US Embassy declines letter calling for de-escalation of conflict with North Korea

The US Embassy declined to accept a letter on Friday August 11 from a delegation of journalists, writers, and peace activists. The letter calls on the United States government to stop its nuclear brinkmanship in the crisis with North Korea.

Millions of people around the world are concerned about the growing threat of nuclear war. Civil society organisations are calling on the British government to call for restraint and a different approach by Britain's main ally. British Prime Minister Theresa May has been silent about the crisis, despite tensions continuing to grow.

The letter was handed in by Giles Fraser, journalist and priest: Victoria Brittain, writer and journalist; Bruce Kent, peace activist; Jan Woolf, playwright; Helen Drewery, Quakers in Britain; Carol Turner, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition; Murad Qureshi, Stop the War Coalition.

Letter to the US embassy

Excellency

We the undersigned are extremely concerned about the growing international tension and the dangerous threats that have been exchanged between the leaders of the U.S. and North Korea.  

We strongly urge President Trump and the U.S. government to employ the utmost restraint and to immediately engage in diplomatic talks with the aim of defusing the current situation. 

It is unthinkable that the threat of nuclear annihilation should be considered as acceptable. At this time people around the world are remembering the effects of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. We are reminded of the death, pain and suffering that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and are determined that people should not have to suffer like that again.

Negotiation and talks to increase understanding between the U.S. and North Korea and to ease the tension must be the way forward. May we humbly remind you that in 2010 a cross-party group of parliamentarians from Japan and South Korea proposed the negotiation of a North East Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone as a solution to the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. This remains a sensible and productive way forward, especially in light of the recent agreement by 120 nations in the United Nations to recognise that nuclear weapons, and threats of their use, are unacceptable and should be made illegal.

People around the world are extremely anxious for their future and we request that you convey our plea for calm and peace between nations to President Trump. We trust that statements defusing the situation can be issued immediately and a diplomatic solution will be sought as soon as possible.

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Join CND's US Embassy Protest

As we commemorate the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, President Donald Trump has threatened North Korea with ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen’ – words that bring the possibility of nuclear confrontation closer.

CND and Stop the War Coalition have organised a joint protest at the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, W1A 2LQ, and a number of celebreties are likely to join us. Make jour voice heard! Come along this Friday, 11 August, at 1pm.

Carol Turner, CND Vice Chair, said:

‘It's Nagasaki Day today, when the world remembers the US atomic bomb that hit a Japanese city unleashing a fire storm with winds of 9,000 miles an hour and killing 100,000 people.

‘It beggars belief that the US president has chosen the 72nd anniversary to threaten North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”. These words mark the real possibility of a nuclear confrontation.

‘Trump's outrageous statement in the present climate cannot be interpreted as simply words. He has ratcheted up international tensions, already high, taking the world closer to nuclear warfare than we’ve been for many years.

‘The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament condemns Trump's comments and we call on the British government to take swift action to de-escalate this terrifying crisis before it's too late.”

More ways to make you voice heard

·         As Trumps comments broke in the news, London CND Vice Chair, Rosemary Addington was quick to respond. She called the BBC protest line to demand that information about Nagasaki Day be included in their broadcasts.  We urge you to do likewise by phoning 03700 100 222. A list of similar numbers for Sky, Channel 4, ITV and other TV and Radio stations will be up on our website at www.londoncnd.org.uk soon.

·         Why not write a letter to your local paper. You’ll find a few details about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki below to help you.

Nagasaki Day remembered

On 9 August 1945 the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaka, three days after Hiroshima had been devastated and destroyed. An estimated 100,000 people died as a result of the Nagasaki bombing, and 23% of all Nagasaki buildings were burned to the ground.

An estimated 250,000 people died in the firestorms which swept the two cities.  Survivors described those people who fled as being so heavily burned they no longer looked like human beings. Others fell ill and died from radiation poisoning.

The devastation didn’t stop there. Atom bomb survivors, Hibakusha as they’re known, suffered miscarriages, birth abnormalities and cancers. Their children and grandchildren are suffering still.

This is what CND remembers of Nagasaki Day.

No more Hiroshimas, Sign the Global Ban Treaty

On 6 August 1945 the US dropped the first ever atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later the tragedy was repeated when a second US bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. A total of around 250,000 people died.

