Letters to the Editor from Our Readers and a Letter from the Editor of the Pacific Call
Letter to the Editor, Cascadia Daily News, week of Dec 11, 2024
Editor,
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo.
Nihon Hidankyo is a Japanese grassroots movement initiated in 1956. It is dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons. Japanese citizens known as hibakusha, or “bomb-affected people” have been speaking out for 75 years to tell us to not forget. Delegations attend international conferences and events to promote nuclear disarmament. They share firsthand accounts of the destruction and horror.
Nuclear weapons are certainly a topic our current world leaders speak to in their use of threats and violence. We hear of it with the news of the Russia-Ukraine War; North Korea/South Korea conflicts; the concern of Iran’s nuclear program; and Israel utilizing its arsenal in the Israel-Hamas War.
However, the people of Japan know what the consequences of using these weapons bring: Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and killed 70,000 people instantly; then a total of 140,000 died due to radiation poisoning. Three days later, Fat Man struck Nagasaki killing 40,000 instantly and by year’s end, a total of 70,000.
Not easy work they have: telling the truth about the consequences of nuclear weapon use.
Thank you, Nihon Hidankyo, for your efforts. We must never stop demanding our leaders to bring the needed changes for a nuclear-weapon-free world.
Barbara Sardarov
Bellingham
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The Seattle Times, Dec 11, 2024
“Green Seattle disappearing”
Thank you for the editorial “More paving, fewer trees. So much for a green ‘One Seattle’ ” (Dec. 6, Opinion). As a resident of North Seattle for over 45 years, I’ve watched the elimination of so many trees just in my little area to allow for new housing (12 huge trees alone on the property adjacent to mine were taken down for one house).
And I’ve seen developers cram six structures (two huge houses and four smaller ones) on one piece of property on 15th Avenue Northeast that had only one large house on it before. Not only is there no space to plant a tree on that property, but for four of the units, there is nothing but cement surrounding them. What a pitiful “non-example” of a green Seattle.
Louise Lansberry, Seattle
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Writing Articles for the Pacific Call
by editor John M Repp:
I would love to have more articles to publish in Pacific Call. To help me publish, you need to know that I use Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word for the articles so I need the text to be in .pub or .docx or something compatible with those two programs. Then I convert those documents to .pdf which I then send to Jean Buskin who loads separate articles and the whole issue onto the wwfor.org website using WordPress.
Articles can be about 1000 words, but just as often they are around 500 words, and sometimes even1500.Addinga visual, like a graph, a picture or a logo is helpful..
In the articles, in addition to telling of the problems our world faces, we can suggest reforms that could help solve social problems and stop wars. We are working for reconciliation between nations, cultures and individuals. We believe that obtaining a just peace through reconciling people and countries is what we as Homo sapiens need to accomplish as our world heats up due to human activities. We know that the better we organize, the more we bring more people together where they can work in solidarity to achieve reconciliation, the closer we can come to peace.
We have many allies. There are hundreds of national and international groups. There are other movements all over the world that have similar goals. In the folio of Pacific Call, just below the top of the front page it says: “members and chapters accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone.” There is power in numbers. The feeling of solidarity is one of the most powerful feelings a person can ever experience.
My email is jmrepp5@gmail.com.