Voices from Survivors of Hiroshima & Nagasaki: "I had dreamt the night before exactly as it happened in Nagasaki."

Hiroshima in Flames (Photo: City of Hiroshima)

Voices From Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (linked at the Gensuikyo (The Japan council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs site) is a profound collection of survivor testimonies describing the hours before, during, and after the atomic bombings.

The lists of titles of the testimonies read like lines of poetry, painting the terrible tapestry of individual human experiences as Hiroshima and Nagasaki passed through the chasm dividing reality before and after the bombings:

Witnesses to Hiroshima from the night of August 5 through the early afternoon of August 6, 1945

I left the place and escaped death.

It was 15 minutes after 8. It was as silent as a graveyard.

Rays shimmered like heat haze on the ground..

I thought Hiroshima was moaning...

I thought I was dead.

The water of the river blown off the ground just like a tornado.

Leaves were burning on the pine trees.

It seemed as if the sun covered half of the sky over Hiroshima.

Na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu, they chanted in their Buddhist prayers...

Witnesses to Hiroshima around noon through the evening, August 6, 1945

The dead sat up abruptly.

The burning bridge fell down.

Flames shot up into the sky like the Niagara Falls inverted.

Angels.

Now is the time to throw away our pens...

Everybody cried out loud.

My little brother died. I should not have yelled at him.

Maybe it was my mother's soul that visited me.

Witnesses to Hiroshima from August 7 through August 14, 1945

Daybreak, August 7th, 1945 Hiroshima

We dug the riverbank and buried her two daughters

The enemy used a new type of bomb

I was more afraid of the Living than the Dead.

Would this case possibly be caused by radioactivity?

The atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945

(Photograph by Hiromichi Matsuda, via Nagasaki City - Peace and Atomic Bomb Records)

Witnesses to Nagasaki from the evening of August 8 through through the evening, August 9, 1945

The farewell meal was rice balls.

I had dreamt the night before exactly as it happened in Nagasaki.

I still cannot forget my seven-year-old-son's back.

Three B-29s are heading toward the west.

My shoes were burning

The cloud like a demon was looking down.

People were dead with their eyes open

Cicadas shrieked, "Water, water!"

Don't cry, she was lulling her baby.  The baby was headless.

Even my soul was blown off.

Nagasaki will never recover.

The sun looked bloody red.

Your face looks like a monster.

This must be the end of the world.

It was dreadful to hear the groaning of thousands of people.

I said the prayer of Job.

I have forgotten the prayer.

I walked home crying for Nagasaki on fire.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 15, 16 in August to The first ten days of September, 1945 

War made us suffer so much.  It didn't matter whether we won or lost.

Radiation injury was the great majority.

Medical science had no chance against it.

I'd like to go where Saint Mary is, with my hair tied in three-pieces.

Pious and calm struggle against disease.

I have been to the "next world."

My younger brother appeared in my dream and told me the place he died.

"If we could die wet with rain, we were willing to do so."

I have to expose my fox-like face to the public and live.

I'm happy.  Buddha has come to meet me to Heaven.

Evening primroses had been in bloom over a burial mound where we buried the dead people.

Hiroshima Nagasaki, A-bomb victim's opinion.

Opposing to atomic bombs are the voices of A-bomb victims themselves.

We really went to stupid war.

I would want to be pilgrim and go to look for my daughter.

We have to revenge by achievement of peace...

A-bomb survivors must not escape from the fact of being bombed.

Parents, children and grandchildren -- three generations continue to carry on movement against atomic and hydrogen bombs.

Please make use of my story.

-JD

Peace Marchers arrive in Hiroshima: Call for a world free of nuclear & uranium weapons; Hiroshima Commemoration & Prayers for World Peace...

A very rare rainy August 6. Anniversary of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. 

Every year, many people from all over the world gather 

to commemmorate that tragic day and vow for a world free from nuclear weapons. 

(Photo: Peace March Journals)

August 4, 2014.  Peace Marchers on the stage of the Opening Plenary of 

2014 World Conference Against A and H Bombs!

(Photo: Peace March Journals on FB) 

Congratulations to our friends at Peace March (sponsored by Gensuikyo, the Japan Council against A and H-Bombs), who have arrived in Hiroshima.

We join all in Hiroshima and  Nagasaki in remembering the people who died and suffered from the nuclear bombings. We also remember all victims of nuclear test bombings (Marshall Islands, US, China, Russia (Kazakhstan), India (Rajasthan), Polynesia...), and uranium weapons since Aug 6 and  Aug 9, 1945. And join their united call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and for peace.

More about Peace March:

The National Peace March is a campaign for a world free from nuclear weapons while walking across Japan literally while calling ‘No more Hiroshima! No more Nagasaki! No more nuclear weapons!’ It starts on May 6 from different prefectures in Japan and converging in Hiroshima on August 4.

The Peace March started on June of 1958 when a Buddhist monk walked from the atomic bomb site in the Hiroshima Peace Park all the way to the World Conference in Tokyo covering a distance of 1000 kilometers. As he passed through several prefectures, many people joined him each day and the delegation became very big when they reached Tokyo.

For more than half a century already, the Peace March has been done every year without a break. Rain or shine more than 1000,000 marchers pass through more than 70% of municipalities in all of Japan’s prefectures each year. Anyone with the wish for the abolition of nuclear weapons is very much welcome to join.

Konnichiwa! Heiwa koushin desu! Hello, this is the Peace March!

See the great photos and read the inspiring entries about everyday Okinawan and Japanese people working for peace and a world without nuclear weapons at Peace March Journals.

August 5, 2015. Hiroshima. 

(Photo: Peace March Journals on FB) 

Filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka: "We need to face the problem otherwise it will never be solved..."

Via webdocumentary AU-DELA DU NUAGE °Yonaoshi 3.11, filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka:

The people of Fukushima think it's too late.

They think they have been contaminated and the country has abandoned them. They can't do anything about it so they better live without worrying.

A lot of people think like this. Today I read in the newspaper that the children of Fukushima say they will die anyway, so there's no need to study...

It is not only the cancer risk that grows. For example, heart attacks also. Cesium goes into the muscles...The risk of strokes also grows...Diabetes also...

In spite of that, they say everything is fine.

This is because these are diseases anyone can have...

Concerning the accident, we all have to face this: Face the fact that we've been contaminated and that it's not over, that there is still no serious compensation even though we lost our way of life, and that for a long time, our health will be exposed to danger.

Can we just go along saying, " Everything is fine."

We need to face the problem otherwise it will never be solved.

For many years, Japanese electricity companies have hidden information.  In 2007, it was revealed that nuclear power plants had hidden many accidents.  On this occasion, a complete report was ordered, with many details. It revealed 456 accidents. Among them, there had been very serious accidents. And they had hidden everything...

