Ashland’s Hiroshima-Nagasaki Vigil

In 2010 I was honored to attend the official commemorations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of a Japan Foundation Fellowship. I attended as a representative of the cities of Ashland and Corvallis and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom DISARM committee.

Both Oregon cities belong to the organization Mayors for Peace. Mayors for Peace work for nuclear weapons free world where resources are used not for militarism but to meet human needs worldwide. As of August 17, 5,312 cities in 153 regions and countries belonged to Mayors for Peace- half the world’s population already lives in a Mayor for Peace city!

I was able to meet with Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima personally as an official representative. He is a hero to me because he has been such an amazing and inspiring force for global nuclear disarmament. He retired as Mayor in 2011 and now he is the chair of the Middle Powers Initiative that seeks to empower NGOs and developed countries without nuclear weapons to effectively spark nuclear weapons disarmament. At the time of my visit,  Mayor Akiba  had just been awarded the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize! He expressed how very grateful he was to Ashland because of our small town’s commitment to having a vigil each August 6th and 9th for over 25 years.  He spoke about the power, healing, and education that can occur with such remembrances. He gave me a beautiful crystal globe to present to the city of Ashland to thank the city for their efforts. He sent me a letter as well (which my husband framed for me) thanking me for my nuclear education efforts and my gifts to him. One of these gifts was an incredible poem written by Olivia Fermi, Enrico Fermi’s granddaughter. Enrico Fermi is often called the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” because he understood quantum mechanics and he developed many of the processes that made the first nuclear bombs possible.  The poem reads:

Circle of Dust

July 5, 2005

What is my life in this moment?
A circle of dust within
A small explosion becomes a flower radiating
from a point from the center of which

Something could emerge
Or fall into –
but only if touched with the deepest
Stillest intimacy

A whisper joining us in dark velvet stillness.

© 2005 Olivia Fermi

I also was honored to bring 1,000 peace cranes to hang at the Children’s Sadako statue in Hiroshima at the Peace Park and to the Nagasaki Lost Child statue during the official commemorations. The cranes were folded by The Great Vow Monastery in Portland and the people of Ashland and Corvallis.

To learn more about Mayors for Peace at http://www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/index.html

To learn more about the Middle Powers Initiative, see http://www.middlepowers.org/

To follow Olivia Fermi and her blog  On the Neutron Trail, see http://neutrontrail.com/

This year, in 2012,  I was so deeply touched to be asked to light the Ashland vigil Hiroshima candle. During the vigil days from August 6 to August 9, I felt more at peace than I have in many years, and I am sure it is because of being given this honor.

The candle is a representation of the Hiroshima Flame that burns in Hiroshima at the Peace Park and will be extinguished when the dreams of a nuclear weapons free future are realized. On my 1986 walk on the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Buddhists walked everyday in the front of our 9 and half month march from LA to DC. They carried a lamp that was lit from the flame in the Hiroshima Peace Park and they chanted, “na-mu-myō-hō-ren-ge-kyō“.

Some of my happiest walks were near them, chanting along, knowing the flame near, and thinking of my steps as prayers. To me, the flame is sacred and connects our vigil to all the remembrances held around the world and is a visible expression of all the prayers we have for victims of war, violence, and nuclear pollution.

This is the amazing educational nuclear history display created by the Ashland Branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. A very small group of women and men in the community make the vigil happen every year, especially my mother, Jill Mackie, who has become the lead facilitator. The display is so inviting and sparks discussion as well as reflection within the community and among passerby. The display, made on fabric with bamboo poles, tells nuclear history using photos, text, graphs, and maps by decade and by topics. This year included drawings made by children who were affected by the Fukushima accident and was particularly heart wrenching.

There was beautiful singing on the plaza in both English and Japanese. The Japanese Association raised money for relief funds for the tsunami and earthquake during the vigil and also performed at the Nagasaki ceremony and folded many peace cranes we could give as gifts to those who came by the vigil to talk or reflect.

After the Nagasaki ceremony that was held this year at Mountain Meadows, everyone who attended was encouraged to offer water to the spirits who suffered from thirst in the aftermath of the bombings and to make a wish for global nuclear disarmament by placing a sunflower, the symbol of a nuclear free future, into Kitchen Creek. Flower Thyme donated the most beautiful huge bunch of sunflowers that I carried right through downtown, smiling ear to ear, the day of the ceremony, and Jill went to the Mountain Meadows garden and cut the beautiful sunflowers she had grown from seeds for the ceremony. The ceremony was so touching, from Jill’s welcome to the music to Paula Sohl’s presence and the reading of the Mayor of Nagasaki 2012 Peace Declaration. I was thrilled to see many of the people there who made the vigil possible for so many years. I spoke about the ceremony in Nagasaki and read aloud the words to the song that was sung by Hibakusha (survivors of the bombings) in 2010.