Sacramento Peace Groups Call for an End to the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza
By Sacramento Peace Action
The Sacramento August Women’s Peace event was created in 1986 by the Florin Japanese American Citizens League, Sacramento Area Peace Action, and others to commemorate the lessons of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and support efforts for peace.
“As the world stands on the verge of yet another genocide and possible world war, with threats of the renewed use of nuclear weapons, we pause this week to remember the tens of thousands of civilians killed by the U.S. in the first global use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII,” explains Mario Galván, past president of Sacramento Area Peace Action.
“Sadly, our government has continued to support the horrors of war and the deaths of countless innocent civilians, most currently in Gaza, where U.S. weapons are killing children on a daily basis,” he added. “This must stop.”
“On this anniversary of the atomic bomb, bringing death and horrible destruction to Hiroshima, let us work to end the continued killing in Gaza,” says Marielle Tsukamoto of the Florin Japanese American Citizens League. “Wars perpetrated by political leaders destroy the lives of ordinary innocent people. We must be willing to speak out, and to take action.”
The U.S. dropped the equivalent of 15,000 tons of bombs on Hiroshima on August 6,1945 and an equivalent of 21,000 tons of bombs on Nagasaki on August 9, 2045.1,2
Gaza is 40% the size of Hiroshima but, as of June this year, Israel had dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, which is 4.6 times the amount dropped on Hiroshima.3,4
The national Japanese American Citizens League passed a resolution at its convention in Philadelphia last month that “denounces and calls for an end to the U.S. government’s funding of Israel’s military which violates international humanitarian laws or the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. §2378-1.” 5
Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, a Jewish Japanese-American writes: “I feel a deep sense of obligation to speak clearly about what is happening in Gaza right now. Which is that it’s genocide. That the Nakba which started in 1948 has simply never ended. And that it stands in opposition to my values as a Jew, and also as a Japanese American. … it is only with international pressure that Israel will end its wholesale slaughter of civilians, of children.” 6
The Japanese American Citizens League and Peace Action are joined by hundreds of human rights organizations and 70% of likely U.S. voters in calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.7
Tsukamoto adds, “As an American of Japanese Ancestry and as a member of the August Women’s Peace Event Committee, I am horrified by the continued killing of civilians in Gaza, where the death toll is nearly 40,000 and growing. I call on my Congressional Representative, Doris Matsui to demand that the U.S. stop sending weapons to Israel. The killing of innocent civilians, so many of whom are children, must stop.”