We lost trust...

They knew there was a meltdown but they didn't say it.

To avoid the explosion and release internal pressure, they vent radioactive vapor into the air, releasing a lot of radiation. But when they did this, they didn't inform the population to escape in a certain direction. They didn't reveal the quantity released into the air. They didn't say anything.

And it was only after the accident, one, two, three months later, that the inhabitants of the cities nearby, Futaba, Okuma, or Minami-Soma, finally learnt about the facts, one after the other.

This was an unbelievable situation.

They were not prepared for crisis management, although these facts were openly revealed, one year has passed, and there is still no one to take responsibility.

Before and after the disaster, the very same people are still in charge.  It is an incredible situation.

If they had changed to new people, people we can trust, it would have been different...

---

Hitomi Kamanaka is a Japanese documentary filmmaker known particularly for her films on the danger of atomic power and the nuclear industry in Japan. In 2012, she directed a movie on internal contamination where she interviews 4 doctors from Japan and Russia who studied the consequences of Hiroshima, Tchernobyl, and now Fukushima.

ドキュメンタリー映画監督, 鎌仲ひとみは2012年に発表した映画で、広島、チェルノビルそして福島での被曝（ひ

ばく）の影響を研究している日本とロシアの４人の医師にインタビューしている。

---

Interview conducted by Keiko Courdy for 霧の向こう＊AU-DELA DU NUAGE°Yonaoshi 3.11_ Japan Webdoc project in Tokyo on June 18, 2012

Background: Hitomi Kamanaka's website: http://kamanaka.com/

Background: 

Hitomi Kamanaka's website: http://kamanaka.com/

"Complicity and Victimhood: Director Kamanaka Hitomi's Nuclear Warnings" (Norma Field, The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 2, 2011)

Naomi Toyoda: The Human Cost of Uranium Weapons

The destructive US legacy of "regime change" in Iraq has been foremost in the minds of those who joined the global outcry against the Obama administration's call to bomb  Syria.  Images of white phosphorus bombings; prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib; millions of Iraqi refugees; stories of young widows and children forced to prostitute themselves to survive; and reports of perpetual violence in Iraq are now imprinted in our collective memory.

Many in Japan are especially sensitive to the suffering caused by depleted uranium (DU) to Iraqi hibakusha: children born with mutations and Iraqis of all ages suffering from cancer.

 Naomi Toyoda has covered the human cost and environmental devastion of the US invasion of Iraq, depleted uranium weapons, Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing survivors, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He is co-editor of The Unending Iraq War: Questioning Anew from Fukushima.

Toyoda's exhibition, The Human Cost of Uranium Weapons, toured Europe in 2006. The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons has an online gallery of the Japanese photojournalist's compassionate photographs which reflect the profound suffering caused by radioactive weapons in Iraq.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a radioactive heavy metal waste product of the nuclear power and nuclear weapons industry. Their nanoparticle fallout has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and enters the body through inhalation and ingestion, where they pass through cell walls..  DU can cause or accelerate cancer, mutate genes, and affect the kidneys, immune system, nervous system, respiratory system, and reproductive system.  The United Nations Human Rights Commission considers DU munitions to be "weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect" incompatible with international humanitarian law.

The US is the largest producer and user of DU weapons. The US military has produced DU weapons from nuclear waste since the 1970's.  The US  used uranium weapons in Iraq in 1991; in Bosnia from 1994 to 1995;  in Afghanistan from 2001; and in Iraq from 2003. NATO used depleted uranium weapons in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. The US tested depleted uranium in Puerto Rico and Okinawa; the UK tested it in Scotland.

The UN General Assembly has twice called for greater transparency over DU weapons use. In December 2012, 155 countries voted in favor, however the US, UK, France and Israel opposed the text, which also acknowledged public health risks from DU use.

On the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, Democracy Now! interviewed  Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail who described the legacy of the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus (a chemical weapon) in Iraq and the ongoing plight of refugees in an interview,  "Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq with Mass Displacement and an Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers":

...in 2005 we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000, so a massive escalation that continues.

 And going on to Fallujah, because I wrote about this a year ago, and then I returned to the city again this trip, we are seeing an absolute crisis of congenital malformations of newborn. There is one doctor, a pediatrician named Dr. Samira Alani, working on this crisis in the city. She’s the only person there registering cases. And she’s seeing horrific birth defects. I mean, these are extremely hard to look at. They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to, because of the amount of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military during both of their brutal attacks on the city of 2004, as well as other toxic munitions like white phosphorus, among other things.

 And so, what this has generated is, from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the aftermath of—in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were—that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II. So, Dr. Samira Alani actually visited with doctors in Japan, comparing statistics, and found that the amount of congenital malformations in Fallujah is 14 times greater than the same rate measured in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings.

These types of birth defects, she said—there are types of congenital malformations that she said they don’t even have medical terms for, that some of the things they’re seeing, they’ve never seen before. They’re not in any of the books or any of the scientific literature that they have access to. She said it’s common now in Fallujah for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, baby’s being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye—really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects. And it is ongoing...

Stunningly, as bad as things were under Saddam—and we have to keep in mind this perspective of Saddam in the wake of a brutal eight-year war with Iran and then the genocidal sanctions for 13 years, from 1991 up until the beginning of this invasion in March 2003—as bad as it was under Saddam, with the repression and the detentions and the torture and the killings, the overall feeling of Iraqis today, in Baghdad and other places in Iraq where I went this trip, was that things are much worse now...

Doug Rokke. who has a PhD in health physics, is one of the many people who have had direct experience with depleted uranium who advocate against it.  When the Gulf War started, he prepared soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.  In "War Against Ourselves," a 2003 interview at YES! Magazine, he describes how DU caused deaths of his colleagues:

DU is an extremely effective weapon. Each tank round is 10 pounds of solid uranium-238 contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, americium. It is pyrophoric, generating intense heat on impact, penetrating a tank because of the heavy weight of its metal. When uranium munitions hit, it's like a firestorm inside any vehicle or structure, and so we saw tremendous burns, tremendous injuries. It was devastating.

The US military decided to blow up Saddam's chemical, biological, and radiological stockpiles in place, which released the contamination back on the US troops and on everybody in the whole region. The chemical agent detectors and radiological monitors were going off all over the place. We had all of the various nerve agents. We think there were biological agents, and there were destroyed nuclear reactor facilities. It was a toxic wasteland. And we had DU added to this whole mess...

The half life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. And we left over 320 tons all over the place in Iraq...

 What I saw...led me to one conclusion: uranium munitions must be banned from the planet, for eternity, and medical care must be provided for everyone, not just the US...but for the American citizens of Vieques, for the residents of Iraq, of Okinawa, of Scotland, of Indiana, of Maryland, and now Afghanistan and Kosovo...

