It is the end of Day 2 of the International Peace Bike Tour in Japan! It is also the middle of the night as I write this and hope I will not suffer too much for the lack of sleep tomorrow. The last two days have felt like a week because of the incredible amount of things we have accomplished.
I am not sure when I'll have internet again, but please keep reading about the experience here, at our group blog, on my Facebook page, or the group's Facebook page!
I met the Mayor of Nagasaki:
Yesterday, I met the Mayor Taue of Nagasaki in the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museum. Our grouped expressed our views and hopes for a nuclear-free world. We also discussed how nuclear energy could turn into a nuclear disaster as was seen in Fukushima. Our time together was brief, but Mayor Taue was in full support of our goals. He wished the group a successful and safe bike tour, and if he had the time, would have liked to join himself.
Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museum:
Wow...there are several pages missing from American history books. I knew to expect more information that I had ever learned in school, but could not fully prepare for the emotions I felt. Imagine scorch marks of a ladder in a wooden fence. It was the place of where a ladder stood seconds before the blast. Such power vaporized it and all is left is a black mark. And next to that ladder is the outline of a human being. A human being, just like you or me.
I wasn't sure how I was going to feel walking in. I knew it would be a challenge to represent the U.S. in this bike tour focused on peace, nonproliferation and our environment. Despite being a first-generation Chinese-American and knowing that my family had no ties to the U.S. at the time the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, I still felt such guilt having an American passport and daring to stand in a museum dedicated to the tragedy humanity faced in 1945.
Tears were brought to my eyes as I listened the stories of survivors. I felt like I was going to be sick and had to walk away in fear that I might actually vomit from the horrors they described. The years of pain from one woman's story was very difficult to listen to. She was bed-ridden for 10 years as she had no skin, constant nausea and headaches, unable to keep food or drink down, and wished for death every day. My only thought: no matter how bad a war may be, we human beings (not just Americans, all people), cannot ever detonate another nuclear weapon. We know the consequences and we are not human if we can wish this agonizing pain onto others. There are others ways to a safe and peaceful world.
'Street Action':
In the morning of our 2nd day, we stood under the hot sun with 50 posters, Hibakusha Worldwide posters. What does that mean, you ask? 'Hibakusha' means a survivor of the Nagasaki or Hiroshima nuclear attack. Our posters were showing all of the other places around the world, including the U.S., that has been affected by nuclear energy and weapons. We passed out flyers to locals asking them to join us in our presentation we hosted later in the afternoon.
FYI: Each step to make nucearl energy or weapons is a dangerous process and harmful to one's health. From acquiring the uranium, to transporting it to a facility, to processong it, to testing it, to 'safely' using it in a nuclear energy facility, to storing it, and to disposing of it, it is signifcantly harmful and increases the chances for many types of cancer, leaukemia, and other illnesses.
Incredible high school activists:
Around 100 high school students from across Japan, including Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Fukushima, and from nearby countries like the Philippines and South Korea attended a joint conference with our group. We heard from a girl (10th grade, I believe) and her personal story of how she was evacuated from Fukushima, stripped searched for radiation poisoning, parated from friends, and banned from her home for over a year. Now she is speaking out against nuclear energy because she knows from experience, the awful consequences.
Bicycles are here!
Thank you Trek! All of our bikes were donated for the two-week use by an American company or group in Wisconsin, USA! I have a lovely red bike and spent a couple minutes today attaching my SPD pedals! A big thank you to 30th Century Bicycle for donating the pedals and hydration pack and to Nor Meyers in Mt. Vernon, IA for donating the shoes to match!
Clint Eastwood made two movies about Iwo Jima, you know; one from the Japanese perspective and one from the American perspective. Eastwood is a straight up guy, don't you think? He's a Republican, that's for sure. He has also lived longer than any of us. He was alive during WWII and I doubt any of us were. I grew up in the shadow of WWII, but she didn't.
