Friends mark Hiroshima Day
'The event will honour the seventy-eighth anniversary since the first atomic bombs were dropped.'
Quakers are marking Hiroshima Day this weekend, with open days and public events across the country. The event will honour the seventy-eighth anniversary since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima – and Nagasaki three days later – leaving more than 200,000 dead.
Tottenham Quakers are marking the occasion by co-hosting a public meeting with Haringey CND about campaigning for a nuclear-free world. The gathering, on 4 August, is timed to coincide with the visit to London of two leading anti-nuclear campaigners: Matthias Engelke from Germany, and Etienne Godinot, from France, who are also joining an Embassies Walk in London and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Gathering in Bristol.
The anniversary follows the new film Oppenheimer, which was released last month and tells the story of the invention of the atomic bomb. Some peace campaigners have welcomed the film for raising awareness of the ‘real and present danger’ of nuclear weapons. Others have said its focus on ‘scientific achievement’ distracts from the real horror of the bombing, with artful depictions of the disfigurements and deaths, rather than reflecting the true suffering and devastation.
‘The overall impact of the film is unbalanced – people leave the theatre thinking how exciting a process it was,’ Carol Turner, a co-chair of CND’s London branch, told The Guardian.
Coventry Friends will mark the anniversary by attending the annual Hiroshima Remembrance ceremony at Coventry Cathedral, where Quaker Jo Hallet will lead a session in making peace cranes. David Fish, from Rugby Meeting, who has been involved in the event since it began in 1987, said that it was also the eighty-third anniversary of the bombing of Coventry in world war two. Meanwhile, Romford Meeting is holding an open day with live music, where a candle sent from Hiroshima will be lit during the service, alongside a candle from Essex, for ‘love and remembrance’.
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