War has become obsolete, because we can't deal with the consequences on our warriors or the environment, but more important, on the noncombatants. When you reach a point in war when the contamination and the health effects of war can't be cleaned up because of the weapons you use, and medical care can't be given to the soldiers who participated in the war on either side or to the civilians affected, then it's time for peace.

---

More background:

Naomi Toyoda's website (The Asahi Shimbun)

"ICBUW-Japan commemorates 10th Anniversary - U.S. March 2003 Iraq Occupation"
(Int. Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), May 9, 2013)

"A decade on and depleted uranium contamination still blights Iraq" ((Int. Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), March 7, 2013)

"1/250th of a Second — Naomi Toyoda" (Peace Boat Voyage 62, June 7, 2008)

"Iraq – A Nuclear Polluted Land" (Naomi Toyoda, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2003)

"A Speech by Naomi Toyoda at the EU Exhibition, The Human Cost of Uranium Weapons" (Int. Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, Hiroshima Office, May 14-16, 2007)

JIM-NET - Japan Iraq Medical Network (Japan-based network of NGOs, private medical clinics and private companies that provide technical, efficient and continuous support for Iraqi children with cancer)

Save the War Children: Ban Uranium Weapons (Website of Japanese photojournalist Takashi Morizumi)

"Discounted Casualties — the human cost of depleted uranium" (Akira Toshiro, The Chugoku Shimbun)

Child Victims of War (UK-based NGO that exposes the impact of modern warfare on children)

-JD

Keiji Nakazawa in Barefoot Gen's Hiroshima: "I decided to use manga to confront the Bomb."

Trailer from director Yuko Ishida's Barefoot Gen''s Hiroshima (Hadashi no Gen ga Mita Hiroshima) a documentary film in which the camera man (Koshiro Otsu) follows "Barefoot Gen" creator Keiji Nakazawa as he visits neighborhoods throughout Hiroshima and recalls living through the nuclear explosion when he was six-years-old.

The film opened in Tokyo on August 6, 2011, and Nakazawa died of lung cancer a year later, on December 19, 2012.

Roger Pulvers' wonderful  film review at  the JT connects the nuclear radioactive dots between Hiroshima in 1945 and Fukushima in 2011:

When the bomb dropped in 1945, Nakazawa was a 6-year-old, first-year pupil at Kanzaki National Elementary School, which was a mere 1.2 km from ground zero. Luckily, on his way into school, he lingered by the wall adjacent to the front gate to speak with someone, and that wall saved his life...

Nakazawa’s father, sister and brother...were all crushed by pillars and beams, and killed. His father had been a vocal opponent of Japan’s war of aggression, and he had spent more than a year in prison as a result. The family had been ostracized by the community. This is a bitter irony of all indiscriminate bombing, since it murders many who are not only blameless non-combatants but also proponents of peace.

Nakazawa never forgot what he saw. He turned his personal experience and that of the people of Hiroshima into a series of manga that was carried in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump for 12 years from 1973. The story of Barefoot Gen kept the plight of the victims of the bomb and its radiation in the minds of citizens of the nation that had become the most intimate ally of the country that caused that holocaust, the United States.

This fact led the Japanese government to isolate the issue as something local — to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other city atom-bombed by the U.S. three days after Hiroshima — as opposed to national. In addition, the vigorous pursuit of “atoms for peace,” an American initiative to promote nuclear power spearheaded in the early 1950s by President Dwight Eisenhower further divorced the radiation spread by the bombs from its possible spread by reactors generating electricity all around Japan.

It is thanks to Nakazawa, and eminent authors such as Kenzaburo Oe, Hisashi Inoue and, most recently, Haruki Murakami — all of whom have taken up the nuclear tragedies of 1945 — that the dangers of radiation lingering in our bodies, our soil, our water, and in the air, are now finally being understood by the Japanese people.

However, a truly remarkable aspect of the story of Barefoot Gen...is its message of optimism and hope. The hero, little Gen, stunned by the devastation and death surrounding him, says, “I’m going to live, to live! I’m going to live through this, you’ll see!”

In those pages...the stench of destruction are everywhere, just as in the prefectures of Tohoku most badly affected by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. Yet Gen does not give up hope...

He goes on to point out that the gen in the name is the same character as that in the word genki, which means full of vitality and strong of mettle...

In his message to children, Nakazawa states, “If you come to feel that you wish for a world without war and without atomic bombs, for a world where peace is priceless...then the subject of this film, namely Keiji Nakazawa, will be content.”

Motofumi Asai's in-depth interview, "Barefoot Gen, the Atomic Bomb and I: The Hiroshima Legacy Nakazawa Keiji"i, translated by Richard H. Minear at APJ: Japan Focus explores the anti-war beliefs of Nakazawa's father as well as those of the writer himself who counsels us to be resilient and persistent in the support of respect of life, human dignity, and an ethos of peace:

In order to effect change, each person has to work away at it. I’m a cartoonist, so cartoons are my only weapon. I think everyone has to appeal in whatever position they’re in.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we gradually enlarged our imaginations! We have to believe in that possibility. Doubt is extremely strong, but we have to feel that change is possible. Inspire ourselves. And like Auschwitz, Hiroshima too must sing out more and more about human dignity.

Steve Nguyen: Hiroshima Revisited

In public imagery, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been fixated in time, at the respective moments the two cities were nuclear bombed.

Linda Hoaglund's recent film, Things Left Behind. a cinematic exploration of  photographer Miyako Ishiuchi's exhibition of the same title,  pierces through to the other side of 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945, to explore (and humanize) the lives of the people who died on that day.

In Hiroshima Revisited Steve Nguyen breaks through to the other side of that moment: the ongoing process of rebuilding and healing in the resurrected city.  This beautiful, sensitive short film might be considered a personal sequel to  HIBAKUSHA, an animated documentary/drama featuring his friend, Kaz Suyeishi, now an 84-year-old woman, who "recalls her most vivid and horrific experiences as an 18-year-old Japanese American student during the morning of August 6, 1945 when the atomic bomb dropped on her hometown."

This look at Hiroshima today brings home not only the striving of Hiroshima survivors and their descendants to rebuild their city and lives, but also the struggle of survivors of manmade annihilation throughout our world (Guernica, Chonqing, Warsaw, and many hundreds of cities, regions...)  who have similarly sought to restore what has been destroyed and broken by war.

Peace March: "No More Hiroshima. No More Nagasaki. No More Fukushima. No More Hibakusha."

Last Day of the Peace March - Arrival in Hiroshima on August 4, 2013

This year, around 1,000 people started the march from Tokyo including Malaya Fabros, nuclear-free activist from the Philippines.

