Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh was shot outside Nagasaki train station Tuesday evening, around 7:50 p.m. The gunman was identified as Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, a member of a yakuza gang who had been involved in past conflicts with city government over public construction works projects. Mayor Itoh died of his injuries after receiving emergency surgery at Nagasaki University Hospital.
Stories are here: Asahi news and here: Japan Today
Mayor Itoh was a tireless worker for peace and nuclear disarmament. Last August, Common Dreams reported on his annual address on the subject at the local commemoration of the Nagasaki bombing:
Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito offered an impassioned plea to step up efforts to control nuclear weapons.
"What is the human race doing?" he said in his address. "The world's nuclear non-proliferation regime faces the risk of collapsing."
"Sixty-one years since the bombing, the city of Nagasaki is filled with anger and frustration," Ito said. "The nuclear powers are not making sincere efforts for nuclear arms reduction."
I'm afraid the late mayor was right. Take a look at this video, made by Ben (formerly of Ben and Jerry's), now of True Majority: Nuclear Arsenal . Ben points out the craziness of spending over $17.5 billion a year to maintain these things. Over $17.5 billion a year. For something we CAN'T USE. We cannot use nuclear weapons, not even just a few of them, because we risk triggering a world wide "domino effect" of nuclear attacks - and no one seems sure at what point nuclear winter begins. Is it 20 weapons? Or 100? I've heard both. Whatever it is, we can't use them AT ALL; this is the biggest boondoggle in American history, pure corporate welfare for the military industrial complex.
Let's do something in memory of the late mayor, who sadly died after years of hard work, seeing his dream crumble instead of showing signs of fruition. Write to your congresspeople and senators, and ask them to pass a law calling for a start to dismantling these things. A little a time is something. Do we really need enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 8 times over? Why not reduce that to, say, five times over? It's still five times as many as they need for the job. It's a start, right? Then maybe we can reduce it to 3, or even .5, or dare I say 0?