I opened up the newspaper yesterday to see that the local anti-war group, Kalamazoo Non-Violent Opponents of War, is planning a vigil to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Whether or not you agree with the decision to drop the atomic bomb, the results of doing so were certainly horrific, but in their zeal to commemorate that event, activists appear to have selective amnesia about the context of that event and other horrors in the Pacific.
Anyway, this is the letter I fired off to the local Gannett rag,
Editor, Kalamazoo Gazette,
It was interesting to read that Kalamazoo Nonviolent Opponents of War and other local peace groups are holding a vigil to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which killed more than 90,000 people.
Perhaps someday KNOW and other groups might consider holding a vigil for the estimated 10 to 30 *million* people murdered by Japan during its 1937-1945 occupation of China.
Japan’s slaughter in China was not stopped by protesters carrying signs through the streets of Nanking, but rather through the overwhelming application of military force — including the two atomic bombs — by the Allied nations.
Given that KNOW holds weekly downtown protests featuring people holding signs with slogans such as, “War Is Wrong Whatever The Outcome,” a few million dead victims of Japanese aggression is apparently an inconvenient fact, best left unmentioned.