Her insightful, lively, soulful "Peace March Journal" is filled with great photos and video clips.  A wonderful introduction to Gensuikyo  (The Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs), the history of the Peace March, the old Tokaido Highway (Edo-era road that connects Tokyo with Kyoto), Japan's diverse local cultures of towns and regions, and some of many Japanese people who want to atone for the destruction and suffering caused by Japan during the Pacific War, maintain the Japanese Peace Constitution, and deepen efforts for a nuclear-free, war-free world:

The Peace Marchers have arrived in Hiroshima Peace Park this August 4!

The Peace March is an annual march in Japan since 1958. Every May 6 to August 4, the Peace Marchers call for peace and nuclear weapons abolition in the streets of Japan.

So What is the Peace March?

In 1958, a monk from Hiroshima decided to walk from Hiroshima all the way to Tokyo to attend the World Conference. Back then, the World Conference was usually held in Tokyo. He started alone and eventually many people joined as he passed through different cities, wards and prefectures along the way...From then on, the Peace March was held every year. There has never been a gap year. Ever.

There had been some revisions from 1958. The World Conference is now held annually at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At present, there are several courses of the Peace March. The quite popular one is the Tokyo Hiroshima Course. There is also a course starting from up north in Hokkaido all the way to Tokyo. Another one is from Okinawa to Nagasaki...

As you can see from the schedule and the courses, the Peace March is a daily demonstration on the streets almost all over Japan to campaign for the end of nuclear weapons and for a real lasting peace around the world...From what I saw so far as today, the Peace March is a strong and creative symbol of the Japanese people’s perservering, unrelenting and patient struggle to make sure that the wrongs made from their past would not be repeated in their country and anywhere else in the world.

More excerpts:

Day 49 - June 23, 2013, Mukou City, Nagaoka-kyo City, Hachiman City

Today’s course passed through Mukou City, Nagaokakyo City, Oyamazaki Town and finished at Hachiman City Hall. ...

I would like to share that the Hokkaido-Tokyo Course of Prace March is currently in Fukushima...Many of its constituents still have not recovered and many of them are still in fear of exposure to radiation.

The bigger challenge is that the government is not giving the nation a real picture of the damage in Fukushima. The residents have monitored radiation levels in their areas and saw alarming results in contrast to what is actually published. The victims of radiation in Fukushima are beginning to be the new batch of hibakushas. Many members of the peace movement in Japan, especially the Hibakushas from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are expressing their support to victims in Fukushima. This is why our popular plea in the Peace March and World Conference has been revised to this:

No More Hiroshima.
No More Nagasaki.
No More Fukushima.
No More Hibakusha.

Day 33, June 7: Iwakura, Ichinomiya and Konan City, Aichi Prefecture

The deputy mayor [Toshiyuki Akahori] shared with us the several peace activities of Iwakura City... Iwakura City’s Peace Declaration was signed on 1985 and they have always been a nuclear-free zone...The city hall currently employs solar power, energy recycling, and water saving methods.

Day 21, May 26: Fujieda City Hall to Kanaya Local Community Center

...On July 26 1945, several days before the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, sample bombs equivalent to that of Fatman (the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima) were dropped by US in Shimada city...It should also be noted that carpet bombs and these test bombs sprayed over many parts of Japan also heavily devastated the nation...


Day 34, June 8: Komaki City and Kasugai City, Aichi Prefecture

...Mizuno san is a hibakusha...Despite what she has gone through from the past, she is now very healthy and active in Aichi Prefecture’s Peace Movement. She is now 90-years-old but looks way younger...

Before the party ended, Mizuno san shared her insights. She said that the Hibakushas fought very hard for.. compensation by the government...

She also shared her compassion for the victims in Fukushima. They are also considered hibakusha, but the government has not yet considered them official hibakushas so they cannot claim free medical support. The voice of victims in Fukushima is one of the latest issues supported by the Japanese peace movement...

Day 44, June 18: Omi Hachiman City

Japan Gensuikyo launched its worldwide signature campaign several years ago to show to the world leaders and everyone that many people want a nuclear free world... From what I remember, they have collected around 2 million signatures already and are aiming for more...

Wherever you are, you can join the signature campaign by visiting the Japan Gensuikyo website: www.antiatom.org...

Resurrecting Hiroshima: Things Left Behind

"Things Left Behind" is the title of an exhibition by photographer Miyako Ishiuchi and a documentary about the exhibition by Japan-born filmmaker Linda Hoaglund.  They leave one with the sense of two women wrestling with not only history and time, but also death itself, in their attempts to pierce through to the other side of 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945.

Their search is about facing trauma; the anguish of loss, the striving to resurrect the past; the invocation of spirits — if only for a while.  These photographs and this film are an invitation for us to meet and lay to rest the dead of Hiroshima by meditating upon the things they left behind.

Things Left Behind is playing with English subtitles every day at 4:30 p.m. at Iwanami Hall in Tokyo, until August 16, the day after the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 11:30 a.m. screening time in Japanese only.  Steven Okazaki's White Light, Black Rain is also showing at 2 p.m. and 6:50 p.m.

ICAN: "What Nuclear Weapons Really Do to People & the Environment"

Int. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Statement at the conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo on March 2 & 3, 2013: "We wanted governments and diplomats to see what nuclear weapons really do to people and the environment. Happy to share with you the Civil Society video statement at the conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo"

During the US military occupation of Japan, US authorities censored all media discussions of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But by 1952, the end of the Occupation, accounts of nuclear survivors’ ongoing struggles with radiation sickness became widespread.

 In 1954, 23 crew members of the Lucky Dragon Japanese fishing trawler were irradiated when the US nuclear test bombed the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. In protest, 30 million Japanese people — over a third of the population — signed a petition demanding the end of nuclear test bombings.

The US nuclear test bombed islands in the Asia-Pacific over 100 times from 1946 to 1962. Survivors of the Bikini Atoll bombings have suffered from miscarriages, profound birth defects, and high rates of cancer. The US also nuclear test bombed the American Southwest over 1,000 times.*  Washington's most recent (underground) nuclear test bombing took place in December 2012, with almost no media coverage. Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui commented,  “I wonder why President Obama, who said he would seek a nuclear-free world, carried out the test."

Despite the well-known health and environmental consequences of nuclear radiation, and widespread protest, France nuclear bombed Mururoa, and its sister atoll Fangataufa in French Polynesia from 1966 to 1995.  Greenpeace reported that France's first nuclear (plutonium) bombing sucked all the water from the lagoon, "raining dead fish and mollusks down on the atoll", and  spread radioactive contamination across the Pacific to Peru and New Zealand.

