Hiroshima Day at the White House, Photo by Felton Davis
by Art Laffin
On August 9 from 12:30-1:30 p.m., about 30 people from the faith-based peace community in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, held a witness of repentance at the Pentagon to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Nagasaki.
Displaying a lead sign saying “U.S. Nuclear Bombing of Nagasaki, August, 9, 1945 – Repent,” and carrying other disarmament signs and photos of the carnage and victims of the atomic bombings, we processed from Army-Navy Drive to the police designated protest zone, which is located in an enclosed space with a bicycle fence on the southeast corner of the Pentagon near the south parking lot. Once at the site, we encountered numerous Pentagon police and security as well as some Pentagon workers. Bill Frankel-Streit and Eric Martin proceeded past the protest zone and were told by police that they could not continue further or remain on the sidewalk. When they refused to comply with an order to go into the designated protest area after several warnings they were placed under arrest.
Before their arrest, as Bill and Eric stood in silence on the sidewalk holding photos of Nagasaki victims, I offered the following statement:
“Seventy-two ago, on August 6, 1945, the U.S. ushered in the Nuclear Age by committing the unspeakable act of using nuclear weapons against the people of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, the U.S. used a second nuclear weapon against the people of Nagasaki. Over 200,000 Japanese died in these bombings and many thousands more have suffered and died since from the effects of nuclear radiation. The U.S. has never repented for the use of these weapons of indiscriminate mass murder.
The renowned Trappist writer and peacemaker, Thomas Merton, in his remarkable “Original Child Bomb,” describes the firepower, death and destruction that was unleashed on Hiroshima: “The bomb exploded within 100 feet of the aiming point. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature at the center of the fireball was 100,000,000 degrees. The people who were near the center became nothing. The whole city was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly everywhere, burning briskly. 70,000 people were killed right away or died with a few hours. Those who did not die at once suffered great pain. Few of them were soldiers.”
We come to the Pentagon today to say Yes to the God of Life who commands us to love and not to kill, and No to the forces of evil, death and destruction. As people of faith, we stand here in front of the Pentagon, the center of warmaking on our planet, with contrite hearts as we call on our nation to join with us in repenting for the colossal sin and crime of building and using nuclear weapons, to apologize to the Japanese and A-Bomb survivors (known as Hibakusha) for our country’s use of the bomb against them and to demand an end to ongoing criminal nuclear war preparations.
We also join with people of faith and conscience in Japan, around the world and here in the U.S., many of whom are holding peace and resistance actions during these days of commemoration, including peacemakers at Los Alamos and Livermore Nuclear Labs, the Bangor nuclear submarine base, the Brandywine Peace Community who are acting at Lockheed Martin, the Manhattan Project for a Nuclear Free Future—all who are committed to eliminating these omnicidal weapons of terror and abolishing war.
Since the secret Manhattan Project to create the Bomb began in 1940, the U.S. has spent some $10 trillion building and refining its nuclear arsenal. Instead of leading the world toward nuclear abolition, the U.S. continues to build even deadlier weapons. And it is also using nuclear technology in its efforts to militarize and dominate space. The massive expenditures for these weapons constitute a direct theft from the poor.”
As Bill and Eric were then handcuffed and taken by Pentagon police to be processed, we sang a verse from “Vine and Fig Tree.” They were charged with “failure to obey a lawful order” and have a court date for October 19, 2017.
After their arrest, I finished reading my opening reflection, an excerpt of which follows: “The violence unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki set in motion a trajectory of unrelenting violence by the U.S. in its wars of aggression that it has waged over the last seven decades, claiming untold lives. In its quest to remain the world’s preeminent military superpower, and control vast amounts of the earth’s resources, the U.S. power structure is committed to using whatever military means is necessary, including nuclear weapons, to enforce and protect its interests. Today the U.S. possesses nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are on hair-trigger alert, and proposes to spend an estimated $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize it’s existing nuclear arsenal. Moreover, the U.S. recently boycotted a special UN Conference that produced a historic “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” that was signed by 122 countries.
It is hypocritical for the U.S., the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons and the leading nuclear superpower who refuses to disarm, to call on any other country to disarm. If the U.S. is to ever truly lead the way to real disarmament, it must first repent for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then and only then, can the U.S. legitimately ask other nuclear nations to disarm.”
