By Sean Arent
My first full day in Hiroshima I had many thoughts about what I was expected to feel and where. I thought, perhaps, I would break down in tears in the Hiroshima Peace Museum or at the iconic dome in the Peace Park. But I did not. These were quiet spaces for reflection. I had seen many of these images before, but there is a gravitas to being here where it happened. Instead, it was in a small room at the beginning of my first presentation as I explained why I dedicated this presentation to the late Glen Anderson and Dr. David Hall, who has now entered hospice care. I shared that Glen passed after his 40th year of weekly peace vigils without ever missing a day. That Dave, even with his 13-year battle with cancer continued to fight for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and even found humor in his treatment making him radioactive as an abolitionist. I choked on my words for what felt like an eternity, but eventually gathered myself and discussed the importance of Washington and nuclear weapons as well as the great work we do here.
There is a flame that burns in the Hiroshima Peace Park, only to be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. It is tended by men like them. In all our ways big and small, we tend it too.
If it weren't for the advocates, Hiroshima would be a city where you could forget what happened there. There was opposition to the preservation of many of the A-bombed buildings, including the iconic dome. Controversy continued around the installation of the Korean victims monument, honoring the indentured and colonized Koreans who died in the bombing.
I am here at the invitation of the World Friendship Center, founded by a small group of people including the quaker Barbara Reynolds. The Reynolds family story is a fascinating one. Earl Reynolds moved his family to Hiroshima to study the Hibakusha (survivors), and after a few years bought a boat named the Phoenix of Hiroshima to sail around the world. The boat had a Hiroshiman crew, and the crew told their stories around the world. At this point, the US government had suppressed information about the atomic bomb, so by accident, port after port would ask what happened and learn the truth of Hiroshima throughout this journey. It was when the boat neared the United States that they learned about the mission of the Golden Rule (to sail to the Marshall Islands in protest of nuclear testing), and from there they decided to join them. While the Golden Rule and her crew were detained in Hawaii, the Phoenix made it through to the Marshalls, broadcasting information about the testing before being detained themselves. These acts, first by accident and then by choice were pivotal to the larger nuclear freeze movement and peace movements to come.
I'm reminded that the advocacy we do often feels small, but unbeknownst to us could reverberate throughout history. I'm reminded of the importance of our work to end nuclear weapons. Barbara Reynolds continued to organize for peace until the day she died, founding the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College and helping shape the World Friendship Center into what it is today. Significantly, Reynolds organized a large trip for Hibakusha to the United States in the 1960s, that put survivors face to face with the likes of Harry Truman, Malcolm X, and Robert Oppenheimer.
I would conclude that we will only achieve peace through organized struggle and acts of conscience. Our system works against us. It atomizes our society and turns us into profit and consumption-driven machines. But we can’t shirk this sacred duty.
As I looked at images of a ruined city, charred corpses, dead children, and deranged horrors brought on by the bomb- It is still up to us to make these deaths mean something. To honor the wishes of the Hibakusha, that they be the last Hibakusha.