Hundreds join Hiroshima Day rallies

BY JONATHAN STRAUSS

Around a thousand people participated in rallies across the country commemorating the 57th anniversary of the US nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

In Sydney, some 500 people rallied on August 10 to hear anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, NSW Greens MP Ian Cohen and the Hiroshima Day committee's Denis Doherty.

On the same day, 300 rallied in Brisbane's King George Square. The rally was addressed by speakers from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, the Atomic Ex-Servicemen's Association, the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign and the Stop Food Irradiation Campaign, which is fighting Steritech, a company that is building a food irradiation plant at Narangba, north of Brisbane.

In Melbourne, 200 people rallied in the Melbourne City Square on August 9 to protest against Australia's nuclear industry, to demand the dropping of the Third World debt, and to oppose a new US war on Iraq.

In Canberra, protesters beat drums and chanted "George Bush, CIA, how many kids have you killed today" outside the United States embassy on August 6. The action was organised by the Nuclear Disarmament Party to mark Hiroshima Day and to oppose a US war on Iraq.

Forty people joined a Hiroshima Day rally in Wollongong on August 10, addressed by South Coast Labour Council president Arthur Rorris.

From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.

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From GLW issue 504