Hiroshima Day:
The Freedom From War Coalition invites you to join us in solemn remembrance of the bombing of Japan’s cities at the close of the Pacific War.
The world mourns the day the atom bomb exploded over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, and three days later, Nagasaki. Of all bombs ever dropped on cities, these two were the most devastating and cruel, incinerating hundreds of thousands and lethally irradiating tens of thousands more.
We question the need for nukes then and now. After the Cold War arms race, we still live under threat of nuclear war. It is never working people who choose war. We gain nothing from war readiness. Weapons of war don’t feed, clothe, house, or connect us to our fellow man. Militarism is the business of an exploiting class that divides us.
In Japan, working masses suffered and paid with their lives for a war launched by the ruling class. The bomb extinguished masses of lives in the blink of an eye, yet inflicted years of pain and grief on those around them.
Sadako Sasaki succumbed at age 12 to leukemia from the bomb’s radioactive fallout. She folded over a thousand paper cranes on her deathbed, making the origami crane a symbol of world peace. This Hiroshima Day, fold a paper crane in memory of Sadako… and all victims of war.
Freedom from War Coalition 2023 Hiroshima Day Press Release:
Our Freedom from War Coalition will be holding an information picket event at Charles Hoey Park in downtown Duncan, BC starting at 11 am on Sunday August 6th to mark the day the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
It is vital we never allow this act of brutality to go unacknowledged.
On Aug. 6, 1945, during World War II, the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb code-named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths. (Three days later, the United States exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki; five days after that, Imperial Japan surrendered.)
Canada was not absent on that day, but unfortunately was part of that travesty and genocide.
Munitions Minister C.D. Howe - after the bomb was dropped - bragged Canadian scientists and Canadian institutions had played a crucial role. Howe sat on a joint committee which authorized the use of the bombs.
Uranium was mined by the Dene people near Great Slave lake, hundreds died of cancer from the work. Canada never warned the indigenous Dene of the danger with such unprotected exposure to uranium.
In other words – the hands of the ruling class in Canada are dripping with the blood of Japanese civilians. Canada stood with the US war machine and without protest committed this atrocity which we all know now was an unnecessary step in securing Japanese surrender.
"It is fortunate the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe” - William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canadian Prime Minister) quote.
We will set up next to the train station. Please join in – we could especially use some help making origami cranes. You are all welcome to participate in this critical remembrance.
About the FFWC:
The Freedom From War Coalition are people of peace aiming to build popular opposition to militarism and the war economy in Canada. We live on Vancouver Island on the traditional and unceded territory of Coast Salish peoples.
Related article by FFWC member Rafe Saltman: Remember the Victims of War on Hiroshima Day (theleftchapter.com)