Members of Wrexham Women for Peace and supporters met at 5pm by the small brook which runs through town below St Giles Church. We put up a banner by the roadside, listened to accounts written by Hiroshima survivors and scattered petals on the brook.

The group then made its way over to the Peace Garden for a picnic where our storyteller recounted tales of hope.

During commemoration events in Hiroshima yesterday, Mayor Akiba criticised the US government for failing to halt nuclear proliferation. Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper saw fit to commemorate Hiroshima with an article which attempted to justify the bombing.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2142224,00.html

We take hope from the actions of those who are trying to bring about an end to nuclear proliferation through nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action. Thousands of people have blockaded the Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane over the past year as part of the Faslane 365 campaign against government plans to replace Trident with a new generation of nuclear weapons. Only two weeks ago, atomic bomb survivors were amongst those arrested for blockading at the base.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2006/faslane/
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376972.html

An estimated quarter of a million people have died as a result of the Hiroshima bombing. Each one of the nuclear warheads owned by the nuclear weapons states is many times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and its people.

Last word to a Hiroshima survivor:

"The fire began to die down in the evening. I became worried about my mother and father. One of my neighbours recognised me. She said: 'If your mother is alive, she will be down there,' and she took me by the hand and led me down the hill.

"We went back the way we had escaped that morning. The sun was setting. Many people were lying dead along the way. I'm afraid I might have trampled on some of the corpses.

"Mother was alive. My father was also alive but my big sister was dead. My father had hurried to try and rescue her but she was already dead beneath a big beam. Mother had been near a window and was badly injured. When the bomb blast had come, she was hurt by the flying glass. There were pieces of glass in her body, her face was cut, and she lost the sight of one eye. Her body was bandaged with pieces of torn kimono. The blood had soaked through and turned the bandages scarlet...

"I want to swear that we will never commit an evil like the atomic bomb."