Thousands of Japanese Protest Against Iraq War

Sun Mar 2, 2003

HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - More than 6,000 Japanese participated in a rally on Sunday to protest against a war on Iraq and the use of depleted uranium shells, organizers said. The protesters gathered in a park in the western city of Hiroshima and formed large human letters that read, "NO WAR, NO DU," in a reference to depleted uranium.

The demonstration featured singing and dancing, "No War" banners and large red, yellow, and green origami cranes that protesters held aloft (Origami is the Japanese Art of paper folding. The Crane is a symbol of long life and Peace).

"All I can say is, don't start this war, don't attack Iraq," said Hinako Nishikawa, a 30-year-old housewife from Osaka. Such anti-war messages carry particular resonance in Hiroshima, which suffered the world's first atomic bombing on August 6, 1945, that ultimately killed more than 220,000 people. Close to 80 percent of respondents to a survey conducted late last month by mass-circulation daily, Asahi Shimbun, said they were opposed to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and a majority said Tokyo should not support such action.



Some protesters spoke out against depleted uranium, which is used to harden the tips of armor-piercing shells, and were used by the U.S. military in the 1991 Gulf War, as well as in Serbia/Kosovo and Afghanistan. "Many children were affected and became irradiated in the last Gulf War by the use of depleted uranium," said Kiyoko Shimada, a 44-year-old worker. "If America attacks again, this tragedy will be repeated," said Shimada, who donned a red plastic suit that looked similar to protective gear worn by workers at nuclear facilities.

Iraqi officials have said that cancer among children and congenital deformities have increased since the Gulf War.

The use of depleted uranium munitions has long been suspected by U.S. and British Gulf War veterans as a possible cause of health problems ranging from exhaustion to loss of motor functions that are known as Gulf War Syndrome. "The problem of depleted uranium used during the Gulf War is completely ignored at the present by the international community... It is extremely problematic," said Nobuo Kazashi, a philosophy professor at Kobe University.

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The Bush poster shown carried in the protest is available to download from the "worldpeacenow" website in Japan

http://www.worldpeacenow.jp/

The Japanese organizers at "worldpeacenow" have been extremely active in opposing any participation by the Japanese government in backing a U.S. attack on Iraq, and they have organized several large demonstrations in Japan. The group's website is in Japanese, but you can translate the page using Yahoo's "babelfish" universal translator, located at:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/ .... simply copy and paste the URL for "worldpeacenow" into babelfish, select language translation as "Japanese to English", and you're on your way.

ART FOR A CHANGE also maintains an exhibition of Artworks created by the Hibakusha... or "Atom Bomb Survivors." These amazing Paintings and Drawings serve as first hand testimony regarding the horrors of Nuclear War. See the Hibakusha artworks, at: