NSW: Bombing survivors encourage abolition of nuclear arms

AAP General News (Australia)
12-29-2008
NSW: Bombing survivors encourage abolition of nuclear arms

By Steph Gardiner

SYDNEY, Dec 29 AAP - Ikeda Michiaki closes his eyes and clenches his fist as he remembers
the darkness that descended upon Nagasaki after an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese
city in 1945.

As a six-year-old, he had been playing with a friend in the hallway of a university
hospital when the bomb was dropped on August 9 by US forces during World War II.

Mr Michiaki, 69, remembers waking in the wreckage of the building and running past
mangled bodies as he tried to escape to a nearby mountain.

Dark clouds covered the city and large drops of black rain fell from the sky.

"I just knew I had to get out of the building, so I jumped," Mr Michiaki told AAP through
a translator in Sydney on Monday.

"When I got out to the yard, what I saw was many people who had been killed and their
eyeballs were literally popping out of their faces ... and all parts of their bodies were
puffed and swollen to over twice their normal size."

"All the trees had been burnt and there was no grass anymore.

"There was rain, big drops of black rain."

The Nagasaki bombing killed about 80,000 people, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima
killed just as many.

Mr Michiaki was in Sydney with other Hibakusha - or atomic bomb survivors - on a stop-off
as part of a three-month global sea voyage to share their experiences and oppose nuclear
weapons.

They presented a letter to the federal government praising Australia for its decision
to establish the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

The letter urged Australia to lead other countries in the abolition of nuclear weapons.

A member of the commission's secretariat, Richard Quinn, accepted the letter and said
it would have several meetings around the world before the Non-Proliferation Treaty review
in May 2010.

Western Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who travelled with the survivors for
five days, said the government needed to remove any mention of nuclear weapons from its
security policy.

"We still have nuclear weapons embedded in our security policy. We lie under the United
States' nuclear umbrella," Mr Ludlam told reporters.

"Every time a warship comes into an Australian port carrying nuclear weapons, that
is one instance of US nuclear weapons being part of our security policy."

Mr Michiaki said the voyage gave the survivors a chance to use their horrific experiences
to educate others.

"On this boat, I have a lot of people who have similar experiences to me," he said.

"It's an environment to exchange our stories ... we can keep on telling our stories
and passing on what we know."

AAP sg/evt/cdh

KEYWORD: ATOMIC (PIX AVAILABLE)

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