The UK nuclear test bombed Australia from 1955 to 1963, exposing Australians, especially aboriginal Australians, to nuclear radiation. The Australian government forcibly removed tribal members from their homelands; when they attempted to return, they developed radiation-related health disorders. Radioactive contamination destroyed their way of life.

Although the human costs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are now known, the suffering of many hundreds of thousands of other nuclear (test bombings, depleted uranium weapons, uranium mining, nuclear weapons production, nuclear waste dumping) survivors worldwide remain much less known. However their suffering reflect a globally interrelated web of nuclear violence that touches us all.

* The National Cancer Institute runs a program to help Americans identify if they were exposed to radioactive 1-131 fallout from US nuclear test bombings  between 1951 and 1963; this isotope can cause thyroid disorder or cancer.

Peace Boat's 63rd Voyage: Atomic bombing survivors (Hibakusha) dialogue with Agent Orange victims

(Agent Orange victim Phuong folding paper cranes with Toshiko Tanaka,

atomic bomb survivor from Hiroshima. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

(Little Van, an Agent Orange victim from Vietnam, sailed with Peace Boat for a week, and got a lot of love from Peace Boat participants, here with Marianna Aoki. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

(In Da Nang with a group of nuclear bombing survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

and Agent Orange victims. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

Via Rose Welsch, some remarkable photos from Peace Boat's 63rd voyage "for a Nuclear-Free World" that took place from September 2008 to January 2009. During the voyage, 102 Hibakusha visited 22 ports in 20 countries over three months to share their testimonies with people from around the world and called for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

At their first stop in Da Nang, Vietnam, the Hibakusha met and exchanged testimony with Agent Orange survivors and 2nd- and 3rd-generation victims.

Starting on August 10, 1961, the US military began spraying Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, throughout Vietnam to destroy forest canopy and farmland. The result: an ecological and public health catastrophe. According to the Vietnamese government, up to four million people in Vietnam suffer from diseases related to Agent Orange. Similarlly to nuclear radiation, Agent Orange damages DNA, and causes birth deformities. Just as the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki radiation impacted later generations in Japan, so has Agent Orange in Vietnam (and as is depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Da Nang was particularly affected because the US military stored and loaded Agent Orange onto planes at a coastal air base there. Phuong & Little Van, in the above photographs, are from Da Nang, and joined the Peace Boat Hibakusha Project for a week of sharing, mutual support, and love.

Children's Peace Monument - Hiroshima

Hiroshima Day- ICAN booklet on catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons

Nagasaki bomb victim Sumiteru Taniguchi looks at a photo of himself taken in 1945.
(Source: ICAN Hiroshima Day booklet)

"As a 16-year-old boy, I was riding my bicycle down the street when the atomic bomb exploded 1.8 km away, scorching my back and leaving the skin on my right arm hanging down from the shoulder to the fingertips."

After 17 excruciating operations and a lifetime of struggle, Sumiteru Taniguchi, 67 year since the bombing of Hiroshima, still fights pro-actively to make sure no one has to suffer what he experienced in Hiroshima ever again.

In remembrance of Hiroshima Day and all of the past and potential future victims of the nuclear industry, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has launched a booklet for free digital distribution on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. Download here: http://www.icanw.org/files/ICAN-CHH.pdf

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a movement of non-government organizations in 60 countries advocating such a treaty, believes that discussions about nuclear weapons must focus not on narrow concepts of national security, but on the effects of these weapons on human beings – our health, our societies, and the environment on which we all depend.

ICAN notes that the same humanitarian discourse was used successfully in banning landmines and cluster munitions. While sharing the stories of anti-nuclear advocates and the survivors of nuclear bombing, testing, and mining the booklet provides pertinent information on:

• the known existing nuclear arsenals in the world
• immediate- and long- term effects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• the devastation that would arise should regional nuclear war break out
• the consequences of nuclear testing
• the impact of mining on marginalized communities
• the massive diversion of public resources for the production of nuclear materials and technology
• currently standing international bans on weapons of mass destruction
• ICAN recommendations on how WE CAN act

With nuclear weapons and nuclear-based technology (including nuclear reactors) still proliferating no one is safe should disaster arise. Just recently, Japan's former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba's statement about the use of Japan's nuclear reactors as a deterrent was made public: "Having nuclear plants shows to other nations that Japan can make nuclear weapons."

In Nov. 22, 2011 Ishiba stressed that Japan isn’t about to make nuclear weapons. But, he said, with nearby North Korea suspected of working on them, Japan needs to assert itself and say it can also make them - but is choosing not to.

(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Unless we have a paradigm shift now, we will continue to be used by governments and industry as test mice of this obsolete nuclear deterrent ideology, living in a house of cards on a slanted table.

This booklet serves as a heart-wrenching reminder of the tragedies of the nuclear industry and the political stranglehold the industry maintains despite the enormous destruction it causes. It is a useful resource for anyone just learning about the consequences of nuclear weapons or fighting to make the shift to a nuclear-free world a reality.

Learn more about how you can abolish nuclear weapons:

ICAN homepage: http://www.icanw.org/
ICAN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icanw.org
- posted by Jen Teeter

From Hiroshima & Nagasaki to Fukushima: Dr. Shuntaro Hida describes censorship of information about the effects of low-dose nuclear radiation

"How many times do we have to be exposed to nuclear radiation?" This video footage is of Dr. Shuntaro Hida speaking in front of Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima city at the "One Million Action Hoping to Live a Life without Nuclear Power" held April 26, 2011. Dr. Hida treated Hiroshima survivors exposed to the high dose of radiation from the Hiroshima atomic bombing. He also treated patients exposed to low doses of nuclear radiation; found them suffering from a disease called "Bura Bura Syndrome" caused by low-dose internal exposure. Dr. Hida describes the US military occupation's censorship of information about the health effects of nuclear radiation. (Original footage: Sunameri (Finless Porpoise) YouTube channel. This clip with English subtitles: via Canale di Koikzuka77. Dr. Hida is also featured in Hitomi Kamanaka's "Radiation: A Slow Death, A new Generation of Hibakusha".)

In "A-bomb doctor warns of further Fukushima woes"  (JT via Kyodo), Dr. Shuntaro Hida, a Hiroshima survivor & physician, links lack of public awareness about the effects of radiation with US military occupation censorship of information about the effects of radiation after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

The amount of research into and public knowledge about internal exposure to radiation is still limited because the United States "concealed" information about the problem for a long time after it dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Hida says. "It is a fight to change the mindset of each and every person," Hida says, recalling his decades-long struggles to make people aware of the danger of internal exposure to radiation amid a lack of scientific data.

"Under the Occupation until the early 1950s, people were forbidden from "speaking, recording or doing research into symptoms of atomic-bomb survivors," he says. "I was stalked by the military police when I was talking about what I witnessed in Hiroshima," and arrested several times by the Occupation forces for "not abiding by their Occupation policy."

