I want to focus on a topic not covered in this week’s program: the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Every year since the late 1970s, a coalition of Iowa peace groups has commemorated the bombings with song, speeches, and ringing the Japanese Bell of Peace and Friendship at the Iowa State Capitol.

That bronze bell weighs 2,000 pounds and was gifted to Iowa in 1962 by our sister state, Yamanashi Prefecture, in response to Iowans providing humanitarian aid following two devastating typhoons.

Every year, the commemoration reminds us of the horror of nuclear war. That horror has haunted me for over sixty years. In 2018, I wrote about it in my memoir, Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim:

War terrified me from an early age. I first learned about Vietnam when I was six. I’d lie in bed paralyzed by fear at the roar of jet engines being tested at General Electric two miles away. I thought the Vietnamese were coming to kill us.

Mom tried to reassure me that there was nothing to worry about. The noise came from the factory where she and my dad used to work, where they’d met in fact. It was a good place, nothing to be scared of.

She made no mention of the napalm being dropped that night on sleeping Vietnamese children by planes powered by those very engines. Like most Americans in the early 1960s, Mom dutifully swallowed the anti-communist propaganda, ignoring the occasional images of truth and horror that slipped through the pro-war ideologues’ shield of deceit.

For many years, I had nuclear nightmares. In one recurring dream, I would stand in a city devastated by a nuclear attack, handing out water and food to scarred and burned victims.

The nightmares ended when I became a peace activist, at first in Ireland in 1984, then with deeper commitment in Iowa in 1985. By 1986, I was full-time engaged with peace work — coordinating the Iowa stretch of the Great Peace March and later founding Des Moines Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Continue Reading →