Corvallis WILPF Hosts 38th Hiroshima/ Nagasaki Never Again Memorial

Bart Bolger from VFP took this picture on August 7 at the Van Buren Street Bridge in Corvallis, OR, at the end of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Never Again vigil.

By Maegan Prentice
Corvallis WILPF

On August 7, 2019, Corvallis (OR) WILPF, along with Corvallis Veterans for Peace (VFP), hosted the 38th Hiroshima/Nagasaki Never Again memorial, a moment each year when our community affirms its intention that nuclear weapons will never be used again. This year’s event was one of the largest.

Before the formalities, people moved through the displays of photos and information that have been collected over the last decade. This year a woman from Japan performed on the koto helping to create a deeper sense of the culture that had been so deeply impacted. Once people were seated, four speakers delivered their messages and the evening ended with a candlelight procession.

The speakers represented several different views of the nuclear issue and explained why nuclear weapons must never be allowed to be used again. Fred Schafer of the National Associate of Atomic Veterans shared the experience of witnessing an actual explosion from a ship full of sailors in the Pacific. For decades these men were forbidden to talk about their experience and kept the horror buried deep inside. Pat Harwood is one of the Downwinders who spoke to the physical problems of the people who grew up downwind and down river from the Hanford Nuclear facility. Russ Yamada shared a very personal story of his grandmother and the beautiful city of Hiroshima that she grew up in that disappeared in a moment. The last speaker was the mayor of Corvallis, Biff Trager, who spoke of the power of people working together to create peace. “We have to eliminate nuclear weapons so we can survive to build a world of peace,” he said.

As in many years past, the ceremony ended with everyone reading the Community Affirmation, a communal commitment to peace. No one knows for sure who wrote the Community Affirmation or when it was used for the first time, but the words convey the heartfelt intentions of all the people who have read it over the years.

After the ceremony candles were lit and a procession formed to walk to the Van Buren Street Bridge over the Willamette River. A flotilla of kayaks with lanterns came down river under the bridge, reminiscent of the Japanese tradition of sending lanterns down river to the ocean. This quiet procession and flotilla gave every person an opportunity to reflect on the experience and to realize they were not alone in their concerns.

Many people were involved in making this event a success. A special acknowledgement must go to Leah Bolger who took over the leadership of this year’s project. When asked why the evening was so important, she responded, “We have this ceremony to recommit ourselves to working against these weapons so they are never used again…We are the majority, we just need to make our congresspeople realize it.”

Everyone appreciated being in the presence of a community of people who hold the same vision. Different moments touched different people more intensely. Some of these intense moments related to a specific speaker’s story, and some moments related to the visuals and the music.

For me, personally, the moment that reflected the power of the whole evening came when Masumi Timson, the koto player, returned from the procession. I looked at her face and listened as she tried to express her feelings in English. She had been deeply moved and glad to have been invited to assist in the powerful experience of the evening.

If you’d like to know more about the event or the Community Affirmation please contact Leah Bolger at leahbolger@comcast.net.

Inset photo credit: Bart Bolger.