Japanese musician protests Hiroshima 75 Anniversary

At 8.15am on 6 August 1945, the AmericanBoeing B-29 Superfortress bomber released its deadly cargo into the early morning skies of the waking Japanese industrial town ofHiroshima. The roar of its engine announced the beginning of the apocalyptic chapter in the story of man’s inhumanity to man. ‘Little Boy” took just 50 seconds, after its release from the aircraft, to detonate in the morning sky 600 metres above Hiroshima.

This Thursday 6 August 6 2020 marks 75 years since sinister nuclear capabilities were demonstrated on a largely civilian target.London band Ooberfuse joins forces with Japanese legendary musician Hibari to expose the hollow rhetoric of peace and justice, rhetoric used like a band-aid to cover the truth and reality of what happened on that day 75 years ago. Re-inventing 80s synth pop classic Enola Gay Hibari tells the story from the Japanese point of view, a song that perhaps others do not want to hear.

Tokyo chip tune and straight edge artist Hibari says : “We learned about these pictures and videos in school when we were children. Everyone should know the tragic pictures of war. Some say the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war.They try to say ‘People who die from the atomic bomb were needed for the current peace.’ My song is not what people want to hear …it challenges the myth that Hiroshima needed to happen in order to spread peace throughout the world.”

Hal St John of London band Ooberfuse, adds : “We live in Woolwich, the place in the 1940’s where Britain’s wartime firepower was assembled, tested and stored. It is possible to see behind the veneer of Woolwich’s newfound prosperity remnants of this past. We have travelled and toured with Hibari in India, the Philippines and Japan. We wanted to do a collaboration with our good friend and travelling companion to capture how Japanese today feel about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”