Feature

Japanese -.

‘hibakusha’
and friends
promote
peace Call

Japan has a significant role in the world
disarmament movement, Yoshito Saito
asserted.

“The feeling and opinion of the Japanese
people against nuclear weapons is very
strong. But not strong enough yet to encir-
cle the (Prime Minister Noburo) Takeshita
cabinet which has maintained support for
the nuclear deterrence theory,” he stated in
an interview.

Yet despite the opposition of the long-
ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the
presence of bases for U.S. nuclear-carrying
warships, some 34 million Japanese have
signed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki appeal
for the elimination of nuclear armaments,
Saito and his companions pointed out.

Six Japanese peace activists, two of them
survivors of the nuclear bombing of Hiro-
shima in the closing days of World War II,
were in Vancouver at the invitation of the
B.C. Peace Council. They took their peti-
tion and greetings to the 1989 Walk for
Peace.

The delegation included bomb survivors
Akito Asano and Nakako Kubo, along
with physician Eri Katayangi, women’s
peace activist Megumi Kondo, Saito and
translator Yayoi Tsuchida.

In an interview with the Tribune, the
delegates made it clear that Japan, with
1,390 of its 3,350 local governments declar-
ing their municipalities nuclear-weapons
free, reflects the growing worldwide opposi-
tion to the arms race — perhaps as only a
country which actually experienced the use

_of nuclear weapons against it can.

At the same time, they painted a picture
ofa nation that has seen its most progressive
citizens become the victims of purges under
the strong grip of the U.S. government
which occupied the country following
World War II.

“Tt is my duty to go out and speak about
the effects of the atom bomb,” said Asano,
a hibakusha — a survivor of the Hiro-
shima holocaust.

Asano, a trade unionist and currently
manager of an Osaka consumer’s co-op,
said he has visited the United States, The
Philippines, the Soviet Union and other
countries on speaking tours.

In a printed autobiographical sheet

EE ES aS |
Greetings

on the 103rd
anniversary of
May Day

from

Ukrainian
Senior
Citizens

Club, #1

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

PEACE DELEGATION IN VANCOUVER...

Yoshito Saito.

Asano writes that he was 500 metres from
epicentre of the blast that destroyed Hiro-
shima on Aug. 6, 1945.

He describes regaining consciousness
after the explosion: “Around me were
charred bodies, a severely burnt corpse
without a head, and people crying for water.
It was like a living hell.

“One day, Matsuura (a friend) sharpened
chopsticks to pick glass splinters out of my
skull and I did the same for him. Some 40
pieces were taken out of my head. Even now
there are still some fragments there,” Asano
reported.

Fellow hibakusha Nakako Kubo’s des-
cription is more gut-wrenching. An 18-year
old who was two kilometres from the epi-
centre, she recalled in her statement the
aftermath: “Burns began to putrefy over-
night due to the summer heat. Bodies
swelled up and their features disappeared,
with eyes becoming only fine lines. Noses
became only two nostrils at the centre of the
face. Lips looked like red peppers.

“TI believe that if people of the world
knew the real picture of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, they would put out great energy
to eliminate nuclear weapons completely,”
Kubo, chair of the Hibakusha Association
of Ehime Prefecture, wrote.

There are 360,000 hibakusha still alive,
and many of these continue to suffer severe
psychological and physical problems, in-
cluding death by leukemia and other
cancers, Dr. Eri Katayangi said.

Speaking in English, Katayangi said: “I
know I can never treat them completely so I
want people to know the after-effect is con-
tinuing. People have mentally and socially
suffered for over 40 years.”

Katayangi and Yoshito Saito are leaders
of the 33,000-member Japan Federation of
Democratic Medical Institutions. The
organization of doctors, nurses and other
hospital employees collected two million
signatures on the appeal, which has more
than one billion signees so far.

“Those engaged in medical treatment
have to make efforts for peace,”’ Saito said.

