BY ROBERT MILLER
HIROSHIMA, Japan - More than 300 people met here July 31
for the opening of the Fifty Years Since the Atomic
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki International Symposium.
In addition to participants from Japan, 73 international
delegates came from 23 other countries, including
Australia, Cuba, Estonia, France, Lithuania, Marshall
Islands, South Korea, Tahiti, and the United States.
The July 31-August 2 conference is cosponsored by the Japanese Preparatory Committee and the Special Non- Government Organization Committee for Disarmament based in Geneva. The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers is playing a major role in this conference.
The International Symposium is one of several conferences that will precede the 50th commemoration of the U.S. government bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. More than 200,000 people were killed in those first atomic bomb attacks or died later from radiation poisoning.
The other meetings include the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, August 3-9; the 50th Anniversary Conference, August 1-9; and the Hiroshima Conference for Peace-oriented Social Alternatives, August 5-6.
Discussions at the first conference are focusing on the reasons Washington dropped the atomic bombs and the devastating effects on the people of Japan that resulted from the blasts.
Conference participants have been relating their efforts to fight for compensation and medical attention for the bomb sufferers, many of whom are Korean. How to fight against further testing, possession, and use of nuclear weapons is also part of the deliberations.
The decision of the French government to conduct a nuclear test on the Moruroa atoll in the South Pacific is an important issue here. Protests in Japan have begun against the testing; similar actions are taking place throughout the Pacific, including in Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. On July 19, for example, 250 people held a street protest in Osaka. The action was called by a coalition of antinuclear groups. Marching by the French consulate protesters chanted, "Stop the nuclear tests!"
Some capitalist politicians, including finance minister Masayoshi Takemura, are seizing the issue to step up nationalist, anti-French rhetoric, calling for a Japanese boycott of products from France.
The ruling coalition parties, along with the major opposition party, are denouncing nuclear testing as an unforgivable act.
Tokyo is also aiming its fire on the government of China, which it says carried out a nuclear test in May.
A delegation of socialist workers and young socialists from the United States will be participating in the 50th anniversary conferences and reporting for the Militant. They will be writing on the fight for compensation for atomic bomb survivors, the situation facing Korean victims of the bombings, discussions among auto workers and youth, and the interest in socialist literature among political activists and workers in Japan.
Bob Miller is a member of United Auto Workers Local 980 at the Ford plant in Edison, New Jersey.