Remarks by Bob Kinsey at City Hall Colorado Springs August 6
“Forgetaboutit 72 years Ago. Big deal. The end of World War 2.. Got the Japs to surrender. Truman never lost any sleep over it. They would have used it on us if they got it. It was a Just War in self defense – Remember Pearl Harbor! We just returned the favor. It save a million American servicemen lives to be lost in the invasion of Japan mainland Forgetaboutit. Its so over and done.”
So who is calling us to Remember? the Hibakusha (Atomic Bomb survivors) want us to remember their city’s dead – mostly civilian – and to have their death, and the shame and pain by Hibakusha themselves at least meah something positive to remind us it must never happen again. So the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb museum sends out these poster to educate—to help new generations to remember
The historic Christian theologians want us to remember that a war is only “Just” if more than a just cause exists. It must also be fought with just means — not targeting civilians or doing more damage than prevented. Just so the Federal Council of Churches condemned the bombing immediately afterward. Given our modern day WMD’s it may be that no war can be “Just”. And to remember that we, so far, are the only nation to detonate nuclear weapons in warfare while lying to ourselves about why we did so.
Gar Alperowitz, the historian of the decision to drop the bomb, wants us to remember how the Japanese were seeking surrender terms months before Hiroshima, — that the Pentegon calculated Japan would surrender by the latest November 1945 without any invasion of their mainland. –that the declaration of war on Japan August 1st by the Soviet Union was more a surrender factor than dropping of the bomb on August 9. After all the US Army Airforce had obliterated many Japanese cities in the last year of the war with “conventional” weapons.
Alperowitz says remember that US Secretary of State argued for the use of the bomb to intimidate the Russians to not use their otherwise superior military might to extend hegemony over all of Europe in 1945. And Alperowitz wants us to remember how we sold ourselves multiple fictional rationalizations for having used the bomb and building more. (including the supposed million American servicemen’s lives saved)
President Eisenhower wants us to remember the 5-6 Trillion dollars we spent on building nukes and delivery systems over the first 50 years when he said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” What if we had spent that money on creating just and prosperous societies world wide? How much safer would we be now?
The International Court of Justice wants us to remember their 1999 advisory opinion that the use –or even threat of use –of nuclear weapons constitutes a crime against humanity.
122 nations who created the Nuclear Ban Treaty want us to remember how our 1970 treaty commitment to non-proliferation involved disarming our own nuclear arsenal. To remember that instead, Congress is commiting another Trillion dollars to “modernize” our nuclear weapons complex to manufacture more bombs and missiles. Let’s remember that it is we who pushed NATO east of Germany towards Russia, in violation of verbal agreements with them not to. We have been baiting the Russian Bear – not the reverse. And we have instructed NATO countries NOT to endorse this Treaty.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists wants us to remember and to consider that we are 2.5 minutes to Midnight — closer to a possible nuclear war than at any time since 1953. More flash points and more despair of peaceful solutions here and elsewhere. Let us remember the words of Dr. King: “the choice today is between non-violence and non-existence.”
Our planet – non human as well as human inhabitants – want us to consider whether we as individuals and as a nation yet have a soul that respects their survival and participation in the great chain of being. They call us to remember rather than repress the meanings of August 6-9 1945.The weapons we point at our enemies have passed through our own heart on their way. Let us remember our citizen power, and our humanity, and turn away from our selfish, and foolish myths that our nation can have national security even if others are suffering. Let us remember that we produce daily in our nuclear power plants and our nuclear weapons production and our so called depleted uranium or armor piercing ordinance,– that we continue to create High Level Nuclear Waste a poison that will be deadly for up to 250,000 years and haven’t a plan to protect the planet from all this “waste”. Don’t forgetaboutit.
