English commemoration of Hiroshima, Nagasaki nuclear victims

Posted on August 3, 2013 by petrel41

This video, of a famous Turkish poem, with English subtitles, on a child who died from the Hiroshima nuclear bomb in 1945, says about itself:

Hiroshima child- Fazil Say – Nazim Hikmet, None can hear my silent tread (kiz çocuğu)

Hiroshima Child

I come and stand at every door
But none can hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead

I’m only seven though I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I’m seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind

I need no fruit I need no rice
I need no sweets nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead for I am dead

All that I need is that for peace
You fight today you fight today
So that the children of this world
Can live and grow and laugh and play

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Campaigners remember US atom bomb victims

Friday 02 August 2013

Peace campaigners in Sheffield are to commemorate the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The United States unleashed the world’s first and only atomic attacks in 1945 on the mostly civilian targets in Japan.

August 6 is Hiroshima Day, with events beginning at Sheffield Town Hall at 10am.

Each year the Sheffield campaigners stage events such as a “peace picnic” in memory of the hundreds of thousands who were killed immediately or died later from their injuries and cancers caused by radiation.

Sheffield Lord Mayor Vicky Priestly will sign a Mayors for Peace declaration and a message will be read from the Mayor of Hiroshima.

On August 11 Nagasaki Day will be marked from 2pm in the Japanese Garden.

Peace activists stood in silence across the world today to honour the 250,000 Japanese killed by US atom bombs in World War II – and call time on today’s deadly nukes.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue criticized the Japanese government at a ceremony Friday for refusing to sign a statement rejecting the use of nuclear weapons. The statement was offered at an international disarmament meeting in April: here.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki remembered in Ghent, Belgium: here.

We recently returned from a 12 day speaking tour in Japan that took us to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, and Okinawa. Before we joined forces in Hiroshima prior to the August 6 commemorative events, Oliver [Stone] lent support to the activists protesting the South Korean naval base under construction on Jeju, South Korea, less than 500 kilometers from Shanghai. Peter was in Kyoto with participants in American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute’s annual study-abroad class. Being in Hiroshima and Nagasaki around the anniversaries of the atomic bombings was a powerful experience for both of us and a vivid reminder of why whitewashing the past is so critical to perpetuating empire in the present — a project in which the U.S. and Japan have collaborated for the past 68 years: here.

Support the British Nuclear Test Veterans Recognition Campaign: here.