Hida, as a representative of a group of medical professionals called the Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions, urged U.N. Secretary General U Thant in 1975 to hold an international conference on the effects of radiation on hibakusha, which was realized two years later.

"It's anger that has kept me speaking to this day. How could I remain silent even 67 years after the bombings?" Hida says.

Dr. Hida's 2006 memoir, Under the Mushroom-Shaped Cloud in Hiroshima, is available online at this link.

June 12: 30th Anniversary of the Historic Million People Nuclear-Free March in New York City

(Photo: Int. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN))

On June 12, 1982, in New York City, one million people demonstrated against nuclear weapons; and for an end to the Reagan administration's military build-up, arms race, and military violence in Latin America (El Salvador). This was the largest political demonstration in world history (until the Feb. 15, 2003 global march protesting the U.S.-UK "preemptive" war against Iraq).

Many thanks for the reminder of this anniversary to No More Fukushimas Peacewalk, organized by the engaged Buddhists of Nipponzan Myohoji, a group known for global witness for peace:

June 12th will be the 30th anniversary of the anti-nuclear rally that drew a million people to New York City. That event was a major touchstone for Nipponzan Myohoji-- 5 peace walks converged on NYC with their teacher, Venerable Nichidatsu Fuji (Guruji). Here is some great archival footage (in Japanese) of Nipponzan Myohoji & Guruji in NYC and then Bainbridge Island Seattle.

(Photo: Int. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Found this short overview video of the march by theAmerican Friends (Quaker) Service Committed (AFSC) :

...And this funky but also great English language footage of the march by NY cable television producers Coca Crystal and Jonathan Burke.

A Nuclear Power Free World is Possible- Conference Jan 14-15 Yokohama

A nuclear power free Japan and a nuclear power free world are possible. This weekend over 8000 people will gather in Yokohama Japan to share information on how to make this attainable goal a reality. Growing out of a coalition of Japan-based NGOs including the Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre (CNIC), FoE Japan, Green Action, Greenpeace Japan, the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP), and Peace Boat, the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World will:

• bring together the voices of people who suffer from radiation exposure all around the world, whether by nuclear power or nuclear weapons - “Global Hibakusha”.
• facilitate the sharing of information with one another. Participants will learn from each other's experiences to illustrate the human and environmental consequences of the nuclear chain.
• aim to demonstrate that it is realistically possible to create a society that is not dependent on nuclear power.
• create a road map for the safe removal of existing nuclear power plants.
• present alternative policies based on renewable energy and propose action plans that can be implemented by Japan and other countries.

Mémé Madoka Watanabe, a Peace Boat staffer coordinating publicity within the Japanesecommunity shared some insight on Peace Boat's involvement in organizing the conference:

The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have both had a dramatic impact around the world. In response to this massive disaster and its tragic consequences to people's lives and environment, the people of Japan are trying to take steps towards recovery. Meanwhile, the nuclear power plant is still unstable and workers are forced to continue working in life-threatening conditions. As the radioactive contamination spreads, many people including children are forced to suffer from prolonged radiation exposure, unable to evacuate due to lack of support from the government.

It is vital that we do not continue to make the same mistakes. It is now time for humanity to put an end to the nuclear age that started with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Japan, well over half the population now supports the goal of breaking away from nuclear power. However, many people question whether it is practically possible to bring nuclear power to an end.

For these reasons and more, a coalition of Japan-based Peace Boat is acting as the secretariat for the conference on behalf of the coalition of Japan based NGO's.

Watanabe stressed how the event is a positive step for the world to move towards eliminating nuclear power as an option:

This event will be an important and positive step for Japan and other countries towards taking action for a nuclear power free world. The presence of both organizations and independent citizens will show that efforts since the disaster to learn from Fukushima have not gone unnoticed. We aim to learn from Fukushima, exchange lessons about nuclear power from around the world and make clear the need to break away from nuclear power. It is also a chance for us to show the people of Fukushima, many of whom feel despondent about the future, that positive action is being taken.The conference will bring together ideas from around the globe to propose action plans that can be carried out by Japan and other countries all over the world.

She also noted how the conference is an outgrowth of other related Peace Boat activities:

Activities such as the Global Voyage for a Nuclear Free World - Peace Boat Hibakusha Project, bringing survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings around the world to give testimony and advocate for nuclear abolition, while meeting with people affected by the nuclear chain around the world, have contributed to public education about the need to move towards a nuclear free world. Peace Boat also carries out other activities promoting nuclear weapon free zones, disarmament for development, and more.

Since March 17, 2011 in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Peace Boat has been active in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture, one of the hardest hit cities on the coast of northeast Japan. Peace Boat is acting in a coordination role between Ishinomaki’s local government and the many NGOs, institutions and individuals offering help in the area and dispatching volunteers each week. With 10,000 volunteers to date. Some of the relief and recovery activities include preparing and serving hot meals, delivering relief goods, cleaning mud out of homes and businesses and salvaging fishing equipment.More recently volunteers have been supporting the communities in the Temporary Houses by distributing a newsletter and becoming part of the community as well as helping to identify and serve their needs. Their presence not only supports the physical recovery of the towns but also gives the local community the encouragement to rebuild.

- Posted by Jen Teeter

Hiroshima 2011 Citizens' Peace Declaration - 広島 2011 市民による平和宣言

Via Peace Philosophy Centre...The "Citizens Peace Declaration 2011," by a group of NGOs including The Article 9 Group Hiroshima and Peace Link Hiroshima/Kure/Iwakuni, who organize the annual 8/6 Hiroshima Gathering for Peace.

This year, 2,000 people gathered at the "die-in" demonstration at the A-bomb dome, followed by a protest walk to the headquarters of Chugoku Electric to oppose nuclear power and the plan to build a new nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki.

The 2011 Citizens’ Peace Declaration

August 6, 2011

In 1938, with the help of Lise Mitner, the German chemist Otto Hahn discovered the nuclear fission of uranium. Just seven years later, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indiscriminately killing many civilians in these two cities. This criminal act of mass killing with a tsunami of radio-active fire can only be described as “human madness.” Yet sadly more madness was to follow, as the nuclear powers of the world, particularly the U.S. and Russia, developed and produced further nuclear weapons. As a consequence, radioactive contamination rapidly became a serious global problem, due to uranium mining, production of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear tests conducted in various parts of the world.

