As Pax Christi USA members from around the nation gather for our 50th anniversary conference, August 5-7, part of our gathering will focus on commemorating the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th. We will be opening our conference on Friday, August 5th with this prayer service adapted and designed by Rosemarie Pace of Pax Christi New York. The prayer is open to further adaptation for use by local groups and others commemorating the anniversaries.

Find additional resources for observing these anniversaries at the following links:

HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS 2022

(partial list; to add your event, send the info to Lauren Bailey, Pax Christi USA National Field Organizer at lbailey@paxchristiusa.org)

Pax Christi New Mexico

The Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans For Peace invites you to join them at Ashley Pond, Los Alamos on the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  The Vigil will take place on Saturday, August 6th, 2022 from noon until 2:00 pm with banners, flags, and signs. It will be near the stage area next to the pond on the Trinity St. side of the pond.  Bring folding chairs, hats, and plenty of water.  Hope to see you there.

Pax Christi Metro New York

Pax Christi Metro New York (PCMNY) is planning a Hiroshima/ Nagasaki memorial on August 7 at 3pm in Fr Demo Square in NYC. The community is welcome to attend in the Square, on Bleecker St. We will have prayer, music, readings and ring a gong 77 times to honor the 77 years since these tragic events occurred in Japan. View the flier here. 

Pax Christi Rhode Island (not hosting it but they’re supporting it)

Sunday, August 7, 2022 at Noon rain or shine at the Jamestown East Ferry Memorial Square to commemorate Hiroshima and to call for U.S. ratification of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Seventy-seven years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there have been at least 13 times when nuclear war nearly broke out, due to accident, miscommunication, malfunction, or diplomatic crisis. Although we are threatened daily by the unimaginable horror of nuclear war, not many of us in the USA are even aware of this 2021 treaty. Both the U.S. government and the mainstream US press have ignored it. Nevertheless, this TPNW treaty is in force in 66 nations around the world, making the fabrication or possession of these weapons illegal under binding international law.

Join us to call for our government to join the TPNW treaty and negotiate an end to the nuclear stalemate with Russia and other nations. Link to flyer here. 

For information contact: William Smith III 401-423-0433 william3@finewoodcarving.com or Marcie Lindsay 401-787-2730 marcie.knox@gmail.com

Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, WASHINGTON, DC
  • What: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Prayer Vigil 
  • When: Tuesday, August 9 (Anniversary of the U.S. Nuclear Bombing of Nagasaki): Noon-1 PM
  • Where: Outside the White House on Pennsylvania Ave. 
  • Sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker

Dear Friends, 

To commemorate the 77th anniversary of the sinful and criminal U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker invites you to attend a prayer vigil on August 9th outside the White House. August 9th marks the actual anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Nagasaki.  

We will remember and pray for the victims of these unspeakable nuclear atrocities and all those who have witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons use, testing and mining–hibakusha, pacific islanders, Native Americans, downwinders,  and all other victims of nuclearism–and call for nuclear abolition. 

Pope Francis has declared that the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral and 66 countries have now ratified the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on January 22, 2021, thereby making nuclear weapons illegal under International law. The nine nuclear-armed nations — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — have not signed the treaty, nor has any nation from the NATO alliance. The Biden Administration is committed to the modernization of U.S. nuclear forces, as evidenced by its proposed 2023 nuclear weapons budget request of $50.9 billion, a 17 percent increase over this year’s $43.2 billion. The U.S. nuclear arsenal upgrade now underway is estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next several decades, while poverty increases, the climate crisis worsens and basic human needs go unmet. In January of this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists turned the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. This determination occurred just prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This conflict has further exacerbated the nuclear peril between the two foremost nuclear powers as both Russia and U.S. nuclear arsenals are now on high alert. 

As we call on the nation to repent for the nuclear sin, abolish all nuclear weapons, ratify the TPNW and redirect exorbitant military and nuclear expenditures to meet urgent human needs, we do so in solidarity with actions taking place around the U.S. and worldwide. In the U.S. see: https://nuclearbantreaty.org/working_groups/days-of-action-working-group/

The Hibakusha plead to the world: “Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.” 

Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorts us: “The choice today is…either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

Please join us and share with friends. Please let me know if you can attend. 

In hope for a disarmed world,

Art Laffin, Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace

Pax Christi Harrisburg

Pax Christi Harrisburg will have its annual Candles on the Water event to remember the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Sunday, August 7 at 6:45 p.m. at Market Square Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg. The program will include music, prayer, and a YouTube video by Archbishop John C. Wester regarding his Pastoral Letter. We will process in silence at 8:00 p.m. to the river to launch candle boats at sunset. Harrisburg is a sister city to Hiroshima and Harrisburg was one of the early signers of the International Mayors for Peace.

St. Susanna Pax Christi (MA)

St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, MA will be hosting a small gathering to commemorate the lives lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To get more information, visit www.saintsusanna.org or email Pat Ferrone at patferrone@gmail.com. On St. Susanna’s website you’ll see a display of their TPNW banner outside the church. You can also access their reading of the Original Child Bomb last year, and the program they put together when the TPNW was accepted at the UN. Either might be helpful to those who haven’t had time to prepare something. 

