[Text Fwd] [ Reply to Cordaro Hiroshima Day Vigil in Souix City.... (Links to DM and Omaha/STRATCOM observances)

* Text fwd from Frank Cordaro on July 22, 2010

Link to DM observance of Hiroshima/Nagasaki
http://groups.google.com/group/iowa-peace-list/browse_thread/thread/e51967e77acf9476


Link to Omaha/STRACTOM observance of Hiroshima/Nagasaki
http://groups.google.com/group/iowa-peace-list/browse_thread/thread/9755ce1e532f75ab


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gerald Iversen geraldiversen@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 21, 2010

What: Hiroshima Day Vigil
Date: Friday, Aug 6
Time: 11:30 a.m.
Place: Federal Building at 6th and Douglas Streets in Sioux City

The Siouxland Peace Coalition invites you to a vigil on Hiroshima Day
Friday, Aug. 6th, to raise awareness of the need for the U.S. to
ratify START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). The general public is
welcome to meet at 11:30 in front of the Federal Building at 6th and
Douglas Streets in Sioux City. After a brief visit to Senator
Grassley’s office to deliver a petition urging his support of START,
the group will demonstrate on the sidewalk until 12:30. Signs will be
provided.


Visit SiouxlandPeaceCoalition.com.

Contact person:
Gerald Iversen
geraldiversen@yahoo.com

712-274-2549 (Please leave a message.)

-----------------------------

Hiroshima Day Vigil Promotes START


The Siouxland Peace Coalition invites you to a vigil on Hiroshima Day,
Friday, August 6th to raise awareness of the need for the U.S. to
ratify START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty).

The general public is welcome to meet at 11:30 in front of the Federal
Building at 6th and Douglas Streets in Sioux City. After a brief visit
to Senator Grassley’s office to deliver a petition urging his support
of START, the group will demonstrate on the sidewalk until 12:30.
Signs will be provided.

Hiroshima Day commemorates August 6, 1945, when an American B-52
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another
atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Representatives of the media are welcome. A spokesperson will be available.

For more information visit the coalition’s website at
SiouxlandPeaceCoalition.com.

Background information about the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki from Greg P. Guelcher, Associate Professor of History,
Morningside College

On August 6, 1945, an American B-52 bomber named Enola Gay lifted off
from the Pacific island of Tinian, flew to the city of Hiroshima,
Japan, and without warning around 9:15 a.m. dropped a new and vastly
deadlier bomb on its unsuspecting inhabitants. Hiroshima itself was
obliterated within minutes; what the shockwaves didn't destroy fell
victim to the massive fires that followed. The human toll was
staggering: some 70,000 men, women, and children were killed
instantly, while many more (another 130,000 or so by 1950) would
perish as the result of their injuries or illnesses, especially
mysterious radiation sickness. Even fetuses still in the womb were
affected adversely.

Three days later, on August 9 (and only a day after a full report from
a devastated Hiroshima had finally reached Japan's leaders in Tokyo),
the U.S. dropped a second, unannounced atomic bomb on the port city of
Nagasaki. Again, the human toll was astounding, with an estimated
70,000 killed in the explosion, and an equal number dying of radiation
sickness within five years. The second atomic bomb had been moved up
from its originally scheduled date, due to fears of overcast weather
later on.

While the bombings did, in fact, help speed Japan's leaders to
surrender, among scholars today there's still great debate about both
the motives for dropping the bombs (intimidating the Soviet Union is
one commonly accepted rationale, for instance), as well as the actual
necessity of having dropped such fearsome weapons on a country that
was already arguably on the brink of total collapse.