#75 Years of Resilience. The hibakusha, those who survived the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are the best-known nuclear survivors, but they are not the only ones.
Downwinders were exposed to America’s nuclear testing and production sites in places including Utah, New Mexico, and Washington State. They are survivors. People in the Marshall Islands endured years of U.S. nuclear testing and continue to face the negative health consequences of those tests. They are survivors. U.S. military veterans sent to observe nuclear tests and clean up nuclear waste have fought for years for compensation for the harm they’ve suffered. They are survivors. Uranium workers mined and produced the raw materials to make nuclear weapons, often on Indigenous land, without ever being told about the severe health risks. They are survivors. Read the testimonies of nuclear survivors here.
Facing History and Ourselves, Full Spectrum Dominance from White Supremacy to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Societies are a fabric of a whole. The foundations of domestic, foreign, and military policies are the same. In his article “Facing History and Ourselves: Full Spectrum Dominance from White Supremacy to Hiroshima & Nagasaki,” Joseph Gerson explains that since the beginning of the genocide of Native Americans, the building of the American economy on the backs and blood of enslaved people, the conquering of colonies, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocausts, racism and full spectrum dominance have served as mutually reinforcing foundations of empire. The brutal police murders of George Floyd and others in recent months, the approaching 75th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombings underline the urgent need for profound political and social change. Read more.
Reflections on Injustice, Racism, and the Bomb. “Contrary to the narrative that nuclear disarmament has been and remains a “white” issue, since 1945, the anti-nuclear movement has included diverse voices who saw the value in connecting all of these issues,” writes Vincent Intondi in his article, “Reflections on Injustice, Racism and the Bomb” in Arms Control Today. “Moreover, the nuclear disarmament movement has been most successful when it left room for diverse voices and combined the nuclear issue with social justice.” Intondi is the author of African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (2015).
Nuclear Era Didn’t Start with Hiroshima – But with a Secret Radiation Cloud Over America. “Most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. In reality, it began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test—seventy-five years ago . . ., July 16,” writes Greg Mitchell in “Nuclear Era Didn’t Start with Hiroshima – But With a Secret Radiation Cloud Over America” in Newsweek. Later in the article he reports: “Fallout was absent in early press accounts of the Hiroshima bombing as the media joined in the triumphalist backing of The Bomb and the bombings. When reports of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki afflicted with a strange and horrible new disease emerged, General Groves [Director of the Manhattan Project] called it all a “hoax” and “propaganda” and speculated that the Japanese had different “blood.” He told a congressional committee that he had heard that expiring from radiation disease was a rather “pleasant way to die.” (Remind you of anyone?)
Speaking of Donald Trump. On July 16, the White House released a triumphant, self-congratulatory Presidential Message on the 75th Anniversary of the Trinity Nuclear Test. Read the pointed July 17 response from our colleagues at the Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo). Statement: President Trump’s Message on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Trinity Nuclear Test Shows No Sign of Remorse and Blatantly Declaring Further Nuclear Arms Buildup.
