Nagasaki Memorial Day: Worthing and Brighton peace activists mark 77th anniversary of atomic bombing during Second World War

Members of peace campaign groups including Worthing Peace Group, Brighton Stop the War, the Brighton, Hove and district branch of WILPF UK and CND, gathered in bright sunshine at the Peace Tree in Homefield Park, Worthing, on August 9 to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Sylvia Knight from Worthing Peace Group said 40,000 deaths occurred in the first few seconds after the bomb was dropped. By the end of 1945, 70,000 people had died as a result of one bomb and the number had increased to 140,000 by the end of 1950, while nearly a quarter of Nagasaki’s buildings were destroyed by the blast and fire.

Following a two-minute silence for reflection, Dr Rebecca Johnson, vice-president of CND, sang a song in Japanese from Nagasaki that recounted the horrors.

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She read the address that the mayor of Nagasaki had given in his city earlier in the day and explained what progress had been made on the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the June talks in Vienna.

She said the United Nations adopted the historic international treaty banning nuclear weapons in 2017 and 122 countries voted in favour but the UK government had boycotted proceedings.

Nadia Edmond from Brighton Stop the War warned of the environmental destruction caused by nuclear weapons at every stage from production to use.

She said the UK government’s own figures showed that for every £1 spent on reducing carbon emissions, more than seven times that amount was spent on the military, including the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Nadia said there was a need to reverse the ratio of military spend to the Green Climate Fund to help poorer nations and increase international security.

"The trillions that are spent on weapons and war robbed national treasuries of the resources needed to provide funds for climate mitigation and adaptation."

Pauline Fraser from Worthing Peace Group drew people’s attention to a forthcoming CND demonstration at Lakenheath, Suffolk, on September 17, opposing the siting of US nuclear weapons there.

She said: "A long campaign by CND has succeeded in getting US nukes removed from the UK in 2008. Now we have to redouble our efforts to have them removed."

Jenny Engledow from Brighton WILPF spoke about the annual commemoration in Brighton of the bombing of Hiroshima and read a moving poem written for one such occasion by the late Con Fraser.