Hiroshima

HIROSHIMA, Japan - The Hiroshima High Court overturned a lower court decision yesterday and ordered the Japanese government to pay 40 plaintiffs, comprising former Korean forced laborers who survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima and their bereaved families, 1.2 million yen - about $11,665 - each. The court cited the illegality of excluding atomic bomb survivors from compensation on the basis that they live abroad. The plaintiffs live in South Korea. Although the court ordered the government to pay a total of 48 million yen - about $466,737 - it rejected the plaintiffs' demands for compensation from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Ryoju, a firm set up after the dissolution of the Mitsubishi conglomerate, on the ground that the statute of limitations had expired.

CHANTILLY, Va. -- The B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, the warplane that began the nuclear age with the first use of an atomic weapon on human beings, has been installed in a place of honor at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center here. It is the first time the airplane has been fully reassembled in 40 years. Eight years ago, another Smithsonian exhibit featuring a portion of the airplane was scrapped and the museum director resigned after a furor erupted over the museum's plans to use the exhibit to address the moral debate over atomic warfare.

A Memorable Place In Hiroshima, a place of contemplation By Tom Potts SPECIAL TO THE SUN During a visit to Japan, my wife and I realized we could take the train to Hiroshima rather than spend a second day touring the shrines and temples of Kyoto. We boarded the Nozomi bullet train and traveled at speeds up to 180 mph to reach Hiroshima. Because the taxi driver at the station -- dressed in suit, tie and white gloves -- understood no English, I pointed to a picture of Hiroshima's Peace Park in a brochure, and we headed there.

Shigeo Sasaki, 87, whose daughter was an atomic bomb victim who became famous for the paper cranes she folded, died Tuesday in Tokyo of a brain tumor. Mr. Sasaki devoted his life to campaigning for peace after his 12-year-old daughter Sadako died in 1955 of radiation-related leukemia that she developed after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 10 years earlier. Mr. Sasaki, a barber from Hiroshima, retold her story to school children around the nation. Sadako made cranes on her hospital bed, inspired by a Japanese legend that says anyone who makes 1,000 paper cranes would be granted a wish.

HIROSHIMA -- Sometimes, in the swirl of unpacking and re-packing and schlepping and waiting and more schlepping, all the while still trying to shake off the enervating after-effects of jet lag, it's hard to remember why touring is such a good thing for an orchestra. And then comes a night like the one the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra had on Saturday before a sizable, enthusiastic crowd in Tokyo's premier performance venue, Suntory Hall. It's worth putting up with just about any aggravation to hear this ensemble make that kind of pour-your-heart-out music-making.

FROM THE nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, to our current "war," the enemy has changed from the Japanese to the Russians to Muslim terrorists, but the solution always seems to involve nuclear weapons. As long as there are terrorists and unstable or foolish leaders, there can be no safety in these weapons. As physicians, we are concerned about the health and safety of our patients, our communities and all the residents of this world. The sacrifice to public health is too great, the scale of civilian suffering and deaths too large, and the environmental contamination too long-lasting to ever justify using a nuclear weapon again.

SNEZHNOGORSK -- In the midst of the desolate landscape of the Kola peninsula -- bare granite and low-growing birch trees for mile after desolate mile -- three nuclear submarines lie rusting in the icy waters of Snezhnogorsk. These submarines will never again be used; in that sense, their presence here is good news. But those with responsibility for looking after them fear that these vessels -- and dozens like them -- could yet cause a catastrophe which would make the Chernobyl disaster pale into insignificance.

The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will present a video screening of "Sounder" tonight at 7: 30 p.m. Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield star in Martin Ritt's classic 1972 drama about a sharecropper family living in Louisiana during the Depression. The video will be shown at the American Friends Service Committee, 4806 York Road. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and refreshments will be served. For more information call 410-377-7987.It's `Wonderful' to giveIf it's the holiday season, it must be time for the Senator to dust off a print of "It's a Wonderful Life," Frank Capra's classic Christmas tale starring Jimmy Stewart.

THIS YEAR the anniversaries passed without notice. Hiroshima, missing somewhere off the edge of our consciousness. Nagasaki, beyond much American recollection. In her home in northwest Baltimore County, Sylvia Beser, widow of Jacob Beser, the only man who flew both atomic bomb missions over Japan, leafs through old photo albums and wonders about the national memory."The kids don't understand," she says softly. "Even V-J Day this year, there was nothing."In October, surviving members of her husband's old unit, the 509th Composite Group of the 20th Air Force, who gathered anxiously on the island of Tinian in the South Pacific 54 years ago, who ushered in the atomic age with the devastation of two Japanese cities and ended World War II, will reunite in Washington.

Four Japanese peace ambassadors from the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima are visiting the Brethren Service fTC Center in New Windsor this week.Every two years, the center sends its ambassadors to several cities in the United States, where they meet with church and community organizations to promote peace. The members of the World Friendship Center, founded in 1965, believe that peace is built one person at a time.The ambassadors will be the guests of Carl and Carrie Beckwith, resident volunteers at the Brethren center.