Saturday, August 9, 2003

Japan and the Bomb

This story is a few days old but I think it needs some small legs.


Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba warned that the world is moving toward war and accused Washington of "worshipping" nuclear weapons during Wednesday's ceremony marking the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.

Some 40,000 people, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito and British Labour MP George Galloway, attended the ceremony at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park and observed a minute of silence from 8:15 a.m., the time a U.S. atomic bomb devastated the city on Aug. 6, 1945.

In his peace declaration, the Hiroshima mayor blamed the United States for making the world a more uncertain place through its policy of undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.


Lately, Japan has made noise that it could, if it wanted to, develop the bomb. And the actions of the Prime Minister were telling. . .


After the ceremony, for the second year running Koizumi left Hiroshima without attending a meeting of atomic bomb victims or without visiting facilities treating elderly A-bomb victims. He is the only post-war prime minister who has refused to do so.


Telling. . . I don't know much about Japanese politics, but I believe, from what I've read, their ruling party isn't too far off ideologically from our ruling party.

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