The firestorms which followed left many victims so heavily burned they no longer looked like human beings. Others fell ill and died from the black rain that spread radiation poisoning.

The devastation didn’t stop there. Atomic bomb survivors, Hibakusha as they’re known, are suffering still from birth abnormalities and cancers – and so are their children and grandchildren, Japan’s second and third generation Hibakusha.

Dozens of ceremonies across the UK remember the bombings each year. London CND held a serious of events for 2017, linking past and future with the demand that Britain support the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which opens for signature on 20 September.

Tavistock Square Gardens, 6 August

Our annual ceremony was held next to the Hiroshima Cherry Tree, planted in 1967 by the then Mayor of Camden and opened this year by Deputy Mayor Cllr Jenny Headlam-Wells. Among those who spoke was Catherine West, Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green who emphasised the need to support the global nuclear ban treaty. So did Pablo Roldan from the Embassy of Ecuador, one of the Treaty’s sponsors, while AL Kennedy gave a powerful anti-war speech. The ceremony began and ended with Raised Voices Peace Choir, and other performers included folk singer Peter Dunne. Click here for photos.

No more Hiroshimas Rally, 7 August

We held an evening rally at Friend House supported by Quaker Peace and Social Witness, with four terrific platform speakers all calling on the UK government to sign the global nuclear ban treaty. Kamila Shamsie open the proceedings with an extract from her novel, Burnt Shadows which begins as the atomic bomb drops on Nagasaki, and later spoke about Pakistan’s and India’s nuclear weapons. Rebecca Johnson, Green Party, gave a first-hand account of treaty negotiations at the UN HQ in New York, and Bruce Kent reminded the audience that we must continue the campaign to scrap Trident. And we listened attentively to special guest José Enrique Castillo Barrantes, Costa Rica’s Ambassador to the UK, who explained why Costa Rica had led the talks on the global ban treaty.

Sands Cinema Film Festival, 1-8 August

London CND joined forces with the Sands Film Club for a mini-festival of anti-nuclear films. Thanks to Olivier Stockman, Christine Edzard and the team who offered film-goers a choice of five very different treatments of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from documentary to anamie and satire – with a London CND speaker leading a discussion of the issues at every showing.

Nagasaki Day, 9 August

Shigeo Kobayashi, a leading member of London CND, led our work in support of Pax Christi’s peace walk and the Battersea Peace Pagoda ceremony.

Local activities, 6-9 August

Local groups held their own commemorations too. You can find some of their photos here.

6 facts about the new #nuclearban treaty

Extract from Burnt Shadows

 Kamila Shamsie read an extract from her book, Burnt Shadows, at London CND’s No more Hiroshimas Rally, It begins in Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Hiroko Tanaka, 21, is preparing for her wedding with Konrad Weiss:

Hiroko removes the kimono from the trunk, and throws it up in the air. The silk shifts against itself and unfolds, so that what went up a square comes down a rectangle; again she throws it up, and it hits the ceiling lamp, catching on its shade before slithering down into her waiting arms. She closes her arms around the fabric that suggests being draped in a waterfall and thinks of holding Konrad, naked.

She undresses quickly, removing the hated grey monpe and the shirt that was once a gleaming white and is now just the colour of too many washes. Then she continues, removing every scrap of clothing. Something strange is happening inside her body which she doesn’t understand, but she knows she wants it to go on happening. Without care for underclothes, she slips one arm into the sleeve of the kimono, the silk electric against her skin.

Konrad walks across Urakami Valley, his heart folding in and in on itself.

Hiroko steps out on to the verandah. Her body from neck down a silk column, white with three black cranes swooping across her back. She looks out towards the mountains, and everything is more beautiful to her than it was early this morning. Nagasaki is more beautiful to her than ever before. She turns her head and sees the spires of Urakami Cathedral, which Konrad is looking up at when he notices a gap open between the clouds. Sunlight streams through, pushing the clouds apart even further.

Hiroko.

And then the world goes white.

