Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508070113
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: T. R. REID THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: HIROSHIMA NOTE: BELOW LENGTH: Medium
At precisely 15 minutes past 8 this morning - a half-century to the second after the awesome blast of heat and light that gave birth to the Atomic Age - the city of Hiroshima once again came to a complete stop. Bells rang out everywhere, and sirens blared their warning - not for the people of Hiroshima this time, but rather for the rest of the world.
For the 50th time, the people of Hiroshima - joined by thousands of anti-nuclear activists from around the globe - held their somber commemoration of the atomic bomb dropped by a U.S. plane on Aug. 6, 1945, the first time in history that nuclear power was used against people. For the 50th time, the city sent out its ritual message: ``No More Hiroshimas.''
From the velvet gray sky, a searing summer sun baked some 60,000 spectators gathered in Peace Memorial Park, at the epicenter of the atomic explosion. But there was little searing rhetoric today. There was no mention of the reasons the A-bomb was dropped. There was barely a word of criticism of the Japanese leaders who started the Pacific phase of World War II, or of the American leaders who brought it to an end by dropping history's most powerful weapon on primarily civilian targets, first in Hiroshima and then in Nagasaki.
The point of the commemoration, as Mayor Takashi Hiraoka made clear in Hiroshima's 50th annual ``Peace Declaration,'' was not to review the past, but rather to issue a dire forecast as the Atomic Age, with its inherent tension and discomfort, begins its second half-century.
``Nuclear weapons offer no security to the nations that possess them,'' Hiraoka read. ``As long as nuclear weapons exist, it is inevitable that some country, at some point, will experience the horror that Hiroshima and Nagasaki already know.''
That message reflects the keen awareness of past agonies that has given Japan and Hiroshima in particular a feeling of obligation to act as the conscience of the world.
This year's 50th anniversary of the bomb had a special ring to it, because so many thousands of foreigners - largely, it seemed, from Western countries - came to join the people of Hiroshima in spreading their warning. They wore ``No More Bomb'' T-shirts, carried guitars and passed out petitions in many languages protesting France's scheduled test of a nuclear weapon in the South Pacific.
For its part, Hiroshima too reached out to other nations, particularly those attacked by Japan in World War II. The mayor declared firmly that ``we apologize for the unbearable suffering that Japanese colonial domination and war inflicted on so many.''
The city this year invited hibakusha - a Japanese neologism that means ``nuclear victim'' - from around the world to take part in the ceremony. Among them were Russians who were injured in Chernobyl and Americans who suffered from fallout from tests in Nevada in the 1950s.
The initial blast from the 9,000-pound uranium bomb - 2,000 times stronger than previously used weapons - and the ensuing fires destroyed 90 percent of the city's 76,000 structures. The heat was so intense that people's clothing burst into flames a mile from the epicenter. Tens of thousands of people went to their deaths pleading for a drink of water. To console them, today's ceremony began with a ritual pouring of cool water over the arching cenotaph where the souls of the dead are said to be enshrined.
One purpose for the annual Aug. 6 commemoration is to update the list of people killed by the bomb. This year, the names of 5,094 people, mostly victims of radiation-caused leukemia, were added. That brings Hiroshima's tally of atomic bomb fatalities to 192,020.
After the names were interred in the cenotaph, there was a noisy flutter near the center of the Peace Park.
A flock of gray-white doves of peace went swirling toward the sky. They swept over the long banks of yellow flowers honoring the dead, over the green tops of the maple trees, over the shattered dome of the Industrial Hall, and up toward the gray sky where, 50 years ago, a bomber had passed over the city and changed the history of the world.
by CNB