secrets go out the back door…
75 arrested at NM lab

LOS ALAMOS, NM 9 August

In the largest demonstration ever against the birthplace of the atomic bomb, about 400 protesters gathered outside Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the US atomic bomb, to mark the 54th anniversary of the nuclear destruction of Nagasaki.

"Los Alamos is getting back into the nuclear bomb making business at a time when the world desperately needs to get back on the path of nuclear disarmament," Bruce Hall of the group Peace Action, told the rally.

Los Alamos, one of US's premier weapons research labs run by the Energy Department, resumed building plutonium triggers for US nuclear bombs in the mid-1990s after stopping in the 1980s.

The protest followed a three-day anti-nuclear conference which featured speakers Fueko Motogama, 68, and Seiko Ikeda, 66, survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, respectively. Ikeda was 12 years old when the first atomic bomb ever dropped destroyed Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945. Nagasaki was hit three days later.

"I saw my skin peel off and there was only red flesh," said Ikeda, who was standing about a mile (1.5 km) from where the bomb struck. Actor Martin Sheen, 59, was among those taken into custody at Los Alamos Nagasaki rally.