{"id":110057,"date":"2017-08-07T01:03:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T05:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=110057"},"modified":"2017-08-07T01:03:20","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T05:03:20","slug":"n-korean-missiles-add-urgency-to-hiroshima-a-bomb-appeals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/08\/07\/n-korean-missiles-add-urgency-to-hiroshima-a-bomb-appeals\/","title":{"rendered":"N. Korean missiles add urgency to Hiroshima A bomb appeals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Left<\/a>
Left picture : At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column. Six planes of the 509th Composite Group participated in this mission: one to carry the bomb (Enola Gay), one to take scientific measurements of the blast (The Great Artiste), the third to take photographs (Necessary Evil), while the others flew approximately an hour ahead to act as weather scouts (08\/06\/1945). Bad weather would disqualify a target as the scientists insisted on a visual delivery. The primary target was Hiroshima, the secondary was Kokura, and the tertiary was Nagasaki. Right picture : Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles Levy. (Photo by By Nagasakibomb.jpg: The picture was taken by Charles Levy from one of the B-29 Superfortresses used in the attack.Atomic_cloud_over_Hiroshima.jpg: Personel aboard Necessary Evilderivative work: Binksternet (talk) – Nagasakibomb.jpgAtomic_cloud_over_Hiroshima.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HIROSHIMA, Japan \u2014 Hiroshima’s appeal of \u201cnever again\u201d on the 72nd anniversary Sunday of the world’s first atomic bomb attack has gained urgency as North Korea accelerates work on its nuclear weapons program, showing its growing prowess with increasingly frequent missile launches.<\/p>\n

When the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0dropped the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, Toshiki Fujimori and his mother, carrying him piggyback, were both thrown to the ground by the impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously tensions are growing as North Korea has been pushing ahead with nuclear tests and development,\u201d said Fujimori, now 73 and a leader of the Hidankyo, a major group of atomic bomb survivors. \u201cNuclear weapons just are unacceptable for mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Japanese and others in North Asia seem resigned to North Korea’s apparent newfound capacity to launch missiles capable of reaching much of the continental United States. But the threat lends a deeper sense of alarm in Hiroshima, where 140,000 died in that first A-bomb attack, which was followed on Aug. 9, 1945, by another that killed more than 70,000 people in Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis hell is not a thing of the past,\u201d Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in his peace declaration at Sunday’s ceremony. \u201cAs long as nuclear weapons exist and policymakers threaten their use, their horror could leap into our present at any moment. You could find yourself suffering their cruelty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, a single bomb can cause greater damage than the two bombs dropped 72 years ago, he said. \u201cHumankind must never commit such an act,\u201d Matsui said, urging nuclear states, as well as Japan, to join the nuclear weapons ban treaty adopted by the United Nations in July.<\/p>\n

Fujimori said that each Aug. 6, his late mother insisted on retelling the story of the bombing to children in their neighbourhood, saying she had to keep reminding them to help prevent the same mistake from happening again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must eradicate nuclear weapons from the earth to make the world a safe place to live,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cThere is still a lot to do and we must keep working on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the adoption of the U.N. nuclear weapons ban, which was boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations, shows that most of the world supports that cause.<\/p>\n

The two Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missiles North Korea test-fired in July appear to have major\u00a0U.S.<\/em>\u00a0cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago within their range. Such missiles could be armed with nuclear, biological or chemical warheads, although many experts say North Korea hasn’t fully mastered miniaturizing nuclear warheads and might not have the technology to ensure a warhead would survive re-entry into the atmosphere from space or even hit an intended target.<\/p>\n

Such developments draw mixed feelings from Kim Ji Nho, a pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean who was born in Hiroshima. Kim, 71, is a \u201chibakusha,\u201d or atomic-bomb survivor, who was exposed to radiation when his mother, pregnant with him, went to the ruins of the city to search for a daughter who went missing in the blast. He grew up in a community of ethnic Koreans in the city and has a relative who had since moved to North Korea.<\/p>\n

He is critical of the\u00a0U.S.<\/em>,<\/em> and says only dialogue, not military actions or threats, can resolve tensions. But regarding nuclear weapons, \u201cWe ‘hibakusha’ and our groups share a clear goal, which is to abolish nuclear weapons from the world,\u201d Kim said. \u201cNuclear weapons should never be used.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like his father, many Koreans were brought to Hiroshima, a wartime military hub, as forced labourers during Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century. They and their descendants have endured outright discrimination by Japanese. So have A-bomb survivors: Kim’s father had told him to keep mum about his radiation exposure, because being \u201chibakusha\u201d could only mean more trouble.<\/p>\n

The two survivors said Japan’s refusal to join the U.N. nuclear treaty, apparently because it’s protected under the\u00a0U.S.<\/em>\u00a0nuclear umbrella, was heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

In his message to Hiroshima, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the presence of some 15,000 nuclear weapons along with \u201cdangerous rhetoric regarding their use\u201d has exacerbated these threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet our dream of a world free of nuclear weapons remains far from reality,\u201d he said. \u201cThe states possessing nuclear weapons have a special responsibility to undertake concrete and irreversible steps in nuclear disarmament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopes that the\u00a0U.S.<\/em>\u00a0and Japan might support the nuclear weapons ban rose during former President Barack Obama’s 2016 visit to Hiroshima. But such expectation has dimmed as North Korea’s threat has escalated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if that young leader (Kim Jong Un) pushes a nuclear weapons launch button? I think neighbouring Japan has a risk of being hit,\u201d said Tamio Ishida, 59, whose father was a survivor. \u201cI think tensions have risen and many people in Hiroshima share a sense of urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayaka Kajihara, 18, a college student, says she imagined her late grandmother, also a \u201chibakusha,\u201d suffered greatly, though she was reluctant to discuss her past. Even so, she feels it was very important to learn what happened to the grandmother and her hometown 72 years ago.<\/p>\n

More than 300,000 of the \u201chibakusha\u201d have died since the attack, including 5,530 in the past year. The average age of the survivors is more than 81 years. Many suffer from long lasting effects of radiation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope more people from the rest of Japan and overseas will visit Hiroshima and just see and feel the reality of what the atomic bomb has done, and start from there,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause that’s how I started thinking about peace \u2014 by meeting ‘hibakusha,’ including my grandmother and hearing their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HIROSHIMA, Japan \u2014 Hiroshima’s appeal of \u201cnever again\u201d on the 72nd anniversary Sunday of the world’s first atomic bomb attack …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":110064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[20517,20516,7216,1509],"class_list":["post-110057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-72nd-anniversary","tag-atomic-bomb-attack","tag-hiroshima","tag-north-korea","mauthors-mari-yamaguchi","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}