There are special wings in several hospi-
tals around Japan for Hiroshima and
Nagasaki survivors, said Saito. But while
the government pays the fees for hibakusha
patients, it is often difficult for people to
qualify for the treatment, he said.

The United States has attempted to jus-
tify the atom bombing of the Japanese cities
on the grounds that it shortened the war
and saved thousands of servicemen’s lives.
But a booklet’ produced by Nihon

Hidankyo — the Japan Confederation of
A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations
— tells a different story.

“By the middle of 1945, Japan had lost all
its marine and air forces, and scarcely any
war potential remained ...An Agreement
had been made.. .at Yalta .. .that the Soviet
Union should enter the war against Japan
from Siberia in early August, within three
months of the surrender of Nazi Germany.

“The use of atomic bombs by the U.S.
was not really ‘to shorten the agony of war
... as President (Harry) Truman claimed,
but ‘to get a political advantage in the U.S.
post-war strategy against the Soviet Union,’
according to Secretary of War Stinson.”

The bombing was also done for experi-
mental purposes, the booklet states: “The
USS. forcibly took many Hibakusha to mil-
itary hospitals ...where they took samples
of their blood and cut off affected parts of
their weakening bodies for pathological
research .... But they gave them no medical
treatment.”

After the war the U.S. military occupied
Japan for several years, using the country as
a base of operations for the Korean. War.
The legacy of that occupation continues
today, with the location of several U.S.
naval bases in Japan, concentrated particu-
larly in the Kanagawa prefecture, a small
and heavily industrialized area which is also
home of the Campaign for a Nuclear Free
Kanagawa.

The legacy of that occupation is seen also
in the sorry state of Japan’s key trade
unions, most of which are little better than
company unions which support their
employers’ policies, including incursions
into the domestic markets of other coun-
tries, the delegates related.

I:

SDPATUUAUAUUANEGEEOOOEOUECEUOOEEOOAOEEEEOUOOGEEOOOERECEUEOEETUOECEET AEE

. Megumi Kando (I), Akito Asano, Eri Katayangi, Nakako Kubo, Yayoi Tsuchida,

MAY DAY GREETINGS
For Jobs & Peace

Both Akito Asano and Yoshito Saito
were personally affected by that legacy,
which saw left-wing trade unionists attacked
during the Fifties and early Sixties. Asano
was purged from his job and his union, the
National Railway Workers Union, during
the Korean War years. Saito was expelled
from his union while attempting to organize
workers at Toshiba.

But, Saito noted, there is a growing fight-
back against company-dominated trade
unionism in the National Conference of
Trade Unions for Promotion of a United
Front. It is “very active” against the Japan/
U.S. Security Treaty, the Japanese Self-
Defence Forces and other facets of the
involvement of Japan in the U.S. military
strategy for the Pacific, he said. ;

While in B.C. the delegation met with
other peace activists, including president
Mary Wynn-Ashford of the Canadian Phy-
sicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War,
who wants to initiate increased contact with
doctors in Japan.

The group also promoted the Appeal
from the Citizens of Hiroshima and Naga-
saki for a Total Ban and Elimination of
Nuclear Weapons. Copies of the petition,
which was launched in 12 countries Feb. 6
and Feb. 9, 1985, were circulated at the
Walk for Peace rally in Vancouver April 22.
It has since spread to more than 150 coun-
tries.

They also promoted the third annual
Peace Wave, in which peace groups stage
activities in sequence around the globe. The
first peace wave, which came out of the 1987
World Conference Against A and H Bombs
held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was
marked in Vancouver during UN Disar-
mament Week Oct. 24 that year.

Finnish
Organization

of Canada

HULUOEUAERDUAEEOOAEDOGEEOUEGEOGERUOOEEOOGEOOEGOUEOAOEUOCEUOODUELUOELOTR;

MM MMMM

Pacific Tribune, May 1, 1989 « 23