EASTHAMPTON — Six months ago, Northampton resident Kyle Pruett, 82, was with his wife in Hiroshima, Japan, at the site of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945.
“We found ourselves almost paralyzed with grief and shame,” Pruett recalled on Wednesday evening as he joined more than 100 others at Nashawannuck Pond to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The event, held for the 41st time since it began in the 1980s, featured peace walkers, poem readings and singing as people issued a call for peace and dismantling of nuclear weapons.
Originally organized by local activists, this year’s commemoration received a boost of support from multiple advocacy groups. The remembrance did not take place the past two years due to planning issues, driving the incentive for the original local activists to partner with the Greater Springfield Campaign Nonviolence and Back from the Brink (BftB) to co-host this year.
The Springfield group, whose mission is to foster justice, peace and well-being through advocacy, has been hosting its own atomic bombing commemoration in Springfield for seven years. BftB is a national group with divisions across the country dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Including the commemoration in Easthampton, BftB helped organize 20 events from California to Boston this week for the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, due to the bombings and associated health complications, an estimated 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 died in Nagasaki, by the end of 1945. It is estimated that 38,000 of those killed were children.
Chair of Greater Springfield Campaign Nonviolence, Jane D. Virgilio, explained the groups joined forces to bring more people together.
“It’s a really good thing,” Virgilio said about the commemoration. “It’s different for us entering a new scene but it’s really important to get as many people as possible to come together … We need to have people aware and awake as to what happened and then the aftermath.”
Virgilio was approached to work together by Bruce Stedman, a member of BftB who lives in Amherst. He emphasized how important it was to continue the commemoration in Easthampton.
“Our intent is to bring people together to commemorate, but leave knowing that we can’t only commemorate, we need to actively work on this situation,” Stedman said.
BftB is dedicated to helping inform the public about nuclear policy, and it considers numerous parts of the United States policy surrounding nuclear weapons to be problematic. The group takes issue with the U.S. president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons without confirmation, nuclear weapons kept on hair-trigger alert in the country, compounding the likelihood of an accidental or unauthorized launch, and the continued pursuit to spend billions of dollars on nuclear weapons.
“I feel somewhat fearful,” Stedman said about the existence of nuclear weaponry. “The more you look into it the more you realize there have been very close accidents that almost released unknown numbers of missiles.”
The commemoration began at the River Valley Coop in Easthampton. Peace walkers made their way to Nashawannuck Pond to listen to many speakers, including one of the original organizers of the commemoration, Merriam Ansara, who spoke about the importance of peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The Raging Grannies, a national group of peaceful protestors with a division in western Massachusetts, were the first to step-up to the microphone.
“We must stop this global spread, for the people of the whole world, have to live in fear and dread …” the group sang. “We must destroy nuclear weapons, we must make them disappear.”
Ansara introduced Easthampton interim Mayor Salem Derby, who read a formal proclamation denouncing nuclear weaponry previously approved by the city.
“A world in which nuclear weapons exist and threaten our community and humanity’s very existence is a deeply unjust world,” Derby read from the proclamation. “Whereas 80 years ago on August sixth and August ninth, 100’s of 1000’s of human beings died, many instantly, or suffered severe health consequences in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, when the United States dropped atomic bombs for the first and only time in armed conflict.”
In 2017, Easthampton called for the United Nations to adopt The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. While the treaty was adopted, it was never signed by the U.S.
“I think the city of Easthampton is a model of what cities and towns can do,” Ansara said at the commemoration, praising the city for its advocacy.
A bus full of campers from Camp Kinderland, a summer camp for children in Tolland, drove to the commemoration to learn more about the atomic bombings.
“I think we’re taught a very specific narrative, one of, it was necessary and we had to do that and that’s really not the case,” said counselor Gabrielle Richardson about the importance of educating children about the atomic bombings. “To avoid anything like that happening again in the future, we need to understand the gravity of what that means, what the actual danger is, what the implications are.”
The commemoration progressed through the afternoon with a reading of multiple poems and speeches including “Original Child Bomb” by Thomas Merton. The night concluded with a kayaker guiding lanterns into the middle of Nashawannuck Pond, a long-standing tradition of the ceremony.
Rep. Homar Gómez, D-Easthampton, was in attendance at the commemoration.
“It’s important to remember what happened so many years ago because we cannot keep continue making mistakes,” said Gómez. “Dropping those bombs on Japan was a mistake … It’s important to recognize that we make mistakes and we shouldn’t continue to make those mistakes. More than that, I think it’s great when the community gets together and sends the message, ‘we want peace.'”
Sam Ferland can be reached at sferland@gazettenet.com
