Members of the Syracuse Peace Council and Peace Action were joined by concerned residents Wednesday for a procession in commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
The atomic bombing (followed by the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945) occurred 69 years ago, and resulted in the deaths of 140,000 people who were either killed on impact or died later from the effects of the thermal waves and radiation.
The Syracuse Peace Council lists numerous reasons for holding the demonstration, which included puppets from the Open Hand Theater. In a release, the activists pointed to current conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and the Korean peninsula as "flashpoints" that factored into the Council's demonstration for this year's remembrance.
The activists other concerns include the $8.7 billion allocated to maintenance of nuclear warheads included in President Obama's 2015 fiscal year budget, and the "first-uses" policy the United States maintained in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.