The light is physical. It throws Hiroko forward, sprawling. Dust enters her mouth, her nose, as she hits the ground, and it burns. Her first response is a fear that the fall has torn her mother's silk kimono. She raises herself off the ground, looks down. There is dirt on the kimono, but no tear. Yet something is wrong. She stands up. The air is suddenly hot and she can feel it on her skin. She can feel it on her back. She glides her hand over her shoulder, touches flesh where there should be silk. Moves her hand further down her back, touches what is neither flesh nor silk but both. She wonders if this has something to do with the burning she felt as she fell. Now there is no feeling. She taps the place that is neither flesh nor silk. There is no feeling at all.

Her neighbour comes out on to the verandah next door. 'What was that?' she says.

Hiroko can only think that her clothing is in shreds and she must go indoors to change. She hears the cry of her neighbour as she turns her back on the woman to enter the house. Hiroko runs her fingers along her back as she climbs the stairs down which, minutes earlier, she had followed Konrad. There is feeling, then no feeling, skin and something else. Where there is skin, there is feeling. Where there is something else there is none. Her fingers pluck at shreds embedded in the something else. Shreds of what – skin or silk? She shrugs off the kimono. It falls from her shoulders, but does not touch the ground. Something keeps it attached to her.

How strange, she thinks, as she idly knots the sleeves of the kimono around her body, just below her breasts.

She walks over to the window out of which she tried to catch a glimpse of Konrad as he walked away and looks down the slope, searching for clues. Houses, trees, people gathering outside, asking each other questions, people shaking their heads, sniffing at the air.

Then.

Hiroko leans out of the window, forgetting she is almost entirely naked. Something is wrong with her eyes. They see perfectly until the bottom of the slope and then they cannot see. Instead they are inventing sights. Fire and smoke and, through the smoke, nothing. Through the smoke, land that looks the way her back feels where it has no feeling. She touches the something else on her back. Her fingers can feel her back but her back cannot feel her fingers. Charred silk, seared flesh. How is this possible? Urakami Valley has become her flesh. Her flesh has become Urakami Valley. She runs her thumb over what was once skin. It is bumped and raw, lifeless.

So much to learn. The touch of dead flesh. The smell – she has just located where the acrid smell comes from – of dead flesh. The sound of fire – who knew fire roared so angrily, ran so quickly? It is running up the slopes now; soon it will catch her. Not just her back, all of her will be Urakami Valley. Diamond from carbon – she briefly imagines herself a diamond, all of Nagasaki a diamond cutting open the earth, falling through to hell. She is leaning further out, looking through the smoke for the spires of Urakami Cathedral, when she hears her neighbour's scream.

Hiroko looks down, sees a reptile crawling up the path towards her house. She understands now. The earth has already opened up, disgorged hell. Her neighbour's daughter is running towards the reptile with a bamboo spear in hand – her grip incorrect. The reptile raises its head and the girl drops the spear, calls out Hiroko's father's name. Why does she expect him to help? Hiroko wonders, as the girl keeps chanting, 'Tanaka-san, Tanaka-san,' hands gripping the sides of her face as she stares at the reptile.

In her search for new beginnings, Hiroko Tanaka finds old of loyalties, loves and disasters evaded and confronted, which begins in Nagasaki and ends in a US prison cell, with a man trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie is available in paperback from Bloomsbury Publishing, price £8.99

Fukushima Cymru Exhibition by London CND activist

An exhibition by artist and London CND activist Lis Fields opens 5 August in Ynys Môn (Anglesey), Wales. The images taken by Lis include some from within 7km of the catastrophic meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, Japan, in 2011, and give a unique glimpse into the scale of the disaster.

This is the latest of several works by Lis on this topic. An earlier exhibition on Fukushima was on show in Conway Hall, London, during 2016. Red Kimono was a series of portraits expressing solidarity with all those suffering as a result of this ongoing catastrophe.

Lewisham & Greenwich CND Hiroshima Day Picnic

Alice in Nuclearland: a Bad Dream by Noel Hamel, Kingston Peace Council

“It really doesn’t make any sense” said Alice. “Here we are, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and saying how nice everything is, and how much we like it and you say it’s all thanks to nuclear bombs”

“You aren’t listening the right way upside down”, said Mad Hatter, “it’s all about back-to-front uncommon sense – anything else is not at all fit to be heard in Trumpington or its suburbs. The May Queen has said it and it’s true – ‘nuclear weapons keep us safe’ – so there! Good night!”

