August 6th, 2011 marks the anniversary of the terrible crime committed by the United States against the Japanese people – civilian men, women and children. 66 years ago, the US dropped atom bombs on two towns of Japan. On August 6, 1945, the atom bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, and on August 9, 1945, over Nagasaki.
August 6th, 2011 marks the anniversary of the terrible crime committed by the United States against the Japanese people – civilian men, women and children. 66 years ago, the US dropped atom bombs on two towns of Japan. On August 6, 1945, the atom bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, and on August 9, 1945, over Nagasaki. Nearly three lakh women, men and children died within a period of two months after the dropping of the bombs, half of them on the days of the bombings. The long term effects of the radiation has effected entire generations. The people of Japan and the rest of the world have never forgotten for a moment nor forgiven the US imperialists for this heinous crime against humanity. Nothing can justify this barbaric action.
Yet, even today, the danger of new nuclear wars is still a reality. US imperialism at the head of coalition of imperialist states, is unleashing barbaric attacks against civilian populations in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. And the US, along with Russia, possesses about 96% of the nuclear weapons in the world.
Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, peace loving peoples of the world have been protesting against the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. While the US and other imperialist states have continued to make a show of proposing and ratifying the Non-Proliferation Treaty to ostensibly agree on a progressive cutback of the number of nuclear weapons, this treaty has actually done very little in this direction. Rather it has been used to arm twist other countries and restrict the development of nuclear technology and weaponisation to selected imperialist states. What is being done is to replace old outdated weapons with new more powerful ones with better technology.
The US state attempts to cover all its heinous acts of aggression against civilian populations the world over, the bombing and torture of innocent people, under concocted pretexts. These facts are kept from the world so that the façade of "peace-keeper" and "defender of humanity" of the US state can be maintained. The American public is kept very much in the dark about all this for fear of vehement protests and rejection of this war-mongering course by them.
The hypocrisy of the US state with respect to its war crimes dates back to those bombings in 1945. US military crews and a Tokyo-based Japanese newsreel company had captured footage of the scene in the two cities. However, the United States governments engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. The American public did not see any of the newsreel footage for twenty-five years, and the shocking US military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. The US state did not want the general public to know what their weapons had done—at a time when they were planning on more bomb tests!
Every day new atrocities and their cover up by the US military abroad is exposed. The only way to bring this to an end is for the working class and peoples of the world, the freedom loving countries to step their struggle against imperialism, which is the source of war. The anniversary of the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a call to the working class and peoples, to continue relentlessly on the path of struggle against imperialism, fascism and war.