wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Ex-missionary says A-bomb memorials reinforce grim

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8856 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05431
August 22, 2005

Drifting toward catastrophe

Ex-missionary says A-bomb memorials 
reinforce grim lesson the world still has not learned

by the Rev. James E. Atwood
Retired PC(USA) missionary to Japan

SPRINGFIELD, VA - Sixty years ago, in the blink of an eye, an estimated
147,000 people were killed when atom bombs exploded over the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

	Two beautiful cities were instantly turned into radioactive
wastelands. 

	As is true in all wars, most of the victims were women, children and
old people.

	Those near the epicenter were the lucky ones. They were vaporized. 

	Tens of thousands of people at a distance from ground zero were
burned alive, dying more slowly, in excruciating pain, begging for water. 

	Survivors of the blasts, now in their 70s and 80s, still carry
grotesque physical and psychological scars.

	I spent nine years as a missionary in Japan (1965-1974). This month I
returned, on a peace pilgrimage, attending 60th-anniversary memorials of the
two bombs that, in the words of Albert Einstein, "Changed everything except
the way we think." In their wake, Einstein added, "We drift toward
unparalleled catastrophes."

	I love the Japanese people. I salute the courage of the United Church
of Christ in Japan as it continues to repent its complicity with Japanese
militarism in World War II. I grieve over the use of atomic weapons on the
people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am impressed that the Japanese people
love their "Peace Constitution." 

	I had to add my voice for peace in a day when the whole world is
threatened with nuclear extinction - yet few really want to talk about it. 

	I was privileged to represent the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship in an
eight-member delegation from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a group
formed to support those in Japan and the United States who resist calls for
the repeal of Article IX of the Japanese constitution.

	That provision, written by representatives of American Occupation
Forces in the early days of Japan's post-war reconstruction, reads:

	1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and
order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the
nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international
disputes.

	2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land,
sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be
maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. 

	The board of directors of FOR in the United States responded to a
Japanese request for support by organizing a quick petition drive calling for
the retention of that principled statement. We delivered 5,200 signatures to
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's office and gave copies to the mayors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

	We made solemn visits to peace museums in both cities, the only ones
in the world that have experienced nuclear annihilation, and attended
gripping 60th-anniversary ceremonies.

	Our own country is still deeply divided over the use of these
horrible weapons. 

I had always accepted the U.S. rationale - that the bombs saved thousands,
perhaps millions, of young American and Japanese lives by bringing the war to
an end and making an invasion of the empire unnecessary.

However, revelations made public recently through the Freedom of Information
Act have persuaded me that the first use of the bomb was a colossal mistake.
On July 18 - nearly three weeks before the Hiroshima bombing - Japan had
asked, through the Soviet and Swiss governments, for peace negotiations.

  I believe the use of a second bomb on Nagasaki was positively demonic.

	Not even God can undo the past. But how are we to walk together into
the future?

	If the planet is to survive, the world must accept the fact that
using nuclear weapons on human beings is unconscionable. 

	Every nation must understand that modern warfare involves the
possible use of even more powerful nuclear weapons than those used in Japan.
The average U.S. nuclear warhead in our program of "stockpile stewardship"
has a destructive power 20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Even now, 10
years after the end of the Cold War, we maintain thousands of such weapons -
on a hair trigger. 

	As former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote in July: "The
United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy
tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous." 

	Several times during our recent peace pilgrimage, we heard distress
in the voices of Japanese church and political leaders as they recited the
nuclear powers' promises to engage in "an unequivocal undertaking for the
elimination of their nuclear arsenals." Yet, in May, these same nations,
parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, met at the
United Nations but could make no concrete progress toward this essential
goal.

	In his Peace Declaration, Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh, called nuclear
nations to account: "The nuclear weapons states, and the United States of
America in particular, have ignored their international commitments and have
made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence," Itoh said.
"We strongly resent the trampling of the hopes of the world's peoples."

	Itoh then addressed the people of the United States, saying: "We
understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9/11
terrorist attacks. Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your
government's policies of maintaining over 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying
out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of
new 'mini-' nuclear weapons? 

	"We are confident that the vast majority of you desire in your hearts
the elimination of nuclear arms. May you join hands with the people of the
world who share that same desire, and work together for a peaceful planet
free from nuclear weapons."

	As doves circled over the assemblies, I was glad to be standing with
thousands of others and making the vow: "No more Hiroshimas. No More
Nagasakis. No more nuclear weapons. No more war." 

	Dear Lord, let it be so.

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