Hiroshima Day Candlelight Vigil

This Saturday, August 6th, is the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and there will be a candlelight vigil at Chapel Hill's Peace & Justice Plaza (in front of the old Post Office at 179 East Franklin Street, across from UNC), 8-9pm.  There will be some speeches and music, but it will mostly be a silent vigil with candles and signs (some will be provided, or bring one).  The vigil is sponsored by Eisenhower Chapter 157 of Veterans for Peace (veteransforpeace.org) .  The organizers recommend parking in the deck at 100 East Rosemary, but most of the parking nearby at UNC should be free on a weekend.

The flyer condemns the Obama Administration's plans to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal (I think I've heard that it would cost $1 trillion dollars, for weapons that could cause human extinction and a mass extinction of other species, and would kill huge numbers of people, and probably not just in the targeted countries, if they are used again) and calls for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.  There is a petition signed by more than 5 million people at nuclearzero.org .   

It is too often left unmentioned that a second atomic bomb with a different design was used on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and much more powerful nuclear weapons are common today.  The USSR joined the war against Japan at about the same time and Japan surrendered a few days later.