In December 1953, at the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, unexpectedly launched the policy “Atoms for Peace,” a concept to promote “the peaceful use” of nuclear energy. The primary reason for launching this policy was an attempt by the U.S. Government to curtail the power of the Soviet Union, which had carried out its first hydrogen bomb test in August that year. “Atoms for Peace” was devised to persuade Western nations to accept plans by the U.S. government and American investments to produce nuclear fuel and technology. Japan was among the most important of the targeted nations. Indeed, it soon became subjugated to the U.S. in two crucial ways: it came under the U.S. nuclear umbrella as part of the military strategy that evolved; and nuclear fuel and technology became part of its energy policy. This has had profound ramifications. On the one hand, U.S. military bases located in Japan, particularly that in Okinawa, were extensively used for many wars that the U.S. engaged in, such as those in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf and elsewhere. On the other hand, the building of nuclear power plants induced the structural corruption among collaborating politicians, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, and caused severe environmental problems. As a consequence, the U.S. – Japan Security Treaty, based on the nuclear deterrence strategy, as well as the leak of radiation from nuclear power plants and accumulated nuclear waste have long been threatening the livelihoods and well-being of the Japanese people. Despite this, the Japanese government firmly established, and continues to maintain, a political system which permits little criticism of these two issues.

The Japanese government, together with the electric power companies and the nuclear industry, has for many years promoted the myth that nuclear power is clean and safe, covering up various accidents at nuclear power plants and related facilities. The danger manifested by major accidents such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have also been consistently ignored. The fatal accident at the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant was not in fact an “accident” caused by a natural calamity, but rather a pending time bomb of “self destruction” which was destined to go off. Through its policies the Japanese government is now punishing its own people, as well as those in neighboring nations, with dangerous doses of radiation.

Despite the national crisis, however, not only Japanese cabinet members, but most Diet members, too, are now busy with their own power politics and are therefore totally incapable of dealing with the grave situation that confronts the victims of the earthquake and nuclear accident. As these politicians have neither the strong political commitment to protect civilians, nor any long-term vision on energy and environmental issues, the government countermeasures for this disaster have been less than effective, and there is political chaos. This state of confusion has provided an ideal environment for U.S. military forces to carry out training of their own special troops, specializing in radiation problems, as well as Marines, under the misleading name “Operation Tomodachi.” Every year Japanese taxpayers pay almost US$ 2.5 billion to maintain such U.S. troops in Japan.

Many A-bomb survivors from 1945 have died – often after a lifetime of suffering - or are still suffering from various diseases caused by the blast, fire or radiation. They live with the constant fear that they may suddenly be struck down by a fatal disease like cancer or leukemia. The use of nuclear weapons, which indiscriminately kill large numbers of people for decades afterwards, is clearly “a crime against humanity.” Yet the scale of damage to people and the environment that could be caused by a major accident at a nuclear power plant, where radiation is emitted either from the nuclear vessel or spent fuel rods, may be comparable. In this sense, a nuclear power accident could be seen as an “act of indiscriminate mass destruction” and so “an unintentionally committed crime against humanity.” The Japanese government is trying to cover up this event, adopting an inappropriate protection standard set by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection).

The wisdom of Hiroshima – that human beings and nuclear power, whether in the form of weapons or energy, cannot co-exist – must be reaffirmed and should be utilized to strengthen and expand our anti-nuclear and anti-war movements. We need to reflect on our hitherto narrow application of the expression “No More Hibakusha (victims of radiation)”, so that it covers not only A-Bomb survivors, but all victims of radiation, including those of nuclear power plant accidents. We need to consider the pain of all the victims of radiation and to think about drastically changing our society that so heavily relies on nuclear technology. Not only do we need to abolish nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, but we must also devise ways to initiate a hitherto impossible, totally new, peaceful and environmentally harmonious society.

(Coordinator and Author: Yuki Tanaka)

Filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka on the effects of nuclear weapons & nuclear energy plants

Interview with filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka featured in "Atomic Mom" (a documentary about two mothers: a scientist who facilitated the US nuclear bomb program and a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing).

In this clip filmed shortly after 3/11,  prophetic filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka talks about her trilogy of documentaries exploring the effects of nuclear weapons and energy industry on the lives of people worldwide.

They include Hibakusha at the End of the World (about victims of nuclear radiation exposure from Japan (nuclear bombings) to Iraq (depleted uranium) to the US (nuclear test bombings), also called Radiation: A Slow Death), Rokkasho-mura Rhapsody, about the decrepit nuclear reprocessing (plutonium) plant at the northeastern tip of Tohoku, and Ashes to Honey, about local residents' and environmentalists' 30-year resistance to the planned Kaminoseki nuclear plant in the Inland Sea National Park.

Kamanaka concludes by predicting the revival of active grassroots democratic participation in Japan. (The mass protests of the Hydrangea Revolution are not new to Japan. In the late 1950's and 1960's, millions of Japanese people from all walks of life demonstrated against the US-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO) which allowed the US to maintain nuclear weapons and military bases in the mainland Japan and Okinawa. The impetus behind this earlier movement was the same as today's: the desire to live a nuclear-free, peaceful life. Despite the protests from all sectors of Japanese society, Prime Minister Kishi rammed ANPO through parliament; it was during this same period that the first nuclear power plant in Japan (Tokai) was built in the 1960's in Ibaraki.)

Background: 

Hitomi Kamanaka's website: http://kamanaka.com/

 "Complicity and Victimhood: Director Kamanaka Hitomi's Nuclear Warnings" published at The Asia-Pacific Journal last year.

Crystal Uchino: Rise like Tsunamis after the Earthquakes" — An open letter speaking to grief, hope & sharing resources for healing after 3.11

Banner reading “We Prioritize Life Over Electricity”, handcrafted by Crystal Uchino for April 10 anti-nuke demonstrations in Tokyo

Greetings. My name is Crystal Uchino, and I am writing from my home in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, Japan.

A somber dirge continues to play in the hearts of all of us here across Japan in the wake of this earth-shaking, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis. This trifecta of disasters is truly beyond humbling: It is a living, grotesque and sobering nightmare that will haunt the world to come. As the after effects of both the earthquake and the tsunami continue to be revealed, so grows the depths of sadness over the magnitude of the situation. Watching events unfold over the news daily in real time delivers new quakes to test the resilience and endurance of our hearts, faith, the depths of our empathy, grief and determination to act.

The death toll has continued to climb daily, as does the number of homeless and seeking shelter from nuclear fallout. Additionally the conditions within the shelters appears grim: inadequate infrastructure to provide sufficient food, warmth, and sanitation. New explosions at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, and large aftershock tremors continue to rock this already shaken nation. The apocalyptic images we see on television news conjure memories of the damage reaped by the atomic bombs dropped here over sixty years ago, as the possibility for a new generation of Hibakusha ("nuclear explosion-affected peoples") emerges as a frightening reality.

