Fifty-nine years have passed since the August sixth when Hiroshima was so thoroughly obliterated that many succumbed to such doom. Dozens of corpses still bearing the agony of that day, souls torn abruptly from their loved ones and their hopes for the future, have recently re-surfaced on Ninoshima sland, warning us to beware the utter inhumanity of the atomic bombing and the gruesome horror of war. I Unfortunately, the human race still lacks both a lexicon capable of fully expressing that disaster and sufficient imagination to fill the gap.

Until recently, the present Bush administration hewed faithfully to its vow never to succumb to North Korea's “nuclear blackmail”. The offer that it presented at the third round of the six-nation talks in June 2004, which promised North Korea energy assistance and improved relations as it disarmed its nuclear weapons, appeared to break with this hard-line approach. In late July 2004, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State John Bolton both visited Northeast Asia to emphasize that North Korea will be surprised to see how much is possible if it simply abandons its nuclear programs; the case of Libya provides a demonstrative example of the rewards that await its cooperation.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were Japan's single greatest catastrophe of World War II. They loom so large in the popular imagination that the events of the previous decade and a half have paled – or faded from view altogether. (Conveniently so, as Asians affected by those events have noted.)

In millions of words and images, eulogizing and otherwise, the bombings have been ritualized and abstracted in that same imagination, their horror endlessly referred to, but less and less clearly felt. Meanwhile, the victims have come to be seen more as park statuary, less as flawed human beings.

For six decades, the inhabitants of Okinawa have lived alongside thousands of US troops. Now new plans for base expansion have provoked fierce resistance.

Taira Natsume is a mild-mannered, bespectacled parson and pacifist in the Martin Luther King mode, but he warns he will not be pushed too far. “If the authorities come back with more people we'll be waiting for them,” he says. “I'm not a violent man but they're not going to get through.” It is a baking hot day in Henoko, a tiny fishing village in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture. For 110 days, the reverend and 8,000 supporters have been coming to this sun-bleached beach to fight off government engineers trying to begin drilling surveys for a proposed offshore helicopter base for the US military.

Toyota is the most profitable company in Japan. Its net profit for fiscal 2004 was reported at 1.16 trillion yen ($10.5 billion). This is after-tax, clear profit, the first time in the history of Japanese capitalism that a company has passed one trillion yen in profits.

If public hatred against the socially weak were organized and came under the control of power, it could even pave the way for the emergence of a new fascism.

The families of 10 missing Japanese believed abducted to North Korea unexpectedly found themselves caught in a vicious crossfire. Their crime? They had expressed their disappointment and anger at Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's failure to find out what happened to their missing relatives during his Pyongyang visit on May 22.

“To go or not to go is the question. Our man Prime Minister Koizumi, just celebrating his 60th, states that decisions should be ‘based on the situation, whether it is ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’. I, being over 60 myself, am at the same crossroads in a way. The difference is that our friend [Koizumi] will proceed if it is safe and will not if there is danger, whilst I take the opposite position. Koizumi in his wavy lionesque ‘do’, and me bald as an elephant, our thinking as opposite as our hairstyles.” – Hashida Shinsuke (1942-2004), from his diary, Screaming ‘Idiot’ in the Middle of Iraq.

Building no dams at all would be best. This is clear. How can we open discussion concerning the destruction of dams that have outlived their usefulness? Kumamoto Prefecture becomes the first to take up the challenge of dam removal. Summer has come to the Kumagawa River. Local fishermen who ply the waters for ayu sardines as a livelihood continue to decrease, but tourists from Tokyo and the Kansai area coming for the sport of it are on the up.

The river is broad, the water clear, and the 30cm-long “shaku ayu” with their distinctive aroma when cooked are drawing more and more people. The government's unprecedented plan to expropriate the river's fishing rights is currently deadlocked, thanks to the stubborn resistance of the residents protesting the construction of the Kawabegawa River dam upstream which would be the second largest in Kyushu.

How many people in the world now remember that fateful day? At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, fifty-nine years ago, the city of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins by a single atomic bomb dropped from an American warplane, killing some 74,000 people and wounding 75,000. Today, Nagasaki's verdant cityscape attracts visitors from around the world, and its residents maintain a distinctive set of traditions and culture. Nevertheless, the city's increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to suffer from the aftereffects of the bombing as well as from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We the citizens of Nagasaki call upon the world with a renewed sense of urgency, even as we reflect upon the intense suffering of those who have already perished.

We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago. The International Court of Justice has clearly stated in an advisory opinion that the threat of nuclear weapons or their use is generally contrary to international law. Notwithstanding, the US government continues to possess and maintain approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, and is conducting an ongoing program of subcritical nuclear testing. In addition, the so-called mini nuclear weapons that are the subject of new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of force. In terms of the radioactivity that such weapons would release, there would be no difference compared to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed. People of America: The path leading to the eventual survival of the human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The time has come to join hands and embark upon this path.