Hiroshima Day 2004

A wide range of community groups supported an event hosted by 
the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Commemoration Committee at the Effective 
Living Centre in Adelaide last Sunday. The gathering at the 
annual commemoration of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the 
Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was given 
encouraging news from the movement known as the Mayors for Peace 
to Ban Nuclear Weapons.

Professor Ian Maddocks introduced Felicity-Ann Lewis, the Mayor 
of the City of Marion, who has recently returned from Hiroshima. 
She gave a very moving account of her tour of the monuments, 
museums and parks of the rebuilt city. She believes that every 
world leader should be obliged to go to Hiroshima to learn the 
lessons of history and to feel the compassion of the local 
people. She supports the Mayors for Peace call for better 
outcomes from the crucial Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 
negotiations in 2005.

Yoshi, a young student of law and international studies at the 
University of Adelaide, spoke of his family's origins in 
Hiroshima. Yoshi lost two relatives in the bombing, including his 
great uncle. He recounted the tragic story of how the family 
searched the devastated city for their loved ones. He pointed out 
that the hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) have expressed their 
yearning for a world without nuclear weapons before the last 
hibakusha dies.

Julia Pitman of the Uniting Church gave an insightful review of 
the peace movement over the past century. Its role in the anti-
conscription campaigns in 1916 and 1917, the movement against the 
Vietnam War and, more recently, the protests against a nuclear 
waste dump in SA are part of an impressive record of achievement.

David Palmer, senior lecturer in American Studies at Flinders 
University, displayed material from a number of little known 
sources to show the extent of the cover up of the suffering in 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US bombing. The censorship of 
sources at the time helped create the impression of an "empty 
wasteland" rather than a scene of mass human misery. He compared 
the difficulties facing those wanting to set the record straight 
after the bombings to those put in the way of Michael Moore, the 
producer of Fahrenheit 9/11. Recent events highlight the need for 
Australians to press for a foreign policy independent of the US.

Fellow Flinders academic Paul Langley added details of how 
testing for radioactivity in the cities and even on the fuselage 
of the infamous Enola Gay B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb on 
Hiroshima was falsified. He traced some of the post-war history 
of weapons testing in Australia were truth was also a casualty.

Sydney

Around 300 people braved a cool winter evening in Sydney and 
marched from Town Hall to Hyde Park to commemorate the 59th 
anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb "Little Boy" on 
the people of Hiroshima.

Speakers from the Hiroshima Day Committee, the union movement, 
the Greens and Democrats warned that the USA's new Nuclear 
Missile Defence Shield and continued imperialist wars were 
causing a re-escalation of the nuclear threat. Australia's 
participation in those wars was not making Australia a safer 
place, but a more likely target.

Communist Party members distributed The Guardian and a 
pamphlet publicising the Party's campaign against the 
Militarisation of Australia.

Meetings and vigils were also held in other major cities.