Hiroshima Day Events...
Statement of Maui Peace Action member Mele Stokesberry
LETTER FROM
THE MAYOR OF HIROSHIMA
-- 60th
Anniversary Hiroshima / Nagasaki Day Program
7pm in the Maui Community College
Student Lounge
Here is a printable flier you may want to print and post where you think people will see it most... Let's tell Maui to show up! [Adobe Acrobat file]
PROGRAM: Lane Nishikawa, nationally-known playwright and actor from Hawaii, will return from California as our keynote speaker. He is the author of a number of acclaimed plays including I'm on a Mission From Buddha, When We Were Warriors, Mifune and Me, The First Time I Met Bruce Lee, Forgotten Valor, Gila River and The Gate of Heaven, plays that express, with humor, pain, deep insight and love, the Asian American experience. Mr. Nishikawa was artist-in-residence at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center when he produced his recent play We Were Brothers on Maui.
This is the 60th anniversary of the only dropping of atomic bombs on people that has yet occurred. It's the 18th annual Maui commemoration of those 1945 events. Every year we remind ourselves to work to make it the last use of nuclear weapons through sharing prayers and actions for peace.
The world is still threatened by nuclear war, with huge over-kill stockpiles of warheads in many countries, including thousands on ready alert. Congress has recently authorized the research and development of "tactical battlefield nuclear weapons" in the Bunker Busters. Our country continues to deploy weapons systems that vaporize depleted uranium on impact, causing birth defects, illness and death. The horror of nuclear disaster is still endangering future generations.
Come join us to share ideas together and to lift our spirits with song and dance along with our international dancers for peace, communal singing and interdenominational prayers for peace.
The event
is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by
Maui Peace Action, the Maui Interfaith-Community Peace
Coalition, Iao Congregational Church, Maui Baha'i
congregations, Unity Church and St. John's Episcopal
Church.
Your support for this program is vital! Please announce this event to your email networks, in your churches & community organizations, and encourage friends & family to attend. Donations to help defray the cost of bringing Mr. Nishikawa to Maui will be very gratefully received and can be sent to Iao Congregational Church, c/o Hiroshima Day Chairperson Takako Dickinson, 2371 Vineyard, Wailuku, HI 96793. Thank you!
For further information, 573-3255
Statement of Maui Peace Action member Mele Stokesberry at Maui Hiroshima
Day Commemoration, Aug. 6, 2004:
At the museum, somber displays about the nuclear arms race inform us that close to 20,000 nuclear warheads are already deployed throughout the world today. The cumulative power of these weapons of mass destruction equals 1.47 million times the power of the Hiroshima A-bomb.
On the chest in the Cenotaph to the victims that holds the names of all those killed, it is engraved, "Rest in Peace, for the Error Shall Not be Repeated." And we commemorate on Maui and around the world each Aug. 6 the horror of atomic weapons because all peoples need to be reminded on a regular basis of the ongoing threat of nuclear annihilation.
Still, it’s not just the big nuclear warheads that we must stay aware of and work to abolish. President Bush has asked for, and Congress has authorized, research on tactical battlefield nuclear weapons. Cluster bombs with their maiming, deadly bomblets, armor-piercing weaponry that emits poisonous depleted uranium radiation, missiles, land mines, tanks and machine guns are also weapons of mass destruction.
A museum display at Hiroshima speaks of a movement today in Japan to look at perceptions of their country in the school textbooks of the Asian countries which Japan colonized or occupied during the war. It says, "Hiroshima was dealt a severe blow by the atomic bomb"(NOTE not "by the USA" but "by the bomb") "but Japan, too, inflicted great damage."
Most significantly, it goes on to say, "Internationalization must begin with speaking the truth about the role each country played in the war. We must find a way to make our mutual pain a positive gift for the future." May we someday see this sentiment expressed by America about American military actions.
In the mean time, let us continue to share knowledge of the dangers and immorality of making war. And in the words of Pope John Paul II, inscribed in the Peace Museum: "... To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future. To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war and....to commit oneself to peace."
