What the United States wrought on Japan on August 6, 1945 when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the instant incineration of some 100,000 human beings, followed by the deaths of 140,000 Japanese within one year (65% of whom were women, children and elderly who had no connection to the war), and subsequently tens of thousands of persons who have died over the succeeding years from radiation poisoning. For millions of people around the world this tragedy evokes the deepest sorrow, contrition and determination to oppose the future use of all nuclear weapons.
Therefore, to exalt the Enola Gay, as the Smithsonian Museum is doing, on Dec.15, 2003 as a testimony to its "technological genius"without mentioning the suffering it caused reveals an abominable indifference, a deliberate cover-up of the human horror, something totally unacceptable to the atomic victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to all of us gathered here today to say "Never Again." Therefore, we are honoring the hibakusha in this Liturgy precisely because we believe that no accurate presentation of the role of the Enola Gay and the significance of the atomic bombs dropped in 1945 can be understood without seeing this tragedy through the eyes of the victims of those who experienced the bombs and their effects. In other words, only "With Hiroshima Eyes," as Joseph Gerson says, can we appreciate the disaster and threat which still hangs over humanity. As Gerson writes:
By remembering that the hibakusha were literally at the vortex of events and human history in August 1945, and by placing them, along with US policy makers, at the center...of our thinking, I have sought to illuminate our understanding of the meaning of nuclear weapons. Democratizing the discourse by listening to and considering [the] people immersed in death by the Truman administration challenges the idealistic, chauvinistic, racialized, and imperial structures of knowledge created by the mandarins of American academia. -Joseph Gerson, With Hiroshima Eyes, p.5
In an attempt to understand their suffering, sacrifices and solidarity with us over the years by coming to the United States and telling their stories, we will remember that past, we will repent for that horrendous deed, and re-commit ourselves to oppose any and all use of nuclear weapons in the future. We understand fully the "other side" of history in 1945, as the Japanese now do, of the horrors of Japan's imperialism and the horrors of Germany's holocaust. But that in no way justifies carrying out acts like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against civilian targets, nor the US cover-up of the devastation of those bombs for 35 years, nor the present denial that they are perpetuating radiation poisoning through the use of weapons made of "depleted uranium," for that only places America in the same mold.
Thus we cordially invite everyone who can to attend this Inter-Faith / Secular Witness Liturgy to share with us and with the hibakusha our common humanity and common opposition to any more nuclear madness. Tel: Phil Wheaton at (301) 270-9038 or email Pat Elder at <>