Pax Christi Maine (Greater Bangor group)

Pax Christi Maine (Greater Bangor group) is hosting an interfaith prayer vigil on Saturday, August 6th. Details in the invitation letter can be found by clicking here. 

We are also working on a Novena for Nuclear Disarmament August 1-9, 2022 which will be shared soon.

Pax Christi Maine (Lewiston/Auburn group)

A second action is being held in Lewiston on August 6th. Pax Christi Maine (Lewiston/Auburn group) is a co-sponsor and a PCM member will be speaking. Click here to see event details. 

Invited, One and All
August 6 is Hiroshima Day

Please join us in recommitting to no-nuclear-war and commemorating Bernard Lown, namesake of the local Bernard Lown Peace Bridge. Observances will take place in Lewiston, Maine on August 6. Be at the Gendron Franco Center on Cedar Street. The time is 10:00 AM. That day marks the anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

On completion of the program at the Center, we move to the monument honoring Dr. Lown at the nearby Bernard Lown Peace Bridge. Further observances there ending at 11:30 AM will finish the day.

Denny Dreher and Fred Brodeur will speak on behalf of Pax Christi Maine.

The organizers for the August 6 event are Maine Veterans for Peace, Peace Action Maine, and Physicians for Social Responsibility – Maine Chapter. PeaceWorks of Brunswick, Maine and Pax Christi Maine are co-sponsors.

According to Rawlings, “peace cranes” will be available to people attending on August 6. These origami paper cranes represent the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese child-victim of the bombing. They have become a worldwide peace symbol.

Fair warning: organizers require that attendees wear protective facial masks inside the Gendron Franco Center. They will be provided.

For more information, please contact Laurent Gilbert Sr. at (207) 632-7373 or Doug Rawlings at rawlings@maine.edu.

Pax Christi Baltimore

On August 6 from 3 to 4 PM, gather outside Northrop Grumman, 973 Elkridge Landing Road, near BWI, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090.  Demonstrate and inform CEO Kathy Warden that producing weapons of mass destruction is immoral and unethical. Mourn for the people of Hiroshima, as on this day in 1945 they were victims of a weapon which did not distinguish between noncombatants and members of the military.

Northrop-Grumman is the #1 nuclear weapons contractor.  The company has received a large contract for the ground based strategic deterrent (GBSD) to replace the Minuteman.  This weapons system is unnecessary, and extremely dangerous being on hair trigger alert. A nuclear war could start by accident. This weapons contractor, like others, does lobbying, makes campaign contributions to legislators, helps write legislation, uses the revolving door and places generals on its board of directors. These weapons contractors have an inordinate influence on decision-making in Congress and in the White House.

On August 9 from 4 to 5 PM, gather at 33rd and North Charles Streets in Baltimore across the street from Johns Hopkins University. JHU is a major weapons contractor receiving close to $1 billion in research contracts at its Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County Maryland.  The university is the #1 nuclear weapons contractor among educational institutions.  Every tax dollar which is used for weapons research is a tax dollar taken away from pandemic relief, climate chaos mitigation, diplomacy, healthcare for all and programs designed to alleviate poverty.

PEACE ACTION MONTGOMERY (MD)

(invitation from Pax Christi member Susan Kerin) Veterans for Peace and BIPOC youth have organized a demonstration on the 77th Anniversary of the US bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. There will be a risk arrest component. The details are below…

Tuesday, August 9, noon | Nagasaki Day | 111 Rockville Pike | Rockville, MD

You can’t have guns and butter–or a liveable climate. As part of our national campaign to “Stop the war! Save the climate!”– local members of Veterans For Peace will risk arrest in support of the BIPOC MOCO GND Interns demand for a Green New Deal. Just when the U.S. had finally begun to pay some attention to the climate crisis, our national media and $53 billion have suddenly shifted to the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. The U.S. military was already the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses in our country, more than the entire nation of Italy. The U.S. already spends more than half our available federal budget on the military, more than the next 10 countries combined, including China and Russia. Moreover, in the Ukraine, we face the greatest threat of nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis. Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads pointed at the U.S. We thank Sen. Van Hollen for endorsing the Green New Deal (GND), but he cannot have it both ways. To fund the GND, he must call on Pres. Biden to immediately negotiate an end to this war–and he must join Rep. Raskin in opposing the current military budget/boondoggle. We must put the money saved into a Green New Deal to tackle the climate crisis and the interlocking crises of racism, poverty, health care, housing, etc. 

So far, Sen. Van Hollen has refused to meet with the organizers.

Sign up to attend and/or get more information: https://forms.gle/RkhLbLhgvxMNgnsY8

pax christi pacific northwest

On Saturday, August 6, advocates for peace, nuclear disarmament, and the global environment will gather near the Spokane River at the INB Center, at 1:00 p.m. Read the article here.

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