Join CPDCS in Boston for the Hiroshima-Nagasaki 80th Anniversary Commemoration

A coalition of Boston area peace, justice and environmental organizations are preparing a major event to mark and to build from the 80th anniversaries of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Boston area events on August 6 will be one of many across the state and around the world urging that nuclear weapons be abolished to help ensure human survival.

Over the past 80 years, many Japanese A-bomb survivors have transformed their excruciating physical and emotional traumas into the world’s most powerful force for nuclear weapons abolition, forging the still very fragile the “nuclear taboo.” Their basic message has been that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.” For their courageous and inspired campaigning, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this past December.

Those two primitive A-bombs destroyed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and took the lives of more than 200,000 Japanese citizens – young and old – almost immediately. Tens of thousands more over time due to radiation exposure. In every country that has since developed nuclear weapons, including the United States, citizens have been killed as a result of uranium mining, nuclear weapons testing, and the weapons production.

We are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Manhattan Project began developing nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have set their Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight – annihilation. Following the pattern of dozens of U.S. preparations and threats to initiate nuclear war during international crises and war, – most recently in the Iraq Wars – Russian leaders have rattled their nuclear sabers in their war against Ukraine, and the US recently helped Ukraine attack Russian air bases where nuclear weapons were stored. Earlier this year, India, and Pakistan, each a nuclear power, brought back to the nuclear abyss in their Kashmir related war.  And two nuclear weapon states, Israel and the U.S., broke another taboo when they attacked the non-weaponized nuclear enrichment facilities of Iran, a non-nuclear weapon state, in June of this year.

The greatest danger of nuclear war arises from the U.S.-China military confrontation, especially over Taiwan and in the South China Sea where an accident, incident or miscalculation could easily escalate to nuclear war.

To continue to hold humanity at risk, the United States is spending approximately $30 billion a year to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and nuclear weapons delivery systems. At a time of massive cutbacks in health, housing, education, foreign aid, and other essential social services, this is money that should be used to support people’s lives, not to threaten human extinctions.

Contrary to the propaganda of the time, we now know that most senior U.S. military leaders advised that Japan’s surrender could be achieved on terms acceptable to the United States without the A-bombings. And we now know that the A-bombs did not end the war. Japanese leaders opted to surrender on August 8 on learning that the Soviet Union had entered the war. Tragically, the myth generated by President Truman’s politically motivated lie that the A-bombings saved U.S. lives has served as a legitimating rationale. To preserve that myth, the history, quotations, and images related to the first A-bombings in the Smithsonian Institution’s 50th anniversary Hiroshima-Nagasaki memorial exhibition were excised and only the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the Hiroshima A-bomb, was displayed.

The Boston Hiroshima-Nagasaki coalition has prepared this major event for Dewey Square, downtown Boston. The event will feature videos and live speeches from Hibakusha (nuclear weapons witness/survivors), scientists and leading nuclear disarmament movement leaders from around the world, film and photographic showings and displays, and in the Japanese tradition memorial lantern floats. Beyond the educational work that will be central to the commemorative events, organizers will be urging people across the Commonwealth and beyond to support the Back from the Brink Campaign, initiated by Physicians for Social Responsibility, and H.R. 317, related legislation initiated by Rep. McGovern and supported by several Massachusetts Representatives, as well as the  Responsible Investment bill (S.767/H.1264) which would divest Massachusetts pension funds from WMD producers and those who finance them.

Initiators of the Boston-Hiroshima Nagasaki Coalition include the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Massachusetts Peace Action, the American Friends Service Committee, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and Back from the Brink.

Organizations and individuals, join us!   Write to owen@masspeaceaction.org for information and /or to join our organizing committee.