This was followed by Ken Cooper reading “A Child’s Memory of Nagasaki,” a powerful heartbreaking account of Fujio Tsujimoto, a six year old survivor of Nagasaki. Here is an excerpt of that account:
“I believe I escaped death when the atom bomb fell on Nagasaki only because I happened to be in the air raid shelter on the boundary of our Yamazato grade school playground… There was a dazzling glare. A powerful gust of wind smashed me against the cellar wall. After some time I looked out of the cellar. Everywhere people lay thickly on top of each other, dead; only here and there one moved a leg or another raised an arm….My brother and my little sisters had come to the shelter too late. They were badly burned. They sat beside me and cried… I sat down at the entrance to the shelter and looked around, yearning for Father and Mother. Half an hour later my mother did come. Her whole body was bloody…The people who were still alive died one after another. They groaned in pain. The next day my young sisters died, and also mother, our beloved mother. Then my brother. I believed that I would also die. Everyone that was with us in the cellar died. Grandmother and I, however, had been the deepest into the shelter. The blast had not reached us. Therefore we remained alive, just we two. Day after day we searched in vain among the many dead for my father.”
Following this stirring account, Bob Cooke and Mary Liepolds read the “Apology Petition” that was shared and presented last year to Mr. Mimaki, a Hiroshima Hibakusha, during our August 6 White House commemoration witness. Over 700 people signed the petition, an excerpt which reads: “We apologize to the people of Japan – and to the survivors of the bombing, the hibakusha – for our country’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we ask forgiveness for these atrocities.”
Felton Davis and Jack McHale then led a Litany of Repentance. This was followed by Kathy Boylan leading a collective recitation of Dan Berrigan’s poem, “Shadow on the Rock.” We then sang together “I Come and Stand.”
This witness was organized by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and cosponsored by Pax Christi Metro-DC, and Pax Christi USA, Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Isaiah Project, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns and the Sisters of Mercy – Institute Justice Team.
August 9 also marks the anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Edith Stein and Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, both of whom were killed by the Nazi’s – Stein in 1942, and Jagerstatter in 1943. Rachel Schmidt read a quote from St. Stein and Scott Wright and Jean Stokan read quotes from Franz Jagerstatter (see below). This was followed by a time of remembrance during which a number of people gave moving testimony. We concluded with introductions, announcements and singing “Vine and Fig Tree.”
In the face of escalating nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, let us heed the plea of the Hibakusha: “Humankind can’t coexist with nuclear weapons.” Let us proclaim the nonviolent message of Jesus to put away the sword, to love our neighbors and enemies in resistance to the powers that be who propagate fear and hostility, and who threaten war. Let us continue to pray and labor for a world without nuclear weapons, killer drones and all weapons of war as we strive to eradicate the triple evils of poverty, racism and militarism, abolish war and create the Beloved Community.
Sr. Edith Stein Reflection
Edith Stein, a German Jewish convert to Catholicism, was a philosopher, a Carmelite nun, and martyr who died at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. She was [https:///entry/Canonization]canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite monastic name) by [https:///entry/Pope_John_Paul_II]Pope John Paul II in 1998.
Quote from Sr. Edith Stein:
“What is meant by “the Law of the Lord”? Psalm 118 which we pray every Sunday and on solemnities at Prime, is entirely filled with the command to know the Law and to be led by it through life. The Psalmist was certainly thinking of the Law of the Old Covenant. Knowing it actually did require life-long study and fulfilling it, life-long exertion of the will. But the Lord has freed us from the yoke of this Law. We can consider the Savior’s great commandment of love, which he says includes the whole Law and the Prophets, as the Law of the New Covenant. Perfect love of God and of neighbor can certainly be a subject worthy of an entire lifetime of meditation. But we understand the Law of the New Covenant, even better, to be the Lord himself, since he has in fact lived as an example for us of the life we should live. We thus fulfill our Rule when we hold the image of the Lord continually before our eyes in order to make ourselves like him. We can never finish studying the Gospels.”
- Collected Works Vol. IV. Part 1 : Before the Face of God, Ch.1 : “On the History and Spirit of Carmel”
Franz Jagerstatter Reflection
Franz Jagerstatter a Catholic, Austrian farmer and married father of three daughters, was beheaded on August 9, 1943 by the Third Reich at the Berlin-Brandenberg Prison. Imprisoned in March of 1943, Jagerstatter was convicted of “undermining military morale” by “inciting the refusal to perform the required service in the German army,” and condemned to death in July of 1943 by the Reich’s Military Tribunal. Jagerstatter was 36 years old when he died. In October of 2007, Blessed Franz Jagerstatter was beatified by the Catholic Church.
