A vigil for Nagasaki and a call for peace

   By Reginald Johnson 

 

    NEW HAVEN --- More than 78 years ago this month, the United States committed one of the most heinous acts of violence in human history.

 Two atomic bombs were dropped by American planes on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing over 200,000 people, mostly civilians. Many people were killed instantaneously, while others died slowly over the next few weeks from severe radiation illness.

 The savage bombing was justified by American officials with the claim that it hastened the end of World War II by forcing Japan to surrender quickly and avoided an invasion of Japan, which could have cost a large number of American and Japanese casualties.

 But historians have since the countered that idea, saying that Japan was about to surrender anyway. They maintain that the real reason for the bombing was that the United States wanted to show the Soviet Union it had the bomb, thus giving America a geopolitical edge in the expected rivalry with Russia after the war.

 Memorials have been held every year since 1945 in Japan and around the world to remember the victims of the bombings. The memorials and vigils have also been occasions when people have spoken out against nuclear weapons and urged that all nations join together to ban the bomb once and for all.

 As they have done in recent years, peace activists and city officials here came together for two vigils, one for Hiroshima on New Haven Green last Sunday and the other for Nagasaki at the Amistad Statue on Wednesday.

  The Nagasaki memorial saw a number of speakers, including Joelle Fishman, chairperson of the New Haven Peace Commision (which is part of the city government), Jim Pandaru, of Veterans for Peace, Paula Panzarella, reading poetry and Hank Bolden, a survivor of atomic bomb testing.

        

           

The vigil in New Haven for the victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan by the United States on August 9, 1945. Some 60,000 to 80,000 civilians were killed in the bombing. (Photo by Reginald Johnson)

  

    Fishman read a message from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent to the peace memorial in Nagasaki. Here are some excerpts:

    “We mourn those killed, whose memory will never fade.

    “We remember the terrible destruction wrought upon the city and Hiroshima.

“We honor the unrelenting strength and resilience of the people of Nagasaki to rebuild.

“We must never again allow such devastation to occur.

“Despite the terrible lessons of 1945, humanity now confronts a new arms race.

“Nuclear weapons are being used as tools of coercion.

“Weapon systems are being upgraded, and placed at the center of national security strategies, making these devices of death faster, more accurate and stealthier.

“All this at a moment when division and mistrust are pulling countries and regions apart.

“The risk of nuclear catastrophe is now at the highest level since the Cold War.

“In the face of these threats, the global community must speak as one.

“Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.

“We will not sit idly by as nuclear armed states race to create even more dangerous weapons.”

 Bolden, 86, told of his experiences as a soldier who survived the US Army’s atomic bomb testing in Nevada in the 1950s. Bolden said he and his fellow GIs were never told ahead of time that they were going to be put in a location that was within 3 miles of an atomic bomb test.

  Bolden, who is black, said the Army was trying to determine what effect the test would have on soldiers placed near an atomic detonation site.

 “I was a guinea pig. They put us in a predetermined path of what they knew was the direction of the fallout," he said.

Bolden has battled three different types of cancers in his life, which he thinks were caused by radiation fallout. He is now trying to let as many people know as possible what happened to him and emphasize that their government at times can be cruel and cynical in how they treat people when they want to achieve some kind of secret objective.

   Asked his opinion about nuclear weapons, Bolden said simply,  “Nuclear weapons should be shut down because that’s the end for all of us. Nuclear proliferation needs to be shut down because who stands to gain by that? There can be no winners.”

 Henry Lowendorf, president of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, which helped organize the vigil, said he and others are going to movie theaters showing the film "Oppenheimer" to hand out leaflets to patrons urging that they call on their congressmembers to end the nuclear arms race and push for a diplomatic settlement to end the Ukraine War.

 The movie tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who developed the atomic bomb for the United States.

  "This movie, one, raises the issue of the horror of the atomic bomb, does it in a biographical format of J. Robert Oppenheimer, but it takes that biography and explores what the atomic bomb means and what it does," Lowendorf said.

 "And we now live in an era now when that is hidden from everybody, censored and not talked about," he said. "And we're facing right now two nuclear weapons powers that are fighting a war against each other, right. And both of them have said using nuclear weapons is not off the table --- both Russia and the United States."

  He added, "and this war is a prelude to a war on China which the United States is preparing us for. So we have this perpetual war. If we don't explode ourselves with a nuclear blast, there will be another war and this is simply promoting the wealth of the military-industrial complex and the militarized society we live in and face everyday."  

   For more information on the peace council's work, email to grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com