Japanese students and their teacher are praying at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, which contain the ashes of roughly some 70,000 people. After the bombing, corpses from the hypocenter and the river were brought to this site and cremated, and in 1946 a memorial mound, vault and chapel was created by The Society for Praying for the War Dead. Reproduced with permission of Ted Edwards.
CounterPunch’s “Pulse of the Planet” series continues with Barbara Rose Johnston’s “War, Peace and the Obamajority.” The series, which draws attention to critical issues in human rights and environmental policy, was initially derived from conference papers delivered at the “Pulse of the Planet” panel during AAA’s 2008 annual meeting in San Francisco.
An expert on the lingering effects of radioactive contamination and the devastation it has wrought upon both land and people, Johnston highlights the importance of the 2009 Hiroshima Peace Declaration. The Declaration reaffirms the will of the hibakusha and the majority of the world’s nations and people to end nuclear proliferation and suffering. It stresses President Obama’s commitment to work towards nuclear disarmament, and his assertion that the US, as the only nation to deploy nuclear weapons in combat, has a “moral responsibility” to do so. The Declaration calls this unified group of advocates the “Obamajority.”
More than impressed by the Declaration, Johnston writes, “What we found in Hiroshima is the reflection of Barack Obama as world leader. His words, policies, and approach to governance have the power to re-energize the most desperate and despondent peoples. His actions in this past year, and the world response to his actions, signal an important shift in global notions of the true meaning of security. Through his policy and ongoing negotiations Barack Obama is building the space for us, the majority of global citizens, to work together towards the possibility of a peaceful world.”
A subtitled video of the 2007 Declaration is available here.
The T-shaped bridge in the background allows passage over the two arms of Motoyasu rivers and access to a delta island, once a densely populated neighborhood now home to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Hiroshima Peace Park. This bridge was the original target for the Hiroshima bombing. I am sitting between two pillars from that bridge salvaged from the rubble and used to memorialize ground zero. The river behind me was clogged with bodies in 1945, and its banks are still littered with broken tiles, pottery, and other debris from an atomizied cityscape. Reproduced with permission of Ted Edwards.
Prior Pulse of the Planet Articles:
“Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses” ~ Melissa Checker
“The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama” ~ Gregory Button
“Water Culture Wars” ~ Barbara Rose Johnston
“Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China” ~ Shannon May
“How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11” ~ Brian McKenna
“The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience” ~ Holly Barker
“What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA” ~ Gregory V. Button
“The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?” ~ Barbara Rose Johnston
“Carbon Offsets: More Harm Than Good?” ~ Melissa Checker
“The Human Right to Eat” ~ Joan P. Mencher
“Dam Legacies, Damned Futures” ~ Barbara Rose Johnston
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This post was updated on Oct. 26, 2009. It is the 12th article to appear in CounterPunch’s Pulse of the Planet series.