This following is taken from a review by Anna Brown of Franz Jagerstatter: Letters and Writings from Prison.
In an essay that he wrote in 1942, “On Today’s Issue: Catholic or National Socialist,” Jagerstatter recalls a dream that he had in January of 1938. “I saw [in a dream] a wonderful train as it came around a mountain. With little regard for the adults, children flowed to this train and were not held back. There were present a few adults who did not go into the area. I do not want to give their names or describe them. Then a voice said to me, ‘This train is going to hell.’ Immediately it happened that someone took my hand, and the same voice said to me: ‘Now we are going to purgatory.’ What I glimpsed and perceived was fearful. If this voice had not told me that we were going to purgatory, I would have judged that I had found myself in hell.”
For Jagerstatter, the train symbolizes National Socialism with all of its sub-organizations and programs (the N.S. Public Assistance Program, Hitler Youth, etc.). As he puts it, “the train represents the N.S. Volk community and everything for which it struggles and sacrifices.” He remembers that just prior to having this dream, he had read that 150,000 Austrian young people had joined Hitler Youth. He recounts, sadly, that the Christians of Austria had never donated as much money to charitable organizations as they now donated to Nazi party organizations. He realizes that it wasn’t really the money that the Nazi’s were after, it was more the souls of the Austrian people: You are either with the Fuhrer or you are nothing. Upon this realization, Jagerstatter writes, “I would like to cry out to the people aboard the N.S. train: ‘Jump off this train before it arrives at your last stop where you will pay with your life!’”
His admonition to “jump off the train” is one that must be heard and acted upon, perhaps never more so than today. In his recent meditation on Jagerstatter’s life, Father Daniel Berrigan urges that we not become complacent in these “post-Hitler” times: “To speak of today; it is no longer Hitler’s death train we ride, the train of the living dead. Or is it? It is. The same train. Only, if possible (it is possible) longer, faster, cheaper. On schedule, every hour on the hour, speedy and cheap and unimaginably lethal. An image of life in the world. A ghost train still bound, mad as March weather, for hell… Despite all fantasies and homilies and ’states of the union’,’ urging the contrary. Today, a world of normalized violence, a world of standoff, of bunkers and missiles nose to nose, a world of subhuman superpowers and the easy riders. The train beats its way across the world, crowded with contented passenger-citizen-Christians.”
In the final months of his life, Jagerstatter wrote, “I perceive that many words will not accomplish much today. Words teach, but personal example shows their meaning … People want to observe Christians who have taken a stand in the contemporary world, Christians who live amid all of the darkness with clarity, insight, and conviction, Christians who live with the purest peace of mind, courage and dedication amid the absence of peace and joy, amid the self-seeking and hatred.”
Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, pray for us.
xxx
from Art Laffin
On August 6, the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the feast of the Transfiguration, about 30 peacemakers held a prayer service outside the White House from 7:30-8:30 a.m. to repent for the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. This peace witness was organized by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and cosponsored by Pax Christi Metro-DC, Pax Christi USA, Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Isaiah Project and the Sisters of Mercy— Institute Justice Team and Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Before the witness began, we placed photos and drawings of the victims and the destruction caused by the nuclear bombings on the street in front of the White House, thereby creating a makeshift shrine of remembrance. I then offered a welcome and an opening reflection (see below). Following this reflection, Bob Cooke gave some brief background about the “Apology Petition” that was read during our Prayer Service of Repentance last August 6 outside the White House and presented to Mr. Mimaki, an A-Bomb survivor, who was present with us. The petition has been signed by over 700 people (see below). All gathered then read the Petition.
Scott Wright and Jean Stokan then led us into a sacred time and space of remembrance and reflection. They brought red and white roses and invited each person to take one. The red roses symbolized the sacredness of all life as well as the grief and suffering caused by war and the Bomb. The white roses symbolized hope and our commitment to work for a nonviolent world, free of weapons, war and violence. This time concluded with my offering the song of the A-Bomb survivors and Paul Magno and Felton Davis leading a Litany of Repentance (see below).
After the Litany, Marie Dennis read a passage for the Gospel of Mark, marking the feast of the Transfiguration, and offered a reflection and prayer.
At 8:15 a.m., the exact time in Japan that the bomb was dropped, we observed a time of silence. Kathy Boylan then read a poem titled “Shadow on the Rock,” (see below) that was written by the late Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
The witness concluded with everyone singing “I Come and Stand,” announcements and the closing song: “Vine and Fig Tree.”
