A-Bomb Victims Stage Rally in Hiroshima Against U.S. Nuclear Warship

ap.tbo ^ | October 29, 2005 | AP

[ncountylee]

TOKYO (AP) - Victims of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan joined a sit-in rally in Hiroshima on Saturday to protest plans to base a nuclear-powered American warship in the country, an activist said.

The protest came as talks got underway between top Japanese and American security officials on how to realign the U.S. military presence in Japan.

About 80 people - many of them victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - rallied against plans announced Friday by the U.S. Navy to deploy a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan, said Kazutoshi Kajikawa, who heads the Hiroshima Peace Movement Center.

"It makes me angry that America can even consider basing a nuclear carrier in Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack," Kajikawa said.

Basing the ship in Japan will also put the Japanese public at risk of being exposed to a radiation leak, he said.

The U.S. has said the carrier can be operated safely in Japanese waters. American Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer told reporters Friday that nuclear ships had made 1,200 visits to Japan in the past 40 years without harming the environment.

The U.S. Navy said it decided to replace the conventional aircraft carrier now based in Yokosuka, just outside Tokyo, with the nuclear-powered ship because it has greater capabilities.

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

Saying the people protesting started the War is like saying that You has a slave or exterminated the Indians.

[muawiyah]

I can see you were never in the military.

[muawiyah]

Can't a guy take a break. BTW, most of the victims still alive were, in fact, women and children. That was the point. Your cheap Islamofascist trick of putting words in my mouth will not work.

[muawiyah]

But, of course, Tojo was there for the start of the war, which was implicit in that particular comment.

Again, your cheap Islamofascist trick of putting words in my mouth will not work.

[muawiyah]

Many more places in Japan were also selected as targets. Some were deselected. The two cities with the most Christians (and historic links to Christianity) were selected.

Did you ever wonder why?

[muawiyah]

The women and children had little to do with making the decisions. In that society, such folk simply lived there. Those few who survived the attack and live on today certainly should not be blamed for it, which, unfortunately, is what thugs and louts prefer to do every single time.

[muawiyah]

You misread everything, and as I told your gumbahs, your cheap Islamofascist trick of putting words in my mouth will not work.

[muawiyah]

No invasion was necessary. The Japanese could have been starved out. It's been over a thousand years since they actually produced enough food for their population.

Whether someone lived, or someone died, or why or how that happened, is not the point. If survivors of the only two A-bombings in history want to get out there and protest, let 'em. It's a good reminder for everybody.

[muawiyah]

They'd been allied to us BEFORE WWII. See: WWI, and also check out the Kellog-Briand Pact for how the US and Japan teamed up to kick the Brits out of the Pacific.

[muawiyah]

Again, the folks you saw demonstrating who were actual victims of the bombing had all been young children at the time.

Although it's much to be hoped for among Christians, it seems to me your local gods Dagan and Saturn continue to demand that the young be passed through the fire into their hands.

[ExpatGator]

Listen up oh builder of straw men. My credentials:

Dana Lee Kissick, Sonar Technician First Class (Non SW). Twelve plus years in Uncle Sam's Big Gray Canoe Club.

Assigned Commands: Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center Pacific, USS Halsey CG-23, USS R.K Turner CG-20, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Six, Naval Training Center Orlando.

Qualifications (too numerous to list them all but here are a few): Nuclear Weapons Training For ASROC Handling Teams (I must attach to this disclosure the standard disclaimer that I CAN NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY THE PRESENCE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT OR ONBOARD ANY COMMAND THAT I SERVED AT OR ON, ASROC Handling Supervisor, Sonar Supervisor, Ship's Rescue Swimmer, #1 Hoseman, Scene Leader, DCET member, Mk38 25mm Chain shootin' and maintaining MOFO, Casual Hero.

Now, Your Name and qualifications please. Don't give me the "I cannot tell you because of National Security considerations or a like excuse." You can disclose your qualifications, and you must or you are a liar who has been called on it. Are you a real man or a Walter Mitty poser?

[ExpatGator]

Here is the Poser's mail reply to my post 151:

Re: A-Bomb Victims Stage Rally in Hiroshima Against U.S. Nuclear Warship
From muawiyah | 10/30/2005 3:13:16 PM PST read
"Hey, people have other stuff to do. This is not a "live chat" area ~ leave your messages and move on."

I do not normally post folks mails, but I gladly make the exception in the case of uninformed pacifist posers who sling invective and claim the moral high ground. I will not "move on" until he answers the simple challenge to qualify his claims.

[muawiyah]

Do you really think anyone believes you?

Well, anyway, thanks for your "gumbahs ping list" ~ I'll add that one to the file ~ under "Children are to blame".

What a strange group you hang with.

[RedMonqey]

Death by starvation.

What a load.
Have you seen the stories out of the Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia? Or North Korea? Not a pretty sight. You would love to have plenty of pictures of dying children with extended swollen bellies and hollow eyes to show how cruel America is.
If America did try to starve Japan , then people like you would switch arguments and say we should have found a different more human way rather than let millions of Japanese civilians die a horrible, prolonged death.

And the survivors will be there, protesting Racial and National genocide as well as the long lasting effects of national malnutrition on untold generations of innocent Japanese.
No thank you.

[muawiyah]

Just being sarcastic.

[winker]

Tough Roentgens! Go tell it to your rabid departed ancestors1

[Mr. Silverback]

"It makes me angry that America can even consider basing a nuclear carrier in Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack," Kajikawa said.

That's like saying that we shouldn't ever send an Arleigh Burke destroyer to visit Korea or Vietnam because we used napalm there and the Burke destroyers are powered by jet fuel.

Upon hearing of this protest, I was reminded of a statement by a Japanese pilot who was visitng the Smithsonian to see a plane he had flown while training to conduct a chemical attack against an American naval base. He said he was gratified to see that visitors looking at his bird would have Enola Gay in their field of vision, so they could see his plane as well as the plane that saved his life and saved his country.

[Mr. Silverback]

Despite the relatively pacifist culture of modern Japan, I'm told by friends who've lived there that the anti-nuke nuts are about as numerous as the hardcore anti-war dipsticks here. In other words, a fringe movement only.

My high school world history teacher lived in Japan for several years, and said a large number of Japanese who were alive at the time of the bombing told him that every horrible thing he'd heard about the cost of an invasion was either true or fell short of the truth. Even many Japanese who resented the bombing on some level agreed with Mitsuo Fuchida, the air commander of the Pearl Harbor attack, who said that any leader who had such a weapon and held it back would be a man who had fundamentally broken faith with his people.

[Eagles6]

Yes, I have that problem of misreading. I usually take people to mean what they say, which, as we have seen, is not fair according to dems and the un.

And , beg your pardon, what words did I put in your mouth?

BTW I think I may feel racially offended by your use of the term gumbah. Not quite sure if I have the time or energy tonight.

[Mr. Silverback]

I think you've missed a lot. Please read this.