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DISARM THE HEART, DISARM THE NATIONS
HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE SERVICE
Nuclear war begins, I believe, in our hearts. And that is
where
it must end.
—Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen
INTRODUCTION
Pope Paul VI called Hiroshima “a butchery of untold magnitude,” and
said, “Let us pray that the world may never again place trust in such
weapons.” Echoing his concern, Pope John Paul II urged the
nations to work toward nuclear disarmament and to take a unilateral
stand against all nuclear weaponry. “To remember Hiroshima,” he
said, “is to abhor nuclear war . . . To remember Hiroshima is to commit
oneself to peace.” Tonight we gather to remember and mourn the
victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to commit ourselves to building a
better world. Together let us remember our nuclear history so
that we will not repeat it.
READING ONE Nuclear History
Just after eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, a United States
plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan which
killed instantly 170,000 people. Three days later the United
States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. Over 350,000 men, women, and
children died from the immediate impact or radioactive fallout from
these bombings.
Today, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, India and Pakistan
have joined the United States as nuclear powers. Other nations
are taking steps to produce nuclear weapons.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Congress in 1970,
created a pact between nuclear and non-nuclear states. In
exchange for the promise of some 180 countries not to seek nuclear
weapons, the nuclear states promised to work in good faith to dismantle
their own nuclear weapons.
But thirty-three years after the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, the United States is no longer striving for a world free of
nuclear weapons. The administration now seeks to develop a new
generation of nuclear weapons, from bunker busting hydrogen bombs 70
times the explosive power of Hiroshima to tactical battlefield weapons
that have one-third the killing power of the Hiroshima bomb.
On June 12, in what can only be called a historic
vote, Congress repealed the long standing prohibition on studying, on
testing, and on developing nuclear weapons. In effect the bill
lifted a decade-old ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and
endorsed moving ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster"
bomb. In the words of Senator Feinstein from the Congressional
Record of May 20, the bill “clearly opens the door to the development
of new nuclear weapons and will . . . begin a new era of nuclear
proliferation.”
The U.S. budgetincludes nearly 7 billion dollars for
nuclear bomb production, 23 billion for the “Star Wars” missile defense
system, and 20 billion for refurbishing the Y-12 national nuclear
weapons complex in Oakridge, Tennessee. The Y-12 Oakridge
facility is now the heart of the U.S. nuclear weapons producing
industry. It is here that the core components were made for the
“Little Boy” bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It is here that W87
warheads are being refurbished to last 100 years, and prototypes of the
new bunker busting “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” are being
planned. It is here, therefore, that Pax Christi USA and other
groups will converge this Saturday in protest to shut down
Y-12. “If, or when, we shut down Y-12,” says Bishop Gumbleton,
“we could stop the production of any U.S. nuclear weapons. This
is where half of the world’s enriched uranium is stored and core
components of every U.S. nuclear weapon is produced.”
CALL TO PRAYER
Leader: Why have we gathered here today?
All: To remember and mourn the
victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all war,
To repent the sins of our nations
and our own sins,
To commit ourselves to building a
better world.
Leader: O Holy One of Peace, we gather together
seeking your peace for our world.
Side 1: We gather with your people of the Middle
East, where Muslim, Jewish and
Christian people find peace an
ever-elusive goal.
Side 2: We gather with your people of the European
Union, where a growing unification
is a small sign of hope.
Side 1: We gather with your people of Central
America, where the beauty of the land is
mixed with the blood of martyrs.
Side 2: We gather with your people of Africa, where
violence and bloodshed continue and
millions are dying of famine and
AIDS.
Side 1: We gather with your people of Asia where
aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons escalate.
Side 2: We gather with your people of Iraq, who
suffer from the devastating effects of war and twelve years of
sanctions.
Side 1: We gather as people of the United States,
feeling a deep responsibility to bring about peace.
Side 2: We gather with your people throughout
the ages who have turned swords into plowshares so that peace may be
harvested.
PSALM 8
All: How great is your name, O
God, through all the earth!
Side 1: Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of
babes
you have found praise to foil
your enemy,
to silence the foe and the rebel.
Side 2: When I see the heavens, the work of your
hands,
the moon and the stars which you
arranged—
Who are we that you should keep
us in mind,
mere mortals that you care for us?
Side 1: Yet you have made us little less than the
angels
with glory and honor you crowned
us,
gave us power over the works of
your hands,
put all things under our feet:
Side 2: All of them, sheep and cattle,
yes, even the savage beasts,
birds of the air,
and fish that make their way
through the water.
All: How great is your name, O
God, through all the earth!
READING TWO
Just after eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, a
United States plane, the Enola Gay, approached the city of Hiroshima,
Japan with an atomic bomb.
The city was full of sun. The fliers could see
the green grass in the gardens. No fighters rose up to meet
them. There was no flak. No one in the city bothered to
take cover.
The bomb exploded within 100 feet of the aiming
point. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature
at the center of the fireball was a hundred million degrees. The
people who were near the center became nothing. The whole city
was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly everywhere,
burning briskly. [One hundred and] seventy thousand people were
killed right away or died within a few hours. Those who did not
die at once suffered great pain. Few of them were soldiers.
—from Thomas Merton, Original Bomb Child
REFLECTIVE SILENCE
LITANY AGAINST WAR
Leader: To the Creator of all things and all people,
of truth and of beauty we pray:
“Hear our voice, O God.”
Hear our voice, for it is the
voice of all the victims of wars,
For all those who died in the bombing and aftermath of the bombing of
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and from the
violence in Israel, Palestine, Colombia, the Philippines, Liberia,
Madagascar, and Ethiopia.
