Spokane groups commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings with peace events

By Caleb McGever | FāVS News Reporter

Spokane Veterans for Peace, alongside several other community organizations, will host two events this week to remember that 80 years ago the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On Wednesday (Aug. 6), “Nuclear War in Real Time” will first be commemorated from 1 to 3:30 p.m.,  with a Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes story hour and a time to make origami paper cranes at the Shadle Park Library. On Saturday (Aug. 9) at 10:30 a.m., these organizations will host an event featuring Veterans for Peace National Executive Director Michael McPhearson and music by the Raging Grannies at All Saints Lutheran Church, 314 S. Spruce St. 

The focus of the event is to understand the consequences of the nuclear war, starting 80 years ago and up to today.

Peace Is the Prayer

The first event is centered around the story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. The book is based on the true story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was a victim of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Sasaki died in 1955, 10 years after the bomb was dropped, of leukemia due to the radiation caused by the bomb. In the book, she aims to fold a thousand paper cranes in order to be granted a wish to live.

“I think this [story] has brought the tragedy of Hiroshima to more Americans than any other thing,” said Rusty Nelson, president emeritus of Veterans for Peace. 

He said that the story helps people see that “this was not Japanese soldiers in full battle gear who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was people like us, people going about their lives.”

Additionally, the book brings in the story of the paper crane, a symbol of peace. 

“This is our cry. This is our prayer, peace on earth. So the paper cranes have become a symbol for many of us of hope for peace and for reconciliation and understanding of the victims of war,” Nelson said. 

After the story, everybody will be invited to fold their own origami paper cranes. Nelson said that having people make something with their hands, like origami cranes out of paper, calls for understanding of other peoples and traditions, in this case the victims of nuclear war. 

Remembering the lives affected and destroyed by nuclear war is an important piece of understanding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the current and lasting effects of nuclear development, Nelson said.

“Many of us have a huge problem with considering the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as collateral damage, and we think that’s unacceptable,” Nelson said..

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the nuclear bombs dropped killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945. 

However, the effects of nuclear bombs extend far beyond the already devastating initial destruction. Sasaki’s death of leukemia, caused by radiation poising from the bombs, is an important example. 

“This is the destruction that happened. Not only the bomb, but the leukemia and the chemical, the radiation, poison is horrible,” said Mary Naber, an organizer of the event who will help run the story hour. “And so this is my introduction to say this is what happens in reality with a nuclear bomb. It’s not just a bomb.”

Nuclear consequences for the Inland Northwest

The consequences of nuclear war even reach into the inland northwest region. 

Naber mentioned two friends who are “downwinders,” which is a name used for people affected by radioactive fallout. Her friends were affected by radiation from the Hanford Site, located in Benton County, Washington, which produced plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki. 

The Hanford Site website tells the story of the Indigenous peoples who lived in the area before the reactor was built and mentions the production processes that left solid and liquid waste that left the local environment at risk, including the Columbia River.

As the Hanford site works to treat contaminated groundwater and dispose of radioactive waste, debates about transportation and regulation still affect Spokane and the region. 

Among those heavily impacted by nuclear development in the northwest are the Marshallese community, 2,400 to 3,000 of whom live in Spokane according to The Northwest Against Nuclear Weapons.

Marshallese people were impacted by nuclear testing performed at Bikini Atoll, an island in the Marshal Archipelago. There, the United States carried out 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the explosion of the first Hydrogen Bomb in 1952. 

UNESCO World Heritage Convention explains how the testing heavily impacted the Marshallese community through their displacement for the testing and the human irradiation and contamination caused by radionuclides produced by the test. 

Secular event, religious dilemmas

Nelson said that although the event includes many faith-based groups like Pax Christi, Jewish Voices for Peace and the All Saints Lutheran Church, the event was planned as a secular event. The event also includes many other non-faith-based groups like Peace and Justice Action League Spokane, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and Spokane Veterans for Peace.  

The secular distinction is in order to not draw distinctions between faiths, Nelson said. 

However, the values of the event speak to a dilemma deeply intertwined with religious values. 

“We have this struggle today that involves the tendency toward religious nationalism, which is always averse to peacekeeping, and is looking for some kind of power play that might cause millions of deaths. It’s sort of a trend that we’ve been locked into since well before 1945,” Nelson said. 

Nelson, whose background is set in the Mennonite tradition of pacifism and peacekeeping, said that he saw a “great idolatry” in spending federal money and paying more debt toward weapons and “more sophisticated ways to kill people.”

“In the peace movement, a few years back, we used to talk about worshiping gods of metal, and that still is quite an image for me,” Nelson said. “We also had the expression, do you pray for peace and pay for war?”