Hiroshima
Nagasaki remembers atomic victims Tho...
Nagasaki remembers atomic victims
Thousands of people gathered in the Japanese city of Nagasaki on Monday to mark 65 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city during the Second World War.
In 1945, the nuclear bomb hit Nagasaki three days after Japan's city of Hiroshima was first struck by a US atomic bomb. Collectively, they killed about 80,000 people.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/08/20108913451439239.html
On the wings of paper cranes, UN staffers aim to spread message of peace In ...
On the wings of paper cranes, UN staffers aim to spread message of peace
In 1955, 12-year-old Sadako Sasaki began folding a thousand paper cranes to try to heal her leukaemia, in accordance with a Japanese tradition. Despite surviving the bombing of Hiroshima a decade earlier, she had developed the “atom bomb disease.” Over half a century later, United Nations staff members hope to harness that same spirit to remind the world of the horrors wrought by nuclear weapons.
Sadako died on 25 October 1955, having completed 644 origami cranes. Her friends completed the remaining cranes and she was buried with them in Hiroshima, where the Children’s Peace Monument now stands in her honour and children from all over the world send more than 10 million cranes each year.
To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, dozens of UN workers at the Organization’s Headquarters in New York and at its offices in Tokyo have worked together to fold a thousand origami cranes. The cranes were then assembled into a garland that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented today to the Mayor of Hiroshima at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. This marks the first ever trip by a Secretary-General to the annual ceremony.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35550&Cr=Hiroshima&Cr1=
An apology fatally devalued by the passage of 65 years ...
An apology fatally devalued by the passage of 65 years
Robert Fisk reports on the day America and Britain united with Japan to remember victims of the world’s first atomic bomb
At last we’ve apologised for Hiroshima – well, sort of. We’ve recognised the suffering our atom bombs caused –well, kind of. President Obama was showing off his anti-nuclear credentials in the killing grounds of Hiroshima, but this was not to be confused with saying sorry.
The presence of John Roos, the US ambassador to Japan, and the British deputy ambassador, David Fitton, at the site of the world's first atomic bombing was an odd appearance.
A Hiroshima Apology? Japan's continued focus on remembering the bomb has b...
A Hiroshima Apology?
Japan's continued focus on remembering the bomb has been an understandable sore point for its Asian neighbors, who suffered greatly at its hands.
For the first time since the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan 65 years ago, today the U.S. ambassador to Japan will attend the official commemoration ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The U.S. ambassador has always declined the annual invitation, but this year is different. President Barack Obama decided to acknowledge the event with the presence of a high-level dignitary. As State Department spokesman Philip Crowley explained, Ambassador John Roos will be there "to express respect for all the victims of World War II."
The U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. When the Japanese still didn't give up, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later. On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally, ending the most brutal war in the history of the world.
Japan remains the only country ever to have been targeted by atomic bombs. More than 120,000 Japanese died instantly from the bombings and perhaps as many succumbed to radiation poisoning afterwards (the exact number will never be known). It should be noted that when President Harry Truman was considering whether to invade Japan instead of dropping the bombs, his advisers estimated that an invasion would result in one million American casualties and at least two million Japanese deaths. In the strange calculus of war, the bombs actually saved Japanese lives.
Since 1945, Japan's narrative has centered almost exclusively on the atomic blasts and its role as victim—with short shrift given to the Japanese invasions of China, Manchuria, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indochina, Burma, New Guinea and, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese children have learned little about the Rape of Nanking or the fact that as many as 17 million Asians died at the hands of the Japanese in World War II—many in the most brutal ways imaginable.
There is also the inconvenient truth that Japan started the war in the first place. There would have been no war in the Pacific between 1937 and 1945 had Japan stayed home.
Focusing on the atomic bombs paints the Japanese as victims, like other participants in World War II. They were not. The Japanese, like their German allies, were bent on global conquest and the destruction of other people who did not fit their bizarre racial theories. Japan's continued focus on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been an understandable sore point for its Asian neighbors, who suffered greatly at its hands.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703748904575411123599873634.html