office in London, England. The well recognized peace symbol emerged from these actions.

The U.S. government had tested the world's first thermonuclear device in 1952 and the Soviet Union had made its own thermonuclear breakthrough the following year. The first U.S. H-Bomb test was conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on March 1, 1954. It occurred at Bikini atoll, located in the Marshall Islands, a United Nations trust territory in the Pacific. The AEC had staked out a danger zone of fifty thousand square miles (an area roughly the size of New England) around the test site. But the blast proved to be more than twice as powerful as planned and generated vast quantities of highly radioactive debris. Within a short time, heavy doses of this nuclear fallout descended on four inhabited islands of the Marshall grouping--all outside the danger zone--prompting U.S. officials to evacuate 28 Americans working at a U.S. weather station and 236 Marshallese. Thanks to their rapid escape, the Americans went relatively unscathed. But the Marshall Islanders, who were not removed from their radioactive surroundings for days, soon developed low blood counts, skin lesions, hemorrhages under the skin, and loss of hair. Over time, the islanders also suffered a heavy incidence of radiation-linked illnesses, notably thyroid cancer and leukemia.

Beginning in 1954, an uneasiness about nuclear weapons emerged around the world. An earlier surge of antinuclear activity, launched by the shock of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, had been promoted with some effectiveness by atomic scientists, pacifists, world government advocates, and hibakusha (Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb). Starting in 1954, however, the rapid development of the hydrogen bomb--a weapon with a thousand times the power of the bomb that had destroyed Hiroshima--began to revive the idea that humanity was teetering on the brink of disaster. Atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, particularly, stimulated public concern. They scattered clouds of radioactive debris around the globe and, furthermore, symbolized the looming horror of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war. Deeply disturbed by this turn of events, many of the early critics of the Bomb renewed their calls for nuclear arms control and disarmament.

Statements from the Catholic Church during these years touched on similar themes. Pope Pius XII devoted much of his 1954 Easter message to a critique of "new, destructive armaments, unheard of in their capacity of violence," which "could cause the total extermination of all life." He asked: "When will the rulers of nations understand that peace does not exist in an exasperating and costly relationship of mutual terror?"

Throughout history, numerous visual images have symbolized peace. These include images of doves, olive branches, broken rifles and the sign language V used by Sir Winston Churchill during World War II. Later signaled by hippies to represent both peace and love.

One peace sign that is recognizable to many is the peace sign designed by Gerald Holtom. It is the familiar round circle with a line down the middle and two slanted lines, about half the length of the vertical line. The slanted lines attach to the vertical line, slightly below its direct middle, and continue to the perimeter of the circle.

While the sign initially stood for nuclear disarmament, it quickly became a symbol for peace, adopted in the 1960s by the strong anti-war and counterculture movements occurring in both England and the United States. Buttons with the peace sign first made their way to the US in 1960.

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In 2010 there are still millions of people world wide who demonstrate against nuclear weapons, war and violence, and still these things all exist.

Why are we not being heard?