Protests as US Warship Docks in Nagasaki

* Nagasaki in wikipedia *


Forwaded by Joseph Gerson, NO Bases List and Agatha Haun



Published on Thursday, February 5, 2009 by Agence France Presse

Protests as US Warship Docks in Nagasaki

by Agence France Presse <http://www.afp.com/english/home/>


TOKYO - A US warship docked Thursday in Nagasaki to the protests
of residents and a boycott by local leaders who said the visit was in
poor taste in a city obliterated by a US atomic bomb.

The burnt ruins of Nagasaki, the site where the United States
dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945. A US warship docked Thursday in
Nagasaki to the protests of residents and a boycott by local leaders who
said the visit was in poor taste in a city obliterated by a US atomic
bomb. (Photo:Yosuke Yamahata Via Shogo Yamaha/AFP)

The USS Blue Ridge, which is stationed in Yokosuka near Tokyo,
sailed to Nagasaki with a stated goal of promoting friendship between
Japan and the United States.

Hundreds of residents including atomic bomb survivors chanted,
"We are opposed to the port call!" as the 19,600-ton vessel arrived in
the southwestern city.

"We don't want to see the US flag flying at this port and this
feeling will not change until the United States takes a policy towards
the elimination of nuclear weapons," Osamu Yoshitomi, an official at
Nagasaki city, told AFP.

Nagasaki's mayor and regional governor both refused to take part
in the welcome ceremony after unsuccessfully asking Japanese and US
authorities to cancel the visit.

The United States stations more than 40,000 troops in Japan
under a post-World War II alliance. Under a 1960 agreement, local
authorities do not have the right to refuse US warships' port calls.

It was the seventh visit by a US military vessel to the city of
Nagasaki. The US Navy also maintains a major base in the nearby city of
Sasebo, part of Nagasaki prefecture.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomohisa Taue regretted the timing of the visit,
saying that atomic bomb survivors had been optimistic that newly
installed US President Barack Obama would move towards nuclear
abolition.

"Nagasaki cannot accept a port call which rouses anxiety in a
city hit by an atomic bomb," Taue said in a statement.

Some 70,000 people died on August 9, 1945 when US forces dropped
an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Three days earlier, another atomic bomb
killed more than 140,000 people in Hiroshima.

Japan surrendered on August 15, ending World War II.