In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico was at the top of the list.[Read More…]
On the 77th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki during WWII was cause for a small group of anti-war activists to demonstrate at the White House to draw attention to both that disaster and the ongoing legacy of nuclear war that continues to threaten the world. The setting was appropriate as nearby on the sidewalk in a tent at Lafayette[Read More…]
This year has been extremely threatening in terms of the rise of big power rivalry and tensions. First, the escalation of the Ukraine crisis with Ukraine becoming a proxy country in the real conflict between the USA and Russia has led to tensions worsening steadily. What is most worrying is that unlike in the case of most recent wars, no[Read More…]
On August 6, as the world observes Hiroshima Day (the 76th anniversary of the first-ever use of an atomic weapon in Hiroshima) , serious concerns regarding the threats from nuclear weapons are increasing in the middle of new tensions and power rivalries. We should not be misled into a false sense of security that the reduction in the number[Read More…]
Shall we understand that US crimes against humanity, including the use of nuclear weapons on civilians in cities, have been committed in a democracy and under a democratic system of government? Or shall we realize that the source of all this continuing genocidal mayhem and nuclear threat are the wealthy and powerful investors in war headquartered mainly on Wall St.[Read More…]
In what is a turn-up for the books, a senior voice of the Catholic Church made something of an impression this month that did not incite scandal, hot rage, or the commencement of an investigation. It did, however, agitate a few editors. Archbishop John C. Wester of San Fe, in speaking at the online Hiroshima Day vigil, had put up[Read More…]
On August 6, 1945, at 8.15 am, an atom bomb was dropped at Hiroshima to end World War II. Archana Mohan takes us on a journey through a novel which gives the story of before and after the bombing & currently lauded and promoted by the United Nations for peacekeeping. Title: The Last Cherry Blossom Author: Kathleen Burkinshaw When a book opens with[Read More…]
The best introduction to Kathleen Burkinshaw is that she a humanitarian. She wrote a novel that has been taken up by The United Nations as a part of its peacekeeping effort. She has been actively participating in efforts to ban nuclear weapons, including presenting with Nobel Laureates. Kathleen Burkinshaw, the author of The Last Cherry Blossom, a book that is in[Read More…]
Wherever on this distressed and yet magnificent Earth you live, this is for you. Right here, right now: Let’s be open and honest before one another. Please. Look at the world without illusions, without hiding, without trying to escape. Don’t be crippled by confusion or disgust. Don’t allow yourself to lose your natural born goodness and become infected with internal[Read More…]
When US President Harry S. Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by another on Nagasaki a few days later, he was not acting as an agent untethered from history. In the wheels of his wearied mind lay the battered Marines who, despite being victorious, had received sanguinary lashings at Iwo[Read More…]
The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau Prime Minister of Canada Office of the Prime Minister 80 Wellington Street Dear Prime Minister Trudeau: As a Hiroshima survivor, I was honoured to jointly accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. With the approaching 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[Read More…]
With survival at stake, can weapon makers change course? Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection. I recall a summer morning following the U.S. 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq when the segment of the Chicago River flowing past the headquarters of the world’s second largest defense contractor, Boeing,[Read More…]
A mother and child, dressed in traditional clothing, sit on the ground amid rubble and burnt trees, Hiroshima, Japan, December 1945; some four months after the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on the city. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) On August 6th, in Hiroshima, Japan, people will gather at the Peace Memorial, or A-Bomb Dome[Read More…]
The human race stands on the verge of nuclear self-extinction as a species, and with it will die most, if not all, forms of intelligent life on the planet earth. Any attempt to dispel the ideology of nuclearism and its attendant myth propounding the legality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must directly come to grips with the fact that[Read More…]
“…how beset we were with what…we had been taught….” –Kenneth Patchen. A poem for voices, with shakuhachi and koto…. (Sound of shakuhachi, a wooden flute–as though the instrument itself is breathing…and crying….) The Pilgrim Under the flush of cherry, in air as mild as breath, by the Ota’s tributary– five crooked fingers reaching into the Inland Sea–[Read More…]
“Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered[Read More…]
In 1945, US president Harry Truman (who had dictatorial control over the atomic bomb) and his advisor James Byrnes intentionally prolonged the US war with Japan until, and apparently so that, they could target Japanese civilians, without warning, with atomic bombs. The bombings were planned and carried out, as Alperovitz notes in an almost thousand-page study, in a way that[Read More…]
The U.S. public has been kept in the dark or misled about foreign policy for much of our history. For example, as we commemorate the 71st anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let’s re-examine the myth of necessity of those barbaric acts. The myth that just won’t die and is believed by most Americans is[Read More…]
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