Today, it seems Japan is once again being poised as a teacher. The wounds emerging from this crisis serve to underscore, once again, just how much the splitting of the atom remains a volatile global threat at many levels: personal, community, state, and environmental. Japan, despite past injuries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its seemingly anti-nuclear principles (non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons) has become a world leader in nuclear development and production. According to Green Action Japan, before the quake, there were 53 nuclear power plants in operation in Japan: 53 nuclear power plants in a small island country notoriously vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

My heart and prayers are with the people of Fukushima and the Tohoku area; it is they who are now shouldering this horrific burden so that the world may be reminded again of just what a painful and costly responsibility we bear when we allow bad stuff to enter our communities.

Around the globe, people are awakening to the reality of our fragility and vulnerability surrounding the dangers of all forms of nuclear development. Barely a week has passed since the initial earthquakes, but as a world we have grown up in ways that we had never hoped to; and with our newly realized maturity, we are challenged look ourselves in the face, to grapple with this saddest of lessons, and answer the question of how we will begin to take responsibility for our part in allowing bad stuff to enter our communities, on both the local and global scale.

The desire to help, to constructively affect the situation here in Japan, is echoing around the world. And the ways each of us can tangibly work to affect some immediate relief are just beginning to be known. Still, because I have gotten so many requests from folks for suggestions on how they can support things here, I wanted to share some of the initial resources I know of with you. These links offer the best grassroots alternatives to donating to the Red Cross that I know of at this time.

Second Harvest Japan: This group has been working at the community level feeding people in Japan for years.

Japan Volunteers: A great resource page consolidating links to support relief efforts, relevant to folks living in Japan and oversees. It is being updated daily with new resources as they develop.

Call for Home stay for Earthquake Evacuees (Only for folks currently living in Japan)

Translators United for Peace: For those who are bilingual. 日本の原発奴隷――原子力発電所における秘密

A friend of mine once wrote some song lyrics calling for people to "RISE LIKE TSUNAMIS AFTER EARTHQUAKES." It is a most hopeful metaphor for me in this time. And today, I received these words in an email from another friend: "When Mother Earth speaks, all we can do is listen. But when humans' dangerous passion for energy consumption has wreaked such toil on her children, then we must act."

The current genpatsu nanmin (“nuclear power refugees”) have translated the reality of nuclear development into a language that the world can feel. Humanity is speaking clearly, and I feel as a result of this new communication, though painful, that many beautiful, hopeful and inspiring things have been brought to the surface. I have been so moved by the feelings of sincere and unconditional caring and support I have received from friends, family, and even strangers this last week; and equally as moved by the demonstrations and vigils manifesting in a multitude of forms that have been erupting with passion all over the world.
.
You may think me young, naive, callous or even insane to bring up politics in a time like this. But I tell you that I have prayed at the graves of unborn aunts and uncles murdered by the atomic bomb disease and I feel entitled to tap into ancestral lessons this week. It is from my vantage point of both proximity and distance from this crisis as a current resident of southern Japan; from my vantage point of both proximity and distance from the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the granddaughter of a Nagasaki Hibakusha, that I say with great hope and longing that this darkest of nightmares may serve as a catalyst to once again pump life into the stagnant pools of the anti-nuclear movement, to overflow them so that the energies built and created there may also nourish other movements. To me, the words "activist" and "healer" are interchangeable.

This tragedy has been an ugly and unsought vindication of many undersupported social-justice struggles, most poignantly the anti-nuclear movement, which warned about this eventuality time and again. Most people sat in silent denial as more nuclear power plants were constructed, not just in Japan, but around the world, and many people sit even now in disbelief, quietly burying their fears as development plans for hundreds of more (albeit "safer") nuclear reactors remain on the discussion tables concurrently with the grotesque suffering of tens of thousands of displaced peoples. But in this cold and dark time resides new growth. A new spring is beginning and each day we rise anew, we each are gifted an opportunity to carve out a more sincere definition of accountability, to hold ourselves and each other responsible in new ways. Although our recent wounds are still gaping, still throbbing, the time is now for us to rise like tsunamis after earthquakes and once again recommit ourselves to the healing of the future for the next generation.

I've spent several days writing and revising this letter, it started out as some brief resource suggestions to friends but morphed into this. I was propelled to keep writing by mydesire to combat the helplessness I feel sitting here, relatively safe, overdosing on miso, kombu, and the news in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, Japan, as coordinated relief efforts have not yet begun taking volunteers. This time of mourning has given me a good opportunity to reassess what I hold important and clear out some clutter to make room for the work that lies ahead. Many exciting possibilities for new growth and new cooperation are resonating in the undertones of this funeral song. Those of us living in the overdeveloped world have become so accustomed to the ubiquitous take take take lifestyle that we have forgotten how to stretch our arms, to reach them out, to reach them up! in times when our spirits long to do so the most. This is an open letter to anyone feeling helpless at this time: let us relearn the actions.

It is my hope that some of the things said and resources within these words will be useful to you, please feel free to share them with others. The links below are also great places to continue to sober up through educating ourselves and get inspired for the long term work that is to come.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service: Updates on the situation at Fukushima and simple ways to engage in the movement to end nuclear dependency

Democracy Now: Sober news reporting.

Midnight Apothecary: Some recipes, because protection, healing, and action begin inside the body.

Anti Atom Demo in Germany

Anti Atom Demo in France

A look into the history of "Japan's Nuclear Nightmare."

This is a great sticker.

An excerpt for an article from Color Lines:

A little over a week before an 8.9-magnitude earthquake ripped open a fissure in the Earth, triggered a deadly tsunami and set off a potential worldwide nuclear catastrophe, House Republicans introduced a bill to permit 200 more commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S., “enough to triple current megawatt capacity, by 2040.” Tucked into that bill is a clause that revives the long debate around nuclear waste storage in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a move that Native American and environmental groups have been resisting for decades.

Japan quake radioactive material monitoring post MAP
東日本大震災・非公式・放射性物質モニタリングポストMAP

Blog post by a Tokyo resident connecting a bunch of dots and sharing a bunch of really great links

Many of the words flowing from this page have been pretty heavy, so I wanted to share just one small anecdote with you.... This past weekend I went to the post office. And so I'm at the post office right, and there are people lined up out the door of the post office sending bags of rice and boxes of water or fresh vegetables to loved ones up north and I thought to myself..."What kind of apocalypse is this?...No one can get food or water, but they can get mail?!"

On that note, I end this letter in solidarity and with hope, taking comfort in the knowing that the same moon shines light down on all of us. Each day I wake up to the budding and flowering of the ume, momo, and the sakura as well are beginning to bloom, as if to say 春が来るよ ("Spring is coming!").

Crystal K. Uchino

Our friend, Crystal K. Uchino, a Nikkei granddaughter of Hibakusha, lives in Nagasaki