Rallies commemorate Hiroshima Day
By Pip Hinman
Nearly 50 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, peace activists in Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney rallied to remember those who died and to demand an end to the arms trade.
Jim McIlroy from Brisbane reported that around 150 people held a candlelight procession through Brisbane's city streets on August 6, stopping outside Macarthur Place, General Douglas Macarthur's World War II HQ, from where the order to bomb Hiroshima in 1945 was probably relayed.
"None of us can sleep safely in our beds until the last nuclear weapon is dismantled", environmental scientist Dr Ian Lowe told the rally. Just one-sixth of the world's "obscene military budget" could feed, clothe and house the poor of the world, Lowe said.
Other speakers at the rally included Jack Sherrington from People for Nuclear Disarmament, and Bougainville human rights activist Rosemary Gillespie.
From Hobart Janine Stubbs reports that a funeral procession of black-clad, white-faced Environmental Youth Alliance activists made their point at Salamanca Markets on August 7. As bodies simulataneously fell to the ground, a narrative of the 1945 events drew a crowd of silent spectators. "While we are living in a post- Cold War world, the threat of nuclear war hasn't disappeared, and it's the youth of today who have to make sure that this threat is never realised," Stubbs said.
From Sydney Lisa Macdonald reports that a lively crowd of 500 people marched to the First Fleet Park where Hannah Middelton from the Australian Anti-Bases Coalition, Dr John Ward from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War and Aboriginal activist Jenny Munro spoke in support of land and justice for Aboriginal people, a nuclear free and independent Pacific and against the continuing international arms trade.