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Date: October 11, 2024 at 10:45:55
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
URL: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/11/nobel_peace_prize_nihon_hidankyo |
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Atomic Bomb Survivors Win Nobel Peace Prize, Say Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Years Ago
OCTOBER 11, 2024
Joseph Gerson
longtime peace and disarmament activist.
Setsuko Thurlow
Japanese Canadian anti-nuclear activist and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
LINKS
Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security
"With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion and Moral Imagination"
"Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World"
A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.S. nuclear disarmament activist who has spent decades working closely with the group.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Today, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9th, ’45. The survivors of the only two nuclear bombs ever used in conflict went on to dedicate their lives to struggle for a nuclear-free world for nearly eight decades. Known as hibakusha, the atomic bomb survivors are being recognized for, quote, “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” The Nobel Committee noted the taboo against nuclear weapons use now, quote, was now “under pressure.” This is Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes.
JØRGEN WATNE FRYDNES: Next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated of 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable number died of burn and radiation injuries in the months and years that followed. Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilization.
AMY GOODMAN: After the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, Toshiyuki Mimaki, spoke to reporters in Tokyo.
TOSHIYUKI MIMAKI: [translated] What? Nihon Hidankyo? How did Nihon Hidankyo? It can’t be real. It can’t be real. … We will appeal to the world, as we always have done, for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the achievement of an everlasting peace. … Why Nihon Hidankyo? I thought for sure it would be the people working so hard in Gaza, as we’ve seen.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, which won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize today. He wept as he spoke. He went on to say, quote, “In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”
For more, we go to Boston, where we’re joined by Joseph Gerson, longtime peace and disarmament activist, who has worked closely with Nihon Hidankyo for the past 40 years, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, former vice president of the International Peace Bureau and worked with AFSC.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! In a moment, we’re going to hear from a hibakusha, but can you talk about the significance, Joe, of this group being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
JOSEPH GERSON: Well, I think there are two things to say. First of all, the courage of these people is staggering. I mean, to understand that the situation that they faced, literal hell — I mean, the descriptions of people that I know, who, you know, suffered burns, saw people with their eyeballs hanging out, ghosts, the whole city destroyed in an instant. I mean, these people literally survived hell. And they turned their experiences, their suffering, into what Wilfred Burchett, the first Western journalist to go into Hiroshima, later described as the most important force for the abolition of nuclear weapons among humanity.
And then to say that it could not come at a better time. What most people don’t understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point, you know, not only in Ukraine, also, especially as United States and China confront one another, the reality that among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called modernizing their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment. And what the Nobel Committee has done has been, in a way, to answer the Oppenheimer film. We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, and we have to work for their abolition.
AMY GOODMAN: And very interesting that the head of the group said he compared Gaza today to Japan after the atomic bombing, and the threats of Israel to perhaps blow up a nuclear site in Iran.
I wanted to go back to 2016, when Democracy Now! spoke to Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. She is a member of Nihon Hidankyo.
SETSUKO THURLOW: I was a 13-year-old, grade eight student at the girls’ school. And I was mobilized by the army, like together with a group of about 30 schoolmates. And we were trained to act as decoding assistants. And that very day, being Monday, we were to start the day’s work, the full-fledged decoding assistant. At 8:00, we had a morning assembly, and the Major Yanai gave us a pep talk. And we said, “We will do our best for emperor’s sake.” And at the moment, I saw the bluish white flash in the windows. I was on the second floor of the wooden building, which was one mile, or 1.8 kilometers, away from the ground zero. And after seeing the flash, I had a sensation of floating in the air. All the buildings were flattened by the blast and falling. And, obviously, the building I was in was falling, and my body was falling together with it. That’s the end of my recollection.
Then I regained my consciousness. And when I regained, I found myself in a total darkness and a silence. I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t. So I knew I was faced with death. I thought, “Finally, Americans got us.” Then I started hearing the whispering voices of my classmates who were around me in the same room: “Mother, help me. God, help me.” And all of a sudden, strong male voice said, “Don’t give up. I’m trying to free you. Keep moving. Keep pushing. And you see the sun ray coming through that opening. Get moving toward that direction. Crawl.” That’s what I did in the total darkness. I didn’t see anything.
But by the time I came out, the building was on fire. That meant all my classmates who were with me, about 30 of them, were burned to death alive. And I and two other girls managed to come out. The three of us looked around outside. And although it happened in the morning, it was dark, dark as twilight. And as our eyes got used to recognize things, those dark moving objects happened to be human beings. It was like a procession of ghosts. I say “ghosts” because they simply did not look like human beings. Their hair was rising upwards, and they were covered with blood and dirt, and they were burned and blackened and swollen. Their skin and flesh were hanging, and parts of the bodies were missing. Some were carrying their own eyeballs. And they collapsed onto the ground. Their stomach burst open, and intestines start stretching out.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Setsuko Thurlow speaking on Democracy Now! in 2016, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, also a member of Nihon Hidankyo, which just won the Nobel Peace Prize. She has lived in Canada for decades. She is well over 90 years old. Thanks so much to Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security and former vice president of the International Peace Bureau.
