9th August 1945 The US drops the atom bomb on Nagasaki

 

Three days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan, the US dropped a second atomic bomb – this time on the city of Nagasaki. The blast killed more than 75,000 people. The bomb itself was equivalent to 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Since then, thousands of people have died each year from the effects of radiation. The registered victims of radiation amount to more than 300,000 in these two cities, many of whom will die. The use of atomic bombs was not dictated by military necessity, as President Truman attempted to justify. The US tried to take advantage of their temporary monopoly on nuclear weapons to intimidate the peoples who, after the end of the Second World War, were fighting and demanding their freedom and independence. The United States systematically rejected all the proposals the Soviet Union submitted which sought to ban the use of the atomic bomb, halt its production, and destroy stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Today more than ever before we need to develop and strengthen a broad, mass and diverse peace movement bringing together broader masses of people from all walks of life and beliefs who through their joint action and initiatives will struggle to stop ongoing wars and foreign interventions, to put an end to nuclear weapons and the permanent threat they pose, an end to the new dangerous upsurge in military spending, the militarisation of international relations and to rally the peoples for peace and disarmament to prevail, together with the peaceful resolution of conflicts based on international law, the UN Charter and the respect of the sovereignty of states.