Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day vigils
Friends around the country marked Hiroshima Day on 6 August
Quakers throughout the UK marked Hiroshima Day this month with vigils and witnesses to peace. Bolton Friends marked the day on 6 August by joining the town’s remembrance ceremony, while members of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) joined the commemoration in Tavistock Square in London. Bradford Friends also attended a service in their town.
The annual event marks the day when, seventy-three years ago, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. According to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 100,000 to 180,000 people were killed out of a population of 350,000.
Sue Hepworth, from Bakewell Friends, who held their annual peace vigil, told the Friend: ‘It was an opportunity to not only remember Hiroshima, but to show people there’s another way, to challenge them to think differently. I have a placard that says “Speak peace, not hate”. Hiroshima was the most appalling thing to happen, and yet we are still producing nuclear weapons today.’
Edinburgh Quakers took a moment from the first full day of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to remember the day at a Meeting for Worship, while Taunton Quakers held a silent peace vigil along Taunton High Street. Quakers came from over six Meetings in Central England Area Meeting to join Coventry Friends’ annual event in Coventry Cathedral, organised for over thirty years with the Peace and Reconciliation Committee of the lord mayor.
David Fish, from Coventry Meeting, told the Friend that Quaker witness was ‘the model’ for the day. He said: ‘We rang the peace bell, we heard readings, a poem by Hiroshima-visiting poet Antony Owen, letters of greeting from Coventry and Hiroshima, Sadako’s story, and each person made an origami crane of peace.’
Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, delivered a powerful message on the day about the critical importance of achieving lasting world peace. He said: ‘If the human family forgets history or stops confronting it, we could again commit a terrible error. That is precisely why we must continue talking about Hiroshima.’
Friends also took part in memorials across the country marking Nagasaki Day on 9 August.
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