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Memories haunt Hiroshima survivors This morning, 60 years to the minute after the apocalypse, tens of thousands of people will pack Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. Wreaths will be laid and 1,000 doves set free. Temple bells will ring. In fact, thousands of peace activists have already marched through downtown Hiroshima. On Thursday, the activists called for a global ban on nuclear weapons. The march to the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was one of dozens of events being held in Hiroshima ahead of today's anniversary. Also on Friday, an appeal against nuclear weapons by Europe's left-wing parties and a declaration of mayors and parliament members was submitted to Greek Parliament President Anna Psarouda-Benaki. Thousands of the atomic bomb victims who were seared by the heat rays, some suffering burns to their internal organs, trudged towards the many rivers that run through Hiroshima in search of water. Barely able to walk, many drowned and their bloated bodies filled the waterways, according to survivors' accounts. For Yoriko Takeuchi, 87, this is always a difficult time of the year. On August 6, 1945, she lost just about everything. As laughing children hang strings of paper cranes, and TV crews stake out their positions for the main event, Takeuchi sits on a shady curb, her rake at her side. She and her volunteer cleaning crew have almost finished their six-hour shift sweeping up the park, and now she is taking a moment to reflect. A Hiroshima native, she had been evacuated with many other women and children before the atomic bomb fell on her city. When she returned in December 1945, she found that she had lost her home and many of her relatives. "All I could see was just a flat, smouldering field," she recalled. Hiroshima today is a thriving city of nearly 3 million, probably best known in Japan for the Carp, its baseball team. "It's a miracle how the city has recovered," said Takeuchi. The theme of peace permeates Hiroshima. The broad, tree-lined thoroughfare leading to the park is called the "Promenade of Peace." Hundreds of thousands visit Hiroshima's Peace Museum every year, and they are greeted at the entrance by a Peace Clock, which counts the days since the bomb was dropped. Every August 6, Hiroshima becomes the epicentre of the global peace movement, but the tone can turn surprisingly combative. Emotions are high ahead of the anniversary, as evidenced by the damage inflicted on a cenotaph whose inscription says: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake." The vandal is a suspected ultra-nationalist who apparently read the inscription to mean Japan might have been partially to blame for the bombing. Some Japanese still want nuke weapons The first speaker at Saturday's observances will be Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, who last year called for a total ban on nuclear weapons and accused the United States of "ignoring the United Nations and international law" by researching a next-generation mini-nuclear weapon. Hiroshima has made it an article of faith for Japan that it will never possess, develop or allow onto its territory any nuclear weapons. Yet the past few years, however, some members of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's conservative party have begun to question that stance. "It's just too much," said Shogo Kadoya, a 70-year-old retiree who grew up in Hiroshima but escaped the bombing. "They aren't hearing us." Estimates vary, but about 140,000 people are believed to have died when the B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped its deadly payload, turning Hiroshima from a typical provincial city to a flaming inferno like none seen before. Another plane, Bock's Car, bombed Nagasaki, on the southern Japan island of Kyushu, killing at least 80,000 three days later. On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered. Including those initially listed as missing or who died later from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of the dead in this city alone at 237,062. This year, 5,000 more names are to be added to the list. The feeling that their message is being lost is growing deeper here. 'Bomb good to end war' Charles Waldren, a native of Colorado, is an expert on the medical legacy of the atomic bomb. He is 71 and has spent his adult life studying the effects of radiation on humans and animals. For the past four years he has served as vice-chairman and chief of research for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, headquartered on a quiet hill within walking distance of Hiroshima's ground zero. Since 1948, the foundation has tracked the lives of 100,000 people who survived the bombing. Roughly 40,000 are still alive, and their average age is 71. "It was a horrible, horrible event," Waldren said. "But it could have been worse." He said research indicates those exposed to the bomb's radiation have only a five per cent higher likelihood of developing cancer than the general population. "It's smaller than people expected, which I think is an extraordinarily good thing." He added that there is also no clear link to hereditary mutations. "Only one in 20 who develops cancer does so because of irradiation," he said. "The risk from radiation is quite small compared with smoking." Waldren said he believes bombing Hiroshima was justified. "My brother was in the Battle of the Bulge," he said. "He was badly wounded, but they planned to ship him off to the Pacific. There was no doubt in my family that (dropping the bomb) was the right thing to do. (China Daily 08/06/2005 page6)
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