LETTER FROM THE MAYOR OF HIROSHIMA TO THE PEOPLE
OF MAUI
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 2003 HIROSHIMA / NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION
(This letter was read at the Community Peace Observance, Iao Congregational
Church, Wed. Aug. 6, 2003.)
Today, on behalf of Hiroshima citizens, I would like to send a message to
celebrate Maui Hiroshima / Nagasaki Commemoration 2003.
Let me begin by thanking you for taking the time from your busy lives to remind
yourselves and the people of your area about the threat of nuclear weapons.
Fifty-eight years ago, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each reduced to ash and
rubble by a single small atomic bomb each, we entered the nuclear age, and war
became obsolete. Ever since, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, led by our A-
bomb survivors, have been trying to tell the world about the dangers of nuclear
weapons and the need to preserve peace at all costs.
For a time in the late 1980's and early 90s, it appeared that we were moving in
the right direction. The Cold War ended amid deep reductions in nuclear weaponry
and a moratorium on nuclear testing. It seemed we would at last take down the
sword of Damocles hanging over our heads for so long.
Unfortunately, the culture of war has launched a powerful counterattack. Rather
than reducing military spending and shifting funds toward the alleviation of
human suffering, governments around the world appear to be increasing military
budgets. In the wake of September 11, we appear to be more convinced than ever
that the answer to violence is more killing.
In recent months, we have heard governments seriously considering the
unthinkable. Tensions between India and Pakistan rose last year to the brink of
nuclear war. Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been extremely
high, and some Americans have called publicly for the use of nuclear weapons in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Nuclear Posture Review issued in 2002 outlines
specific circumstances under which nuclear weapons might be used on certain
nations, including non-nuclear nations. In a context of speculation that Iraq,
Iran, and North Korea may be attempting to build nuclear arsenals, the Bush
administration requested increased funds for the development of nuclear earth
penetrator bombs and so called "mini-nukes" with the idea that such weapons
could actually be used pre-emptively against nations with weapons of mass
destruction. Incredibly, here in the 21st century, some people still appear to
believe that nuclear weapons have a rational combat role. This idea must be
stamped out completely before it can grow further.
If the United States were to use a nuclear weapon, the taboo would be broken.
The hatred and fear released by such an act would lead inevitably to the
retaliatory, terrorist use of a nuclear weapon in the US or Europe. We have seen
what happened after two buildings in New York were destroyed. The world has yet
to recover from the fear, hatred, violent retaliation, and emotional and
economic pain which that event engendered. If even a small nuclear weapon were
to destroy several blocks in Manhattan, Washington D.C., Berlin, or Paris, our
already-strained, highly interdependent civilization is likely to fall to depths
of violence, death, destruction and suffering that only the people of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki can imagine.
I believe that, in the 58 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the danger of
another nuclear disaster has never been greater than it is right now. Therefore,
the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the World Conference of Mayors
for Peace, are launching an emergency campaign to bring the nuclear threat back
to public awareness. In the months to come, you will have opportunities to
participate in various events related to nuclear weapons. I hope you will
participate in and support these activities as much as you possibly can.
We must let our leaders know that we demand immediate freedom from the nuclear
threat. Nuclear weapons are heinous, cruel, inhumane weapons that threaten our
entire species. Nothing could be more obvious than the illegality of these
weapons, and they should be banned. Now that the Cold War has ended and our
primary enemies are stateless terrorists, to allow nuclear weapons to continue
to exist is to give those terrorists the means by which they can best subject
our children or grandchildren to unparalleled horror and suffering. Therefore,
on behalf of the human family, we must demand the rapid and total elimination of
all nuclear weapons everywhere.
This is a global emergency. The lives of millions, and perhaps our entire
civilization, are at stake. If we eliminate nuclear weapons, we will have taken
a giant step toward the new levels of trust and cooperation required to solve
the myriad other global problems that will arise with deadly urgency in this
century. If we fail, there are some errors from which there is no recovery.
I hope your sincere effort will make the Maui Hiroshima / Nagasaki Commemoration
2003 successful, and that will eventually make your city a leader in the
campaign to ban nuclear weapons. Please keep the threat in mind and do whatever
you can. Thank you very much.
Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor of Hiroshima