Michelle is just a kid. Lighten up. I'm not a peacenik, but it's popular with this generation to be a peacenik. That's why Ron Paul is so popular with some of my leftist friends who used to vote Democratic. It's also a form of isolationism because American wars cost so much, no matter who started them. We can't keep putting American wars on a credit card like George W. Bush did while offering ever more tax cuts to the rich. It's not working.
I would find it difficult to forgive execution and rape on such a scale. To me, forgiveness is a contract between two people. First the person who committed rape and execution would have to say he was truly sorry. Then, perhaps, I could accept that apology.
Have you no sense of shame at the fact that the United States is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons? And, let's put some scale into context: while the Japanese rape of Nanking was horrible, at an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilian dead, the US made up for that in its bombing of Dresden (German civilian casualties were also very high when USAAF forces targeted the German transportation net in March and April 1945), and the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945, which killed an estmated 100,000 Japanese. Is the fury of your response an unconscious expression of your own guilt, or lack of remorse?
No I have no shame we used nuclear weapons, It was necessary we had them we used them it ended the war. You are correct I have no remorse for what happened and I definitely have no guilt. The fury of my response is due to the fact that some of my best friends are veterans as well as active service military feeling guilt for the actions taken in defence of our country after we were attacked denigrates their service. Ask some of the last living veterans of WWII what they think of your comments.
You just don't want to admit that it was the USSR's final offensive of the war, against the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria, which tipped the scales and convinced the Japanese to surrender...
You also forget that Japanese junior officers attempted a coup the night before Hirohito's broadcast, and actually attacked the Imperial Palace in an attempt to seize the recording of the Emperor's address. Many Japanese army officers wanted to fight on, regardless of how many bombs were dropped. Then there's the inconvenient fact that the US could have dropped maybe two more bombs in 1945: American industry could not produce fissile material the way it was cranking out P-51s or M-4s. My bottom line: the nuclear bombings targeted previously intact Japanese cities in order to demonstrate the power of fission weapons; tens of thousands of civilians were killed by a USAAF which had fought most of the war trying to avoid inflicting civilian casualties; the ONLY good outcome of the bombings was to educate the world about the horrors of radiation sickness and flash burns, effects which had not been anticipated; the end of the war was brought about by a number of factors, not just the bombings, but apologists for the bombings have to ignore those facts to salve their consciences.
We may have only been able to drop two more bombs but the Japanese did not know that. So what you are telling me is that you have to ignore your own facts to salve your conscience? Not sure what your point is because I sure am not an apologist nor does my conscience bother me regarding dropping bombs on Japan. Yes there were a lot of factors that led to the end of the war and dropping nuclear weapons was one of them and probably the defining one.
GOTCHA! You have presented your interpretation of the history, Troy, and since you reached a conclusion before examining all of the evidence, of course you're going to justify the nuclear bombings. And, you should know that the Soviet Union was the real target of the bombs, not Japan, since Truman knew the Japanese wanted to end the war, and the US did NOT impose unconditional surrender terms. The US accepted the Japanese condition that Hirohito remain on the throne. If you knew the history of the Pacific War, you would have known that Hirohito was just as hated as Hitler and Mussolini, and Americans wanted him tried as a war criminal. Finally, Truman's decision to drop the bomb was informed by domestic political considerations: he didn't want the American people to discover the US had developed a nuclear weapon and NOT used it. Troy, the war was over, Japan was looking to surrender, and the surrender would have happened without either bomb being dropped.
What Jeff Klinzman said was what I understood. The Japanese were losing the war. Even without dropping bomb, the war could end. I didn’t know the political part though. Now I learn. (I can't find a reply button to Jeff's entry.) War is horrible. Robert McNamara would talk about his mistake hoping people would not repeat it. Perhaps it eased his guilt.
One thing to be grateful for, maybe? We never used a nuclear bomb again, except to test them, and that testing killed a lot of people too. I am still breathless over the horror of what the Japanese did to your relatives in Hong Kong. No wonder the Chinese still hate the Japanese. I'm not saying their hatred solves anything. Not at all. but I understand it. Peace is a precious thing, and in the Middle East, for example, it rarely if ever happens.