Coming up, The Apprentice, “the movie Trump doesn’t want you to see.” Stay with us.
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Date: October 11, 2024 at 14:15:51
From: Joe, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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I have been to both Hiroshima and Alamogordo. Have no
memories of Hiroshima as I was not even four when I
went there. Alamogordo had no New Mexico vibes at all.
It was like an alien city.
Here is an anecdote from World War 2. An American POW
noticed that the guards at his camp are totally
distraught and talking amongst themselves about an
event. He has no idea what is going on but is able talk
to a prison interpreter who tells him that the
Americans had just dropped one bomb on a Japanese city
which had killed everyone there. The POW told the
interpreter that that was a lie and that Americans
would never do anything like that.
We live in a dark and uncertain time when nukes could
be used again. Even conventional weapons can produce
similar results as the ruins of Gaza show.
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Date: October 11, 2024 at 16:08:16
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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That says it all. When will Americans see our country and our values for what
they really are?
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Date: October 11, 2024 at 15:54:17
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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My father was on the Hiroshima "clean-up crew". He
spoke to me only once of what he saw. I still have
nightmares occasionally even though I was one set of
eyes removed.
From my father's perspective, they didn't have much of
a choice. The nazis or Japan were also working on it
and would have used it on us. It wasn't a matter of a
nuke being used, just who would use it first.
His view is a frontal assault on Japan would have cost
so many allied lives that would have dwarfed what was
lost in the two bombs, so in that way--saved lives of
Americans.
I've thought many years on whether I agree with his
perspectives or not. He was there, I have to respect
what he saw and thought at the time. Hindsight's
always 20/20...it's not always so in the midst of the
storm.
I would not advise any country on Earth to use one
again, based on the nightmares I still occasionally
have from what my father witnessed. I do fully wish
they would all be dismantled and gone once and for all.
That's not likely anytime soon. That's sad..and that's
our legacy to deal with now.
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Date: October 11, 2024 at 16:31:28
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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The Japanese had a nuclear facility in North Korea. I
had a book years ago on the subject that claimed Japan
was literally weeks away from activating their bomb,
and that the Russians got their nuclear technology from
the North Koreans, not only the Manhattan project.
I'm sorry for your war dreams, as a child of veterans
have had many as well.
Nuclear bombs, and power have no end game. No place to
put the trash that technology generated.
All these bright people who come up with these genius
ideas are subject to the corporate whims and the
military they employ.
Unfortunately in none of my dreams had I a positive
resolution to this question.
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Date: October 11, 2024 at 17:52:13
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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interesting...i have never heard that before...
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Date: October 12, 2024 at 10:05:02
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
URL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_program |
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So I went looking for the book, and couldn't remember
the title. Wikipedia had an interesting entry that
criticized the book, "Japan's Secret War". If you're
curious.
"On 2 October 1946, the Atlanta Constitution published
a story by reporter David Snell,[20] who had been an
investigator with the 24th Criminal Investigation
Detachment in Korea after the war, which alleged that
the Japanese had successfully tested a nuclear weapon
near Hungnam (Konan) before the town was captured by
the Soviets. He said that he had received his
information at Seoul in September 1945 from a Japanese
officer to whom he gave the pseudonym of Captain
Wakabayashi, who had been in charge of counter-
intelligence at Hungnam.[21][22][23] SCAP officials,
who were responsible for strict censorship of all
information about Japan's wartime interest in nuclear
physics,[24] were dismissive of Snell's report.
Under the 1947–1948 investigation, comments were sought
from Japanese scientists who would or should have known
about such a project. Further doubt is cast on Snell's
story by the lack of evidence of large numbers of
Japanese scientists leaving Japan for Korea and never
returning.[22] Snell's statements were repeated by
Robert K. Wilcox in his 1985 book Japan's Secret War:
Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb.
The book also included what Wilcox stated was new
evidence from intelligence material which indicated the
Japanese might have had an atomic program at Hungnam.
[25] These specific reports were dismissed in a review
of the book by Department of Energy employee Roger M.
Anders which was published in the journal Military
Affairs,[26] an article written by two historians of
science in the journal Isis,[27] and another article in
the journal Intelligence and National Security.[28]"
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Date: October 12, 2024 at 10:15:05
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
URL: https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-bomb-20150805-story.html |
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thanks mitra!
a bit more on this...
New evidence of Japan’s effort to build atom bomb at the end of WWII
Aug. 5, 2015 3 AM PT
Reporting from Tokyo —
In August 1945, the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, as Japan and the rest of the world prepare to mark seven decades since the end of World War II in the Pacific, new evidence has emerged about the Japanese military’s own secret program to build a nuclear weapon.
A retired professor at the state-run Kyoto University recently discovered a blueprint at the school’s former Radioisotope Research lab, Japan’s Sankei newspaper and other local media reported recently.
The notebooks were related to research work by Bunsaku Arakatsu, a professor at the university whom Sankei said was asked by the Japanese navy to develop an atomic bomb during the war.
