70 Years After the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Canada’s Gift to Japan
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 20 Jul 2015
Theresa Wolfwood – TRANSCEND Media Service
British pilot Leonard Cheshire, on board the plane with that bomb dropped on Nagasaki described the bombing as, “Obscene in its greedy clawing at the earth, swelling as if with its regurgitation of all the life that it had consumed.”
200 thousand people died immediately and within days of these bombings; 70 years later people continue to die from the radiation effects of these toxic bombs. Canada was complicit in this tragedy and continues to be complicit in nuclear weapons production.
From a deposit in the NWT, uranium was mined and shipped to the USA; the local 1st nations Dene people who worked at the uranium mine, many died and their descendants continue to die from radiation-caused cancers to this date. Canada provided most of the uranium for the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 The Dene gave the white southerners caribou, moose and fish. “They were strangers living among us on our land so we took care of them.” In return, the locals helped extract and transport the deadly ore with no knowledge of its dangers. The southern miners left the people with toxic waste dumps in their community and radiation ticking in their bodies. New mines in Saskatchewan now export uranium to our friends around the world. Canada is the 2nd largest producer and exporter of uranium in the world.
USA, Russia, China, Britain, Israel, France, India, Pakistan (and maybe others) have more than 19,000 nuclear bombs, many made with Canadian technology and materials. They are moving around the globe everyday on land, in the seas and the air, including in BC. Canada continues to be complicit in nuclear development by selling uranium and technology for nuclear energy (which also contaminates the world with harmful radiation) producing bomb fuel s as well as electricity and for bombs themselves.. Canada provides highly radioactive so-called ‘depleted uranium’, to 22 nations for weapons – bomb casings, guns, tanks and other steel-hardening military uses. Depleted Uranium weapons were tested in Panama and used in Iraq, Afghanistan and former Yugoslavia.
The Canada Pension Plan, mandatory for all working Canadians, invests our contributions in the five largest weapons makers in the world, which make nuclear as well as non-nuclear weapons that are sold and used in many countries against civilian populations.
Nuclear weapons and radioactivity continue to threaten the health of all life systems and undermine the security of human society. Wealth and resources wasted on war making are needed to create a peaceful and sustainable life for all humanity. It is time to call for nuclear disarmament and a moratorium on uranium mining; to call for cuts in our military spending and an increase in social, health and education budgets. Our precious resources and energy should be directed to the creation of a peaceful, just and healthy world. Nuclear nations and a handful of men can destroy all life on earth and that unspoken threat is behind wars waged by nuclear powers today in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Palestine.
In the words of the mayor of Hiroshima, “The world without nuclear weapons and beyond war that our hibakusha {survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki} have sought for so long appears to be slipping deeper into a thick cover of dark clouds that they fear at any minute could become mushroom clouds spilling black rain.… Now is the time for us to focus once again on the truth that “Darkness can never be dispelled by darkness, only by light.” The rule of power is darkness. The rule of law is light. In the darkness of retaliation, the proper path for human civilization is illumined by the spirit of reconciliation born of the hibakusha’s determination that “no one else should ever suffer as we did.”
*********************
In Victoria BC, Canada on August 6, 2015 from noon until 1 pm, Victoria Women in Black will gather in silent vigil on Government St. below the Tourist Office, across from the Empress Hotel. With banners and leaflets, the group will call on Canadians and foreign visitors to work for complete nuclear disarmament. All supporters of this message are welcome to stand with Women in Black. For information contact: 250 595-7519. We send greetings of solidarity and our hope for a peaceful to friends and groups around the world.
__________________________________
Theresa Wolfwood is a Canadian peace and social justice activist and writer for many publications. Her poetry book, “Love and Resistance” was published in 2014 and is available online and at UK and Canadian bookshops. See: www.bbcf.ca
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 Jul 2015.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: 70 Years After the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Canada’s Gift to Japan, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
2 Responses to “70 Years After the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Canada’s Gift to Japan”
Read more
Click here to go to the current weekly digest or pick another article:
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION:
The best gift to Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be given not only to them but also to the whole world. What kind of gift is it? The answer: “A world without nuclear weapons”.
[…] This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 July 2015: TRANSCEND Media Service – TMS: 70 Years After the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Can… […]