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Protests as US Warship Docks in Nagasaki
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.
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12 Comments so far
Show AllI'll start caring about what the Japanese want when they stop slaughtering whales and dolphins. Until then I really can't get all that upset about a U.S. warship on a diplomatic mission.
Besides, you want to talk about WWII atrocities let's talk about the rape of Nanjing by the Japanese military. Not saying the atomic bombs were justified - I just don't like hypocrisy, and Japan was just as barbaric as we were. Everyone is a barbarian during war, that's why we should avoid them.
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"
Well....a fair comment.
Yeah, the people who got melted in Nagasaki were military who took part in "the rape of Nanjing." (I put it in quotes because it's a book title.)
And didn't you know you're directly responsible for the Iraq war?
Just as the United States is responsible for the war crimes it committed when it dropped Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands civilians, the Japanese are responsible for the crimes they committed in China and elsewhere.
One sides crimes do not excuse anothers. A crime against humanity is a crime against humanity. "They do it too" can never be an excuse.
And yes, the people of Nagasaki have the right to be offended by this visit by the US Military just as the people of Nanking would have the right to be offended by a visit from the Japanese military.
Innocence stolen
bombs have fallen
like a hot wind
from within
inhumanity is stripped away
our humanity reappears
once again to hold sway.
US warships on a diplomatic mission? The comment is disgraceful and Moore is simply worse to call it fair. You fail to recognise scale in your lack of empathy for the residents of that shell shocked place. There is no reason to drift off into japanese war criminal behaviour. But since you hav they were certainly no worse that the allies treatment of people in Germany for a couple o fyears after the war ended. It is well and truely documented how the super power acted and why. Clinton's bombing with NATO lead forces in Serbia followed a similar pattern and how does mankind clean up depleted uranium. You two sound like you'll be on here raring to follow a military mindset of what the Pentagon Papers revealed and with the trillion dollar war machine set to justify its next attack with mini-nukes. Create the enemy and daemonise it, use a media blitz of lies and distortions to create fear among citizens, justify unrestrained costs that overwhelmingly disappear in waste and corruption, thriving armaments industrial jobs in Congressional districts supported for constituents by a well lobbied corrupted Congress, insatiable greed and racist dogmatic distain for human rights abroad, bullying and murderous intent under the pathetic guise of self defense and professed concern for human rights, support and promotion of terrorism, imposition of empire. What are nuclear arms for? They are terrorist weapons. Terrorism!
What is it now eleven aircraft carriers? How does this insensitive provocation hope to achieve diplomatically in Japan? American war machines go wherever they like by right? Israeli ships commit piracy and aggression on the high seas? They too have nuclear weapons. Will they become the second country to use them?
Democracy? The Japanese don't require nor do they want US military in their country at all. You care for the dolphins your military are training while your wonderful allies use your ammunition to pepper and sink Palestinian fishermen imprisoned off the coast of Gaza terrorising them? Your military imposes its will frightening people and threatening nations whose populations don't want your 'help'. Because your 'help' and foreign aid imprisons them and goes back to your corporations and armament manufacturers while their corrupt elites supress and rob them. Your military are not the answer but the problem. They support and train finance and arm their leaders to supress. Your Government is totally corrupted because your system is corrupt. Like the citizens of Nagasiki I too am sickened. 'Department of Defence'? You must be joking justice!
Nuclear weapons are a danger to mankind. In the hands of the Pentagon and their Israeli buddies we should all feel safer? You are both naive and the comments are lack human empathy, understanding and consideration. Gun-boat diplomacy, what a terrorist Republic!
US WARSHIP and "dipomatic mission" MEANS -- WAR PREPARATIONS.
this is another US "WAR DIPLOMACY" .
and it has NOTHING to do with PEACE. but is an attempt to get japan to MUSCLE UP militarily to intimidate ............
CHINA _- which is the USA's "next enemy" lined up by its corporations and congress - and to BLAME for the USA's OWN ECONOMIC debacle...it is SO TRANSPARENT. the USA is still trying to hang on to its "pacific lake" influence .......
You are kidding, right?
As human beings we empathize with the Japanese, but could we say this was also an act of nature, like hurricanes and earthquakes? Doesn't nature control human overpopulation too by other means?
Aren't wars, bombs, plagues, famines, crime, resource depletion, pollution, etc. more of nature's ways to restore balance by killing us off? Of making way for a diversity of species to stabilize the ecosystems our human species has so disrupted?
Why do we think humans are special beings immune to nature's laws? Is nature humane, kind, or fair in the way it kills us off? If nature had not killed all those Japanese, would there still be whales, elephants, tigers, bears and tuna? Isn't being humane a strictly human concept?
Maybe controlling our birth rate is the most humane thing we can do.
Are you having a laugh??
Are you implying that dropping Atomic Bombs may be natures way of controlling the population?
Most of the comments have totally missed the fact that the US still has 60,000 troops stationed in Japan, nearly 64 years after the end of the War. Why? If they truly are equal partners on the world stage, why are they there? Again, why do the Japanese people still have to allow our ships to enter their ports at will? Because the US thinks that it has the right to rule wherever it wants.
Peggy
Raulmax
Puerto Rico has the right to be an independent nation.
The arrogance of the US and its Navy are alive and well. One would think there would be a modicum of respect for the fact that Nagasaki had been destroyed by the US use of the bomb.