Veterans in the Twin Ports are marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a ceremony Sunday to remember those who died, as well as a call for an end to nuclear weapons.
The actual number of lives claimed by the bombings remains unknown, but it’s estimated around 70,000 Japanese were killed when the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima 70 years ago. Almost 40,000 more were killed in Nagasaki.
Philip Anderson, president of the Duluth-Superior Chapter of Veterans for Peace, said it’s important to remember those who were lost.
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“Mostly it’s important because we remember so we will learn from our mistakes and not repeat these kinds of horrific events in the future,” he said.
Anderson said the United States has a moral responsibility to work with the eight other nations that have nuclear weapons and abolish them under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“We need to be getting rid of all of these weapons of mass destruction and not maintaining them and upgrading them and certainly not spending that kind of money on weapons that we can not use,” said Anderson. “We can not use them from a moral standpoint. We can not use them from a practical standpoint.”
He says the Iran nuclear deal is a step in the right direction.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. is on track to spend an average of about $35 billion a year on nuclear forces in the next decade.
A youth delegation from Ohara, Japan, is expected to attend the ceremony in the Twin Ports on Sunday.
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