Apology Petition
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: An Apology
Envision the World Without Nuclear Weapons
August 6 and 9, 2016–71st Anniversary of the U.S. Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a time of remembering the horror, repenting the sin and reclaiming a future without nuclear weapons. It is a time to recommit ourselves to the work of disarming and dismantling the machinery of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons are sinful and idolatrous. Their research, production, possession, deployment and use are a crime against God and humanity. We decry the fact that the U.S. government plans to commit a trillion dollars to modernize its existing nuclear arsenal over the next thirty years.
On this August 6 and 9, we gather with people of faith and conscience across the globe to mark the anniversary with a daily presence of prayer and action. As citizens of the United States, we invite people to publicly ask God for forgiveness for the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused the immediate death of more than 200,000 people, and hundreds of thousands more who died in the aftermath as a result of radiation poisoning. Pope Paul VI, in his 1976 World Day of Peace Message, described the bombings as “a butchery of untold magnitude.”
We apologize to the people of Japan – and to the survivors of the bombing, the hibakusha – for our country’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we ask forgiveness for these atrocities. We repent for the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons at the expense of unmet human needs. Further, we offer repentance for threatening to use nuclear weapons and keeping many of them on a first-strike hair-trigger alert. We firmly resolve, with God’s grace and mercy, to reject the false idols of nuclear weapons, and to embrace the life-affirming work of abolishing these weapons of terror.
Now is the time to pursue non-violent alternatives to war and proclaim a Jubilee Year of Mercy, as both the Scriptures and Pope Francis suggest: to restore justice for the poor; to lay the foundations for peace; and to seek a nuclear-free future for our children. In that spirit, we renew our commitment to the biblical vision of peace, a world without weapons or war, expressed so well by the prophet Isaiah: On that day, “God will rule over all nations and settle disputes for all peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not raise sword against nation; nor will they train for war anymore” (Is 2:4).
(This petition was prepared by Scott Wright and Art Laffin. Groups sponsoring the petition include: Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro-DC, Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Isaiah Project, the Sisters of Mercy—Institute Justice Team, Little Friends for Peace, Jonah House and the Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area. To sign the petition please go to http://action.nonviolenceinternational.net/apology_petition. This petition was presented to Mr. Toshiyuki Mimaki, Hiroshima Hibakusha (A-bomb Survivor), at the August 6, 2016 White House prayer witness.
Opening Reflection by Art Laffin–August 6, 2017 White House Prayer Service of Repentance
Good morning. My name is Art Laffin from the DDCW and, I extend greetings of peace to everyone here visiting the White House as well as to the secret service agents and to all who reside in the White House.
Seventy-two ago, today, the U.S. ushered in the Nuclear Age by committing the unspeakable act of using nuclear weapons against the people of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, the U.S. used a second nuclear weapon against the people of Nagasaki. Over 200,000 Japanese died in these bombings and many thousands more have suffered and died since from the effects of nuclear radiation. The U.S. has never repented for the use of these weapons of indiscriminate mass murder.
We, members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro-DC, and Pax Christi USA, Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Isaiah Project, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, the Sisters of Mercy—Institute Justice Team, Jonah House, and other peace and justice groups, come to the White House today (which is also the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Catholic Church) to say Yes to the God of Life who commands us to love and not to kill, and No to the forces of evil, death and destruction. As people of faith, we stand here in front of the White House with contrite hearts as we call on our nation to join with us in repenting for the colossal sin and crime of building and using nuclear weapons, to apologize to the Japanese and A-Bomb survivors (known as Hibakusha) for our country’s use of the bomb against them, to demand an end to ongoing criminal nuclear war preparations, and to lead the way to total worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons. If the U.S. is to ever truly lead the way to real disarmament, it must first repent for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then and only then, can the U.S. legitimately ask other nuclear nations to disarm.
We also join with people of faith and conscience in Japan, around the world and here in the U.S., many of whom are holding peace and resistance actions during these days of commemoration, including peacemakers at Los Alamos and Livermore Nuclear Labs, the Bangor nuclear submarine base, the Brandywine Peace Community who are acting at Lockheed Martin, the Manhattan Project for a Nuclear Free Future—all who are committed to eliminating these omnicidal weapons of terror and abolishing war.