“But it isn’t night, it’s the middle of a nice sunny day and how on earth do nuclear weapons make it so?” asked Alice.

“Wrong again. Nuclear weapons blot out the sun completely which is why they keep us safe,” said Mad.

“That’s contradictory,” said Alice.

“No, it’s just nonsense that makes perfect sense. No one dare blot out the sunshine and destroy the earth so they don’t use nuclear bombs and that keeps us safe and the sun shining”, said Mad.

“Oh! I see” said Alice. “Nuclear weapons would destroy everything but no one wants that, so they aren’t used, and that keeps us safe …   but what happens if they are used?”

“Now you are being silly,” said Mad. “Use them? No, Trumpington thought about it in Korea and Vietnam but decided it was too dangerous and would start another world war and destroy the earth. So they put nuclear weapons away for the moment; and the world was saved by nuclear weapons because they weren’t used on those occasions. Obvious really.”

“But what about other occasions,” said Alice, “and as not all countries have nuclear weapons it doesn’t seem fair that those without should also have their sunshine blotted out and be destroyed in a nuclear war.”

Don’t worry,” said Mad, “those without nuclear weapons would only die from radiation poisoning, and from famine because of climate destruction. Nuclear armed countries would get far worse – they would be directly hit by nuclear bombs. No point in hitting Uruguay which can’t hurt anyone with nuclear bombs when you can hit the UK which can.”

“Oh!” said Alice, “so by having nuclear bombs it means we would be hit hardest and hit directly in a nuclear war? That doesn’t sound like ‘keeping us safe’.”

“You learn fast,” said Mad. “I told you it’s all about back-to-front uncommon sense. But, there is more. The laugh is that the people paying £billions to have nuclear weapons in the UK are putting themselves first in the firing line in a nuclear war so they are potentially paying for their own destruction – assuming nuclear weapons are ever used – which they aren’t supposed to be – which is why we have them – so they won’t be used – except that we are supposed to think they would be used – to keep us safe from total destruction if they ever were used – though we would be totally destroyed if they were used since there is no escape. All clear now?”

“So nuclear weapons cost £billions and aren’t meant to be used?” asked Alice incredulously. “Are you sure they are real? And wouldn’t the money be better spent on something useful?”

“I don’t know that they are real or that they would work,” said Mad, “but you miss the point which is that others should think they are and that we would use them, (if we felt like destroying the planet one day,) so it is a game of make-believe. Politicians love games of make-believe because it makes them feel big and powerful, especially if people think they could destroy everything. Why spend money on sensible things if you can spend it on trying to make others believe you can destroy everything?”

“So, we are safe so long as no one uses nuclear bombs; then we are the least safe because we have them; but it all only works anyway so long as no one else uses theirs and believes that we might use ours to destroy them,” said Alice. “But what happens if there is a mistake?”

“If there is a mistake then the make-believe spell is broken – normal common sense returns and everyone, everywhere is killed. There is no defence against nuclear war,” said Mad, “but that won’t happen, except there have been some accidents and false alarms…  so, barring all that I have said, nuclear weapons keep us absolutely perfectly safe. Would I lie to you? Mind you, we would be even safer than that if we had no nuclear weapons – but who would want that?”

“It’s all gobble-de-gook to me”, said Alice, “All this is making my head spin. I need to lie down … “                                                          

Book Review by Daniel Blaney

'Corbyn and Trident: Labour's continuing controversy', by Carol Turner

Carol Turner's excellent new book discusses the history of the Labour Party's complex relationship with nuclear weapons. Its purpose is not describing abstract or nostalgic historical events; this is a tour-de-force explaining the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the failures of New Labour, while debunking myths about nuclear weapons, the left and electability.

Context is all and Carol's landscape of Labour history since the advent of nuclear weapons is multi-faceted. To understand and then explain the Labour Party is not to describe its technical policy history or its chronology of leaders but recognise a complex and ever-changing eco-system.

The book is littered with fascinating accounts from notable figures interviewed by the author, including several from Corbyn himself when interviewed by the author in 2013. It is an enjoyable tour of an aspect of recent political history, but it is most valuable in its promotion of the inescapable relationship between the rise of Corbyn and the project of a world without nuclear weapons.

'Corbyn and Trident: Labour's continuing controversy', by Carol Turner is available to buy now from our online shop