Also found were drawings of a turbine-based centrifuge apparently to be used for the study of uranium enrichment. It was dated March 1945. Another blueprint was found of a centrifuge that a Japanese company, Tokyo Keiki, was producing, with a notation indicating the device was scheduled to be completed Aug. 19, 1945 — four days after Japan announced that it was surrendering.
Experts say the material buttresses information contained in U.S. archives and casts light on the direction the research was headed.
For some, the documents also have contemporary resonance, and are a painful reminder that Japan was headed toward developing the same kind of intensely destructive weapons the United States had.
The disclosures come as Japan is in the midst of national debates on nuclear activities and on the use of soldiers.
Japanese parliament members are weighing whether to reinterpret the constitution to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to fight abroad with strategic allies such as the United States. Meanwhile, the country is considering whether to restart its nuclear power plants, idled since a meltdown at Fukushima after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“These drawings are more confirmation of the Japanese atomic bomb effort, something many in Japan do not want to admit,” said Robert K. Wilcox, the L.A. based- author of “Japan’s Secret War: Japan’s Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb.”
Wilcox, who has been researching the program for decades, said Japan’s problem was not a lack of know-how.
“They knew the physics needed for creating the bomb and the engineering needed to build it,” he said. “It was lack of element resources like uranium that was the real problem for them.”
Such supplies were not readily available in Japan so its leaders looked toward occupied territories.
“In 1945, the Japanese navy alone spent a fortune to gather uranium,” Wilcox said. “They needed a win-the-war weapon and an atomic bomb was seen as one of those.”
The Japanese government burned thousands of documents as the war was ending. Researchers believe many documents related to Japan’s atomic bomb program were destroyed. U.S. occupation forces confiscated almost anything that remained.
So the documents discovered in Japan have drawn intense interest.
“We can say the blueprint is a monument to the elementary levels the research reached at the early stages,” Masakatsu Yamazaki, an expert on nuclear development history and an emeritus professor at Tokyo Kogyo University told the Sankei. “It’s historically meaningful and it’s amazing that it remained.”
After the American bombings, there was little public discussion about Japan’s attempts to develop an atomic bomb. But Wilcox and Japanese scholars who have since studied the matter say there were two programs to produce a nuclear weapon.
The first plan was commissioned by the Japanese navy and code-named F Research, which involved Arakatsu, the professor. The Japanese army carried out the other program, known as the Nigo Research project, headed by Yoshio Nishina, a physicist at the Riken Institute in Tokyo.
Some scholars believe Japan could have made a nuclear bomb if it had succeeded in acquiring uranium and been able to enrich it. Two major setbacks delayed progress, researchers and those involved in the programs have said.
Masa Takeuchi, who had played a central role in researching thermal diffusion under Nishina, said in the 1960s that Japanese researchers had completed a thermal diffusion device that would have allowed extraction of uranium 235 as early as 1944, but U.S. bombings destroyed their secret facilities.
The other problem was that Japan couldn’t get enough uranium to move forward, another researcher, Kunihiko Higoshi of Gakushuin University, said in 2013.
“Nishina told us that a U-boat from Germany would bring us the uranium. It never arrived,” Higoshi said.
On May 19, 1945, a Nazi submarine was captured and discovered to be delivering 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide to the Japanese military. The vessel was dispatched for Japan shortly after Adolf Hitler committed suicide, a time when the Germans wanted to dispose of their large amounts of uranium. Two Japanese officers were aboard the submarine; both committed suicide upon being captured.
In an article published in October 1946, the Atlanta Constitution cited an unidentified Japanese officer as saying that U.S. air raids on Japan forced the military to move its bomb plant to Japanese-occupied territory in what is now North Korea, delaying Tokyo’s bomb development schedule by three months.
Most experts believe that Japan did not have the capability to build a nuclear weapon before the U.S. bombings.
Takeuchi told the Yomiuri newspaper that when he heard that “a new type of bomb” had been dropped on Hiroshima, he thought to himself, ‘How the hell did the U.S. come up with an atomic bomb!’
“It was overwhelmingly regrettable and frustrating,” he said.
When Japan surrendered, the occupying U.S. forces discovered just five cyclotrons, devices that speed up atoms in order to separate isotopes that can then be used for a bomb. U.S. atomic facilities in New Mexico, by comparison, contained hundreds of separators operating day and night to produce just four bombs.
“I don’t think Japan’s nuclear program was very advanced or that it played a role in the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan Campus, and author of “Contemporary Japan.”
The uranium seized from the German submarine ended up in the American atom bombs, John Lansdale Jr., head of security for the Manhattan Project, said in a 1995 New York Times interview.
Chieko Takeuchi, widow of the atomic scientist, recalled her husband saying, “If we’d built the bomb first, of course we would have used it. I’m glad, in some ways, that our facilities were destroyed.”
Adelstein is a special correspondent.
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Date: October 12, 2024 at 10:23:40
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Yrs Ago |
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