BY DOUG COOPER
SYDNEY, Australia - A sign reading "Little Boy and Fat Man were `tested' too" summed up the attitude of thousands who took to the streets in major cities around Australia on Hiroshima Day, August 6, to call for an end to nuclear weapons and tests. The nicknames, symbolizing Roosevelt and Churchill, were given to the atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. government on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The big-business media, which widely publicized the actions beforehand, estimated 30,000 people took part around the country.
Under the slogan "Hiroshima never again!" between 7,000 and 10,000 marched in Sydney. Thousands more protested in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, and Hobart.
Chantal Spitz, a primary school teacher and veteran antinuclear and proindependence activist from the village of Maeve on the island of Huahine in French Polynesia, briefly addressed the Sydney action. Spitz condemned the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and solidarized with the victims of nuclear power plant disasters at Three Mile island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1985. She also asked for continued support for stopping underground weapons tests on Moruroa Atoll by the French government, which are scheduled to begin in September.
`Ban the bomb'
A contingent of Japanese children led off the march here
and a Japanese youth choir performed at the final rally.
Many protesters carried signs saying "Ban the bomb" and "No
nukes." Others, however, carried signs with anti-French
slogans, echoing the chauvinist propaganda of the Australian
government.
Banners identified the presence of teachers, building workers, and other unionists, along with pacifist groups, Korean youth, Bougainville solidarity activists, and left- wing organizations. Supporters of the Australian Greens and Australian Democrats mobilized. Some Australian Labor Party branches also had contingents.
Hannah Middleton of the Hiroshima Day Committee and Paddy Crumlin of the Maritime Union of Australia were the main speakers at the rally.
Middleton made a nationalist appeal to the Australian government to "act against colonialism" in the Pacific by sending an "Australian vessel" to Moruroa, and cancel uranium sales to, and military contracts with, the French government. Middleton noted that Paris was threatening retaliation for the Australian government's recent decision to prevent Dassault, the French military aviation company, from bidding for a $A740 million contract to supply warplanes to Canberra. "Are we going to let France bully us?" she asked.
The most extreme act of anti-French chauvinism occurred in Byron Bay, a resort town north of Sydney, where a small group with sledgehammers destroyed a car painted in the colors of the French flag.
In an interview, Spitz explained that the governments of Australia and New Zealand "just want France out of the South Pacific so they can be the leaders. It's not good. Each country must be free and someday we will be free, so we won't go under Australia.
"I think it's just an opportunity for the two big countries of the South Pacific to tell the other small islands: `You stupid people - Aborigines, Maoris- we know what's best.' I don't think the governments are altruistic," she added.
Australian army atrocities in WWII
In an exception to the general chauvinism promoted by
the big-business media, Sydney Sun-Herald writer Alex
Mitchell's August 6 column took a look at a long-hidden and
once-vilified book, Time of Fallen Blossoms, by Allan
Clifton, published in London in 1950.
In his book, Clifton, a World War II Australian intelligence officer, describes atrocities he witnessed by Australian troops against Japanese prisoners of war and civilians, especially during the postwar occupation of Japan.
Mitchell notes, "His description of Hiroshima victims and a girl lying in a hospital after being raped by 20 Australian soldiers make sobering reading."
Doug Cooper is a member of the Australian Workers' Union at Alcan in Sydney.