A video report of this event can be found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLhpXn9qh7g and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjFoILElek
A report posted by Takver on Sydney Indymedia appears not to be recoverable at present – the link was http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/node/51484
Text of message read at rally:
I am Dr Shuntaro Hida, born in 1917.
I send greetings to this Peace and anti-nuclear gathering from Japan.
On August 6, 1945 I survived the atomic bomb when working as a military doctor in the Hiroshima Military Hospital. Somehow I avoided death and started treating bombing victims immediately after the bomb attack. In the 62 years since that day, I have continued to treat the atomic bomb survivors, more than 6,000 people in total, including those who have since died. I am one of the few doctors who truly knows how the atom bomb killed people, and how radiation affects survivors over the years.
The instant the Hiroshima atomic bomb exploded, the heat and blast killed 50,000 citizens of Hiroshima, and in the following months another 150,000 who recovered from burns and injuries died from exposure to high radiation levels. And there are more tens of thousands exposed to the bomb from a distance, who have died over the decades from exposure to residual radiation in the air and water as they entered the bombed city to help people or look for family members.
The truth of this cruel damage from nuclear weapons is suppressed as military secrets by the Japanese government under coercion from the US government and military, and is not conveyed to the peoples of the world.
As a doctor who values human life, I oppose the creation, transportation, testing, storage, possession, and of course the use of, inhumane nuclear weapons that create bombing victims, and I have worked for their abolition.
Nuclear superpowers that possess nuclear weapons use new nuclear weapons such as depleted uranium bullets, killing without discrimination soldiers, and also innocent women, children and the elderly in the Gulf War, Kosovo and more recently, Iraq.
We in grass-roots citizen movements must combine our strength across national and racial boundaries to get our governments to introduce policy for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
I promise to continue this fight together with the 250, 000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs so long as we still exist.
No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis! No Hibakusha!
See Japanese for Peace (JfP) Website
At the end of the march which followed the rally, members of MAPW (Medical Association for Prevention of War – http://www.mapw.org.au/ ) braved the rain to stage some street theatre to highlight the consequences of a nuclear attack for the people of Melbourne:
