...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, August 08, 2003
      ( 3:56 PM )
 
1,000 Cranes

Daintily Dirty (scroll down: "1000 cranes") reminds us to remember. This week was the 58th anniversary of the only time a country has used weapons of mass destruction on another country, killing hundreds of thousands at one time. The US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and this week the Japanese humbly request that we consider not doing it again:

On the 58th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack,
the mayor of Hiroshima, the city that was nearly obliterated with
160,000 people killed or injured by that single act, affirmed Japan's
commitment to "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty", while Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi called for countries around the world to
ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would impose a
moratorium on nuclear explosion tests. "Hiroshima city added to
the cenotaph 5,050 names of those who have died from cancer and
other long-term ailments over the past year, raising the toll to
231,920."

Three days later, Nagasaki held similar services, remembering the 70,000 that died the day the second atomic
bomb was dropped.

May we never be so cruel again, may the world not allow us to commit such acts. We hold no higher morality than any other nation of human beings, and there is no greater power than to be peacemakers and mercy givers - that is what will make this world safe, not the continuous stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

In rememberance.

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