79th Anniversary of Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 6 and 9, 1945

Oppose Nuclear Blackmail!
Make Canada a Zone for Peace!

This year marks the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. These were horrendous war crimes committed by the U.S. imperialists which deliberately targeted civilian populations for self-serving aims. These criminal acts set the pattern of impunity on the basis of which the U.S. fashioned the Cold War. On the basis of Cold War racist, anti-communist and anti-worker ideology the Anglo-American imperialists converted the striving of the peoples of the world for peace, freedom and democracy into an Anglo-American crusade against communism, the Soviet Union and People’s Democracies and the national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atom bomb that exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing about 140,000 people in the initial blast, with total deaths estimated at more than 237,000. Three days later, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki, immediately killing an estimated 70,000 people, with more than 140,000 people dying in total from the initial blast, burns, injuries and radiation sickness.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not chosen because they had any military significance. Hiroshima had not been previously bombed and thus was considered a good target to demonstrate the devastating power of the atomic bomb which had never been used before. The original target for the second bomb was Kokura, but it was clouded over so the secondary target, Nagasaki, was bombed instead. The bombing of Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima was also intended to test the effects of a plutonium bomb as compared to the uranium bomb used at Hiroshima. This partly explains why the U.S. rushed to execute the second horrific war crime only three days after the first – it wanted to test both types of bomb before a Japanese surrender and establish its military hegemony in the region.

Aftermath of U.S. war crimes in Japan (left to right): Hiroshima, August 6, 1945; Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.

The criminal bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was carried out not to end the war as the U.S. claims, as if this would justify such an act of mass terror, but to threaten the peoples of the world with nuclear annihilation if they did not accept U.S. imperialist dictate and hegemony. In particular it was aimed at the people of the Soviet Union and to serve the U.S. plans to establish permanent military bases in Japan and military dominance over Asia. The people of the Soviet Union had played the leading role in the defeat of Nazi fascism, at the cost of over 20 million lives. In opposition to a world united against fascism and war, the heinous crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left no doubt that U.S. imperialism had taken up the Nazi aim to defeat communism and establish its domination over the whole world.

August 6 and 9 are now days when people worldwide commemorate those who were killed in these horrendous acts of terrorism by the U.S. On these days the peoples of the world say Never Again! They reaffirm the commitment of humanity to a world of peace, freedom and democracy and their determination to oppose the war crimes and crimes of genocide being committed today.

Elimination of nuclear weapons has always been a goal of all peace-loving Canadians, who have fought every attempt of the U.S. to impose them on Canadian soil. According to U.S. and British imperialists and Canadian rulers, the goal of stopping nuclear proliferation involves the U.S. and Britain arming themselves to the teeth with offensive nuclear weapons while demanding that the peoples they threaten with nuclear annihilation are not permitted even to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes. The U.S. gives itself the right to launch “pre-emptive nuclear strikes” against any nation or people as it has threatened to do against Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), countries waging a determined struggle for their right to be.

Threats to use pre-emptive nuclear strikes or to retaliate against those declared to be enemies by using nuclear weapons, are part of the outlook that might makes right, and that there is no greater might than their vast arsenal of nuclear weapons. It is to terrorize people rather than having them seize the initiative by waging the resistance struggle to advance their own agenda for peace, freedom and democracy.

Far from working to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the U.S. and other big powers are carrying out nuclear weapon modernization programs, in violation of the commitments of the five nuclear-weapon states signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that they would pursue a halt to the nuclear arms race and seek nuclear disarmament.

Of great concern at this time is that the imperialist countries have armed Israel with the most lethal weapons of mass destruction in aid of the Zionist entity’s continued occupation of Palestine and genocide of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. Not only the U.S. but France, Germany, Britain and even Norway secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or turned a blind eye to its theft. The imperialist powers continue to deny that they have armed the Zionists with nuclear weapons, while they threaten Iran and declare it does not even have the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Similarly, the U.S. has permanently stationed its troops in south Korea in violation of the armistice agreement reached at the end of the Korean War, and has installed nuclear warheads on the Korean Peninsula aimed at the DPRK. It carries out annual nuclear war games to threaten the DPRK, including computer-simulated exercises for the invasion of the DPRK. When the DPRK saw itself forced to take measures to deter the U.S. by itself acquiring nuclear weapons, the U.S. engineered further threats and sanctions, unjustly accusing the DPRK of being responsible for the tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Humanity’s fight to rid the world of nuclear weapons and defeat the U.S. imperialist dictate requires stepping up the struggle to uphold the sovereignty and independence of all nations and the elimination of the threat or use of force to settle conflicts. It also necessitates that the Canadian working class and people organize for an anti-war government that rejects the use of force as a means of settling conflicts between nations and peoples, and withdraws from all aggressive military blocs and treaties such as NATO and NORAD.

On the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the nuclear bombings, all peace- and justice-loving Canadians pay their deepest respects to the Japanese victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Palestinian people and all peoples the world over who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of imperialist dictate. The criminal Anglo-American imperialist system can and will be ended by the peoples’ resistance and unity in action of all the fighting peoples of the world to establish a new world based on peace, justice, and dignity for all nations and peoples.

Protests in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary against NATO’s 75th anniversary summit.

[BACK]