Portside

Artist Unknown, Offset, Circa 2003, Venezuela

Poster Translation:

Hiroshima

August 6, 1945

100,000 killed

Nagasaki

August 9, 1945

60,000 killed

Vietnam

October 1964 - January 1973

1,000,000 killed

Iraq

March 20, 2003

No to war! repeated in several languages including Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Basque, Portuguese, German, and Russian]

Never Forget!

August 6 was the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.  On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay, piloted and commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped "Little Boy", the world's first nuclear bomb, over the central part of Hiroshima, Japan. It exploded about two thousand feet above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 thousand tons of TNT, killing an estimated 80,000 civilians outright and 60,000 more by the end of 1945 due to radiation poisoning. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 39,000-80,000 outright. None of these figures include subsequent cancers caused by the bomb.

The dropping of these bombs--against a Japan that was about to surrender--was not an accident or aberration. It was a calculated and logical endpoint to a worldview that persists even now. 

This is not ancient history but related to today's headlines.  Congress is currently divided between those who want to wage war against Iran for developing a nuclear program, and those who want to works towards peace by monitoring and inspecting their program to ensure they are not building nuclear weapons.  The peace makers support the deal forged by the P5+1: UN Security Council's five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the U. S.) plus Germany.

Please let your congress people know how you feel.

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