Marilyn Bechtel
Senior editor and lead columnist at TruthoutLIVERMORE, Calif.—Hundreds gathered outside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory here Aug. 6, to mark the 73rd anniversary of the devastating U.S. nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to pledge a greatly stepped-up fight to abolish nuclear weapons worldwide.
Peace advocates see global nuclear disarmament as an ever more urgent issue now, in the face of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, released last February.
Rally speakers brought the demonstration’s call to action—No Nukes! No Walls! No Wars! No Warming!—to life as they linked today’s urgent struggles and examined decades of historical context.
Keynote speaker Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower whose 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers helped speed the end of the Vietnam War, highlighted the concept of “time, time enough, and too late” in relation both to climate change and nuclear apocalypse.
He linked the alarms raised by climate scientists who see looming “tipping points” after which change is impossible, with Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 1967 observation concerning nuclear weapons: “There is such a thing as too late.”
Donate
Illustrating his point with accounts of the captain of the Titanic sealing his ship’s doom by ignoring repeated warnings, and the choices which might have averted total nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ellsberg said, “The meaning I draw from it is, every minute we have here is precious, everything is at stake, we don’t know if it is too late to keep those trees from dying in a nuclear winter. That means each of us has the opportunity to do what we can to postpone that, avert that, make it less likely forever. And that is worth doing.”
He called on the crowd “to act as if we still have time to change this. We don’t know otherwise; it’s impossible to say it’s too late at any given point.”
The Rev. Nobuaki Hanaoka, a retired Methodist minister now living in the San Francisco Bay Area, was an infant in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the day the U.S. unleashed on that city the second of its nuclear bombs.
Within the first year, he said, the death toll from the two bombings had climbed to a quarter million. The blast knocked down nearly every building within a two-mile radius, and people were crushed by falling buildings and struck by flying debris. Then came the immense fireball, with a surface temperature of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
“More insidious and deadlier was the nuclear radioactive fallout spreading into the atmosphere over the wider area,” Hanaoka said. “And death came down with the rain.”
Though Hanaoka’s family was living outside the city, in the years that followed his mother and then his sister died of leukemia. When his brother died years later at an early age, an autopsy showed his internal organs to be like those of an 80-year-old man. As a child, Hanaoka overheard a doctor say that he himself might not live to see his tenth birthday.
“If the Hiroshima bomb, a rudimentary small bomb, inflicted so much pain and suffering for so long,” he said, “who can imagine what these new weapons can do to us? Disaster is not the word, it’s a global suffering, global crime.”
Hanaoka called on President Trump to bring all nine nuclear states together “and start discussing dismantling all these criminal weapons.”
Family separation was one theme for Christine Hong, a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who focuses on transnational Asian-American issues, the Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies.
She pointed out that the Korean War in 1950-53, which has never been ended with a peace treaty, “ensured that one in three Korean families was separated. We’re not talking about separation of a matter of months—we’re talking about separation that has lasted for seven decades.”
“In the U.S.,” she said, “there are over 100,000 Korean Americans—you probably know some and you’re talking to one, too—who have family members in the North.”
Observing that recent developments on the Korean peninsula, including the coming together of the two Koreas, are making this a very different time than a year ago, Hong said, “Peace in Korea has appeared, amazingly, as a prospect on the horizon,” but reminded the crowd that in the absence of a peace treaty the countries that signed the armistice agreement, North Korea, China, and the U.S., are all responsible to hammer out a peace agreement.
She cited two critical issues: whether the U.S. and North Korea have the same understanding of denuclearization, and whether the two countries “have the same concept of peace—it’s not just denuclearization, it’s peace.”
67th UN DPI/NGO Conference
Hong called on the crowd to help to build a people’s movement for peace with North Korea, “which has never existed,” and to think of “the people in their communities who have been part of separated families for over seven decades.”
The Oakland-based hip-hop collective The Oakland Mind galvanized the crowd as it expressed the demonstration’s goals through its music.
The rally ended with a heartfelt call for peace from young people ages two to 11, who participated in a family peace camp over the preceding weekend, and with a stirring Call to Action delivered by Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation.
Cabasso announced that anti-nuclear activists were forming a contingent to join the Sept. 8 Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice march in San Francisco.
She reminded the crowd that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists earlier this year moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock to 2 seconds to midnight—30 seconds closer than before and as close as it has ever been since its inception in 1947. In doing so, she said, the Bulletin cited the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change and declared “the world is as threatened as it has been since World War II.”
“Preparations for nuclear war are underway here at the Livermore Lab,” Cabasso said, noting that 89 percent of the lab’s budget for fiscal year 2019 is dedicated to nuclear weapons activities including developing new ones.
“But in this time of multiple global crises, our work for the elimination of nuclear weapons takes place in a broader context,” she said, “with the interface between nuclear and conventional weapons, the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear war, and the fundamental incompatibility of nuclear weapons with democracy, the rule of law, and human wellbeing.”
Demonstrators then marched to the West Gate of the Livermore Laboratory, where they participated in a Japanese ceremonial dance, held a “die-in” and left chalk outlines of their bodies near the Lab entrance, and witnessed or joined in the voluntary arrests of some 40 protesters, who were cited and released.
Actions were held around the country, including at the Y-2 plant in Tennessee, the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, and Santa Barbara, Calif., with overall sponsorship of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a network of three dozen groups based near U.S. nuclear weapons sites.
