The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.29           September 1, 1997 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
September 8, 1972
Thousands of activists in more than 20 cities across the United States participated in antiwar actions between Aug. 5 and 9 to commemorate the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The actions were called by the National Peace Action Coalition and the Student Mobilization Committee. NPAC and SMC also issued a joint call for international actions together with GENSUIKEN (the Japan Congress Against A and H Bombs).

A common theme of the actions was the comparison between the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and that caused today by U.S. bombing in Indochina. The weekly tonnage of U.S. bombing over Vietnam now equals many times the tonnage dropped on Hiroshima.

The Aug. 5 New York action began with a picket line in Duffy Square, followed by a march to the Bandshell in Central Park. Five to six hundred people participated.

An Aug. 5 action of 400 in San Francisco began with a commemoration ceremony for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki held at the Japanese Trade Center Peace Pagoda. About 100 Asian-Americans participated, and representatives of the Japanese-American community addressed the ceremony.

In Japan, several hundred Tokyo demonstrators tried to block the shipment of U.S. tanks to Vietnam on Aug. 5. More than 40,000 people gathered in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 to commemorate the 1945 bombing.

September 1, 1947
PARIS, France, Aug. 14 - Theses adopted July 8 by the Provisional Central Committee of the League of Internationalist Communists, one of the groups fighting in the Viet Nam Republic of Indo-China against French imperialism, have been received here. Excerpts from the theses follows: (1) August 1945, sounding the death-knell of Japanese domination, marked the birth of the Viet Nam revolution. It was born in the vacuum created by the disaster which befell the Nipponese military and which at the same time found the Allies unable to send relief troops in time... The Viet Nam revolution was truly national and popular. It established the democratic Viet Nam Republic with its own government, National Assembly, army and finances.

(3-A) Dominated, however, by the policy of the Indo- Chinese Communist (Stalinist) Party, the strongest and best organized of all the parties composing the Viet Minh - a policy of a bloc of many classes - the policy of the Viet Nam republican movement was above all to defend the class interests of the bourgeoisie and the landlords.  
 
 
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