The powers that be want us to believe that the atomic bomb had to be used to save American lives and end WWII. This is a fallacy! Realizing that Japan was on the verge of surrender as early as July 13, 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower, along with Admiral William Leahy, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed the use of the Bomb. In Leahy’s own words: “the use of the barbarous weapon on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Nuclear weapons were used against the Japanese primarily for two reasons: first, the U.S. wanted to hasten its victory over Japan without the aid of the Russians, who were about to enter the war; second, and most importantly, Truman intended to threaten the Russians and warn them not to challenge U.S. plans to organize the postwar world. Through using these genocidal weapons against the Japanese, the U.S. set the tone for the already emerging cold war with the Russians and made clear its future intention to use the bomb if need be, to protect its rapidly expanding worldwide corporate interests and its quest for global empire. It is within this context that the nuclear arms race began and continues. The violence unleashed at Hiroshima set in motion a trajectory of unrelenting violence by the U.S. in its wars of aggression over the last seven decades, claiming untold lives.
Since the secret Manhattan Project to create the Bomb began in 1940, the U.S. has spent some $10 trillion building and refining its nuclear arsenal. Instead of leading the world toward nuclear abolition, the U.S. continues to build even deadlier weapons. And it is also using nuclear technology in its efforts to militarize and dominate space. The massive expenditures for these weapons constitute a direct theft from the poor.
In its quest to remain the world’s preeminent military superpower, and control vast amounts of the earth’s resources, the U.S. power structure is committed to using whatever military means is necessary, including nuclear weapons, to enforce and protect its interests. Today the U.S. possesses nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are on hair-trigger alert, and proposes to spend an estimated $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize it’s existing nuclear arsenal. Moreover, the U.S., recently boycotted a special UN Conference which produced a historic “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” that was signed by 122 countries.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has turned its “Doomsday Clock” to two and half minutes to midnight due to unchecked climate change and global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals which pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity. The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.”
Nuclear weapons are immoral, illegal, anti-God, anti-life, anti-creation and have no right to exist. The Hibakusha plead to the world: “Humankind can’t coexist with nuclear weapons.” Dr. King, mindful of the extreme perils posed by the nuclear threat, exhorts us: “The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or non-existence.” And Thomas Merton declared that the most urgent necessity of our time is to not only prevent the destruction of the human race by nuclear war, but to refuse our consent to this greatest of crimes.
Now is the time for urgent nonviolent action to abolish nuclear weapons and end the scourge of war. If the human family and the earth are to survive, we need to heed the admonitions of the Hibakusha, King, Merton, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan’s and many other prophets of peace. We need to strive with every fiber of our being to embrace the way of nonviolence, pursue the path of just peace and create the Beloved Community.
LITANY OF REPENTANCE
Response: Forgive us O God
For the U.S. development, use, and continued threatened use of nuclear weapons, Forgive us O God
For the over 200,000 people who are estimated to have died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a direct result of the U.S. nuclear bombings, Forgive us O God
For the countless Japanese A-Bomb survivors who have suffered and died from the effects of nuclear radiation, Forgive us O God
For the unknown numbers of people who have suffered and died from nuclear testing in the South Pacific, Forgive us O God
For workers in nuclear facilities who have been exposed to radiation and who have suffered and died, Forgive us O God
For those living downwind from nuclear facilities who have contracted cancer and other illnesses and who have died, Forgive us O God
For those prisoners and people with mental disabilities who were subjects of nuclear radiation experiments, Forgive us O God
For the U.S. use of highly toxic radioactive depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and elsewhere which have claimed untold lives and have caused dramatic increases of cancer, leukemia and birth defects in each of the countries where these weapons have been used, Forgive us O God
For the millions who needlessly suffered and died–past and present–because of the money and resources squandered on weapons and war instead of on programs to help eradicate poverty and preventable diseases, Forgive us O God
For the desecration of the earth and the environmental damage caused by the mining, testing and use of nuclear technology, Forgive us O God
For the militarization of space and the dangerous use of nuclear technology in space, Forgive us O God
For the U.S. military being the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate, Forgive us O God
For placing our trust in the false security of weapons and mammon rather than in God, Forgive us O God
SHADOW ON THE ROCK
by Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
At Hiroshima there’s a museum
and outside that museum there’s a rock,
and on that rock there’s a shadow.
That shadow is all that remains
of the human being who stood there on August 6, 1945
when the nuclear age began.
In the most real sense of the word,
that is the choice before us.
We shall either end war and the nuclear arms race now in this generation,
or we will become Shadows On the Rock.