Original Publisher
People's WorldMarilyn Bechtel writes for the People’s World from the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined the PW staff in 1986, and currently participates as a volunteer.
There is noticeably a bundle to know about this. I assume you made certain nice points in features also.
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme.
Did you design this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
Plz reply as I’m looking to construct my own blog and would
like to know where u got this from. thanks a lot
Nice post. I was checking constantly this blog and I’m impressed!
Very useful information specifically the last part 🙂 I care for such info much.
I was seeking this certain information for a very lengthy time.
Thank you and best of luck.
Hey, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your website in Ie, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer,
it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, wonderful blog!
Hello i am kavin, its my first occasion to commenting anyplace, when i
read this article i thought i could also create comment due to
this good article.
Hi there to all, how is the whole thing, I think every one is getting more from this website, and your views are fastidious in support
of new people.
This blog was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something that helped me.
Many thanks!
Wonderful blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring
writers? I’m hoping to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you propose starting with a free platform
like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are
so many options out there that I’m completely overwhelmed ..
Any suggestions? Bless you!
Hello! I realize this is kind of off-topic but I had to ask.
Does operating a well-established blog like yours require a large amount of work?
I’m completely new to blogging however I do write in my
journal daily. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my own experience and views online.
Please let me know if you have any kind of ideas or
tips for new aspiring blog owners. Thankyou!
Link exchange is nothing else except it is only placing the other person’s
website link on your page at proper place and other person will also do similar in favor of you.
My brother recommended I might like this website.
He was totally right. This post actually made my day.
You cann’t imagine simply how much time I had spent for this info!
Thanks!
Hello there I am so excited I found your web site, I really found
you by error, while I was looking on Google for something
else, Nonetheless I am here now and would just like to say
thanks for a tremendous post and a all round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to read through
it all at the moment but I have bookmarked it and also
included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read more, Please do
keep up the great work.
My coder is trying to convince me to move to
.net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses.
But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a number of
websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform.
I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net.
Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it?
Any help would be really appreciated!
I was curious if you ever considered changing the page layout of your blog?
Its very well written; I love what youve got to
say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better.
Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or two images.
Maybe you could space it out better?
I know this site gives quality based posts and extra data, is
there any other web page which provides these data
in quality?
Terrific post however I was wondering if you could write a litte
more on this topic? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate
a little bit more. Kudos!
of course like your website however you need to check the spelling on quite a few
of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to inform the truth nevertheless I’ll definitely come back again.
This website was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally
I have found something which helped me. Kudos!
This article offers clear idea in favor of the new people of blogging, that really how to do running a blog.
Why users still make use of to read news papers when in this technological globe all is
accessible on net?
Wonderful blog! I found it while searching on Yahoo News.
Do you have any tips on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get
there! Thanks
Superb site you have here but I was wondering if you
knew of any forums that cover the same topics talked about in this article?
I’d really love to be a part of online community where I can get opinions from other knowledgeable people
that share the same interest. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.
Thanks a lot!
Woah! I’m really digging the template/theme of this blog. It’s
simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s tough to get that “perfect balance”
between usability and appearance. I must say you’ve done a very good job with
this. Also, the blog loads very fast for me on Opera.
Exceptional Blog!
you’re in point of fact a good webmaster.
The site loading speed is amazing. It sort of feels that you are doing any
distinctive trick. In addition, The contents are masterpiece.
you have performed a fantastic job on this matter!
I have been exploring for a bit for any high quality articles
or weblog posts in this kind of house . Exploring in Yahoo
I at last stumbled upon this web site. Reading this information So i am happy to express that I’ve a very excellent uncanny feeling I discovered exactly what I needed.
I most undoubtedly will make certain to don?t overlook this site and give it a glance regularly.
Howdy! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but
after browsing through some of the post I realized it’s
new to me. Anyways, I’m definitely delighted I found it and I’ll be bookmarking and
checking back often!
Heya i am for the first time here. I found this board and I find It truly useful &
it helped me out a lot. I hope to give something
back and help others like you helped me.
Amazing! Its genuinely awesome paragraph, I have got much clear idea about from this piece of writing.
bookmarked!!, I like your web site!
There is certainly a lot to learn about this topic. I love all of
the points you made.
Yes! Finally something about quest bars cheap.
With havin so much content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright infringement?
My site has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either
authored myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping
it up all over the internet without my authorization. Do you know any techniques to help prevent content from being ripped off?
I’d really appreciate it.
Hi there all, here every person is sharing these
kinds of knowledge, so it’s nice to read this weblog, and I used to pay a
visit this webpage every day.
Right here is the right website for anybody who really wants to understand this topic.
You realize a whole lot its almost tough to argue with you (not that
I personally would want to…HaHa). You certainly put a new
spin on a subject that has been written about for ages.
Great stuff, just excellent!
I am sure this piece of writing has touched all the internet users,
its really really pleasant article on building up new web site.
What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable know-how
regarding unexpected feelings.
I absolutely love your blog and find almost all of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for.
can you offer guest writers to write content to suit your needs?
I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on most of the
subjects you write regarding here. Again, awesome website!
Definitely believe that which you said. Your favourite reason seemed to be on the internet the simplest thing to be mindful of.
I say to you, I certainly get annoyed at the same time as people consider issues that they just don’t
recognise about. You controlled to hit the nail upon the highest and defined out the entire thing without having
side effect , other folks could take a signal.
Will probably be again to get more. Thanks