All: HEAR OUR VOICE, O GOD.
Leader: Hear our voice for it is the voice of all
children who suffer when people
put their faith in weapons and war. It is the voice of Sadako who
died of leukemia in Hiroshima and Ali who lost his family and both arms
in the bombing of Baghdad.
All: HEAR OUR VOICE, O GOD.
Leader: Hear our voice, for we speak for the
multitudes in every country and in every period of history who do not
want war and are ready to walk the road of peace.
All: HEAR OUR VOICE, O GOD.
Leader: Hear our voice and grant insight and strength
so that we may always respond to hatred with love, to injustice with
dedication to justice, to need with sharing of self, to fear with trust
of the other, to war with peace.
All: AMEN.
PSALM 51
All: At the very threshold
of death, rescue me, Lord.
Side 1: Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
Lord, hear my voice!
O let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.
Side 2: If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,
Lord, who would survive?
But with you is found forgiveness:
for this we revere you.
Side 1: My soul is waiting for the Lord,
I count on his word.
My soul is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak.
Let the watchman count on daybreak
and Israel on the Lord.
Side 2: Because with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption,
Israel indeed he will redeem
from all its iniquity.
All: At the very threshold of
death, rescue me, Lord.
READING THREE
Every U.S. president since World War II has pursued a policy of nuclear
arms control. Every administration, that is, until this
one.
The following are excerpts from the May 20 Congressional Record arguing
against a bill that would lift the Spratt Amendment, which is a
prohibition for research and development of nuclear weapons.
Senator Feinstein of California spoke on May
20 to
say, “I was 12 years old when the Enola Gay went out of the Pacific. I
remember that big mushroom cloud . . . and the pictures that came back
from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It may well be that we are too far
removed from that day to really understand the repercussions of what
this bill is going to begin to allow to happen in the United
States. As we continue . . . the war on terror, it should be a
central tenet of U.S. policy to do everything at our disposal to make
nuclear weapons less desirable, less available, and less likely to be
used.
This bill will do exactly the opposite.
Instead of ratcheting back our reliance on nuclear weapons, this
administration is looking for new ways to use nuclear weapons and to
make them more usable. Even considering the use of these weapons
threatens to undermine our efforts to stop proliferation. In
fact, it actually encourages other nations to pursue nuclear weapons by
emphasizing their importance.
A 1-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated . . . 50 feet
underground would dig a crater the size of Ground Zero in New York and
eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air.
According to models done by the Natural Resources Defense Council,
detonating a similar weapon on the surface of a city would kill a
quarter of a million people and injure hundreds of thousands
more. Moreover, nuclear weapons cannot be engineered to penetrate
deeply enough to prevent fallout. So there really is no such
thing as a ``usable nuclear weapon.”
Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts spoke on
May 20 to
say: “Make no mistake about it . . . it is the clear intention of
the administration to move ahead with not only the design but also the
testing of nuclear weaponry.
[Why?) Over the period of the last 5 years we
have not had any testing of nuclear weapons by India or by Pakistan,
two nuclear powers. We have not seen any testing either by the United
States, Russia, or China probably for the last 15 years. What is the
challenge? Are we finding that the Russians are building up to develop
this kind of capability? No, we have not heard that. Have we heard the
Chinese are now trying to build up their capability somehow to be a
threat to us? No, we have not heard that. Have we heard the Pakistanis
are going to do it? No. The Indians are going to do it? No, we
have not heard they are going to do it. They have actually complied
with the test ban treaties by not having any explosions, and they have
been working with us in terms of the reduction.
This chart depicts the average wind patterns for a
winter day in the Middle East. It depicts a hypothetical attack
outside of Damascus, Syria, using an [earth-penetrating] nuclear weapon
with a yield of 5 kilotons. . . . This blast would cause 230,000
fatalities and another 280,000 casualties from radiation exposure
within 2 years of the blast. This is a plume pattern developed by
the Defense Threat Reduction Agency computer model. We are talking
about tens of thousands--hundreds of thousands--of casualties. That is
what we are talking about with this weapon system.
There is no reason for this weapon system other
than, well, let's take a chance, we can move ahead, it will be nice to
add this to our stockpile, add one more weapon system, seems to be the
argument. We have the possibility of going ahead; why not go
ahead and do it. . . .
I don't hear the other questions being raised
about the range of activities that are going to take place in countries
around the world. Make no mistake, this will release a chain of
reactions across this world in nuclear testing. This would be a
remarkable step backward from the firewall between conventional and
nuclear [warfare] established by General Eisenhower and adhered to by
every administration since. This administration, this policy,
will break that down. It is wrong. It is not in our national security
interests.
Similarly, on May 19, eight top nuclear
scientists
across America wrote Mr. Bush and warned that, “Any use of nuclear
weapons would demolish a firebrake that has held for nearly 60 years
and would be a disaster for the world. The United States should be
seeking to increase the barriers to using nuclear weapons, not
decreasing them.”
Senator Byrd of West Virginia agreed and predicted that, “One
powerless
country after another [will] seek to develop the most extreme weapon of
mass destruction in order to assure its security, fearing an imminent,
preemptive attack from the world's only superpower, which views itself
as being unconstrained by international law, the U.N. Security Council,
or the court of world opinion.” “If we do not wish to be in
a state of perpetual war,” advised “Byrd, “the United States must
recapture its standing as a peacemaker.”
Senator Durbin of Illinois observed that,
“When you
put together a policy of preemption, a policy of first use of nuclear
weapons, and a new generation of nuclear weapons, which this bill calls
for, it does not make for a safer world. It is an invitation for a
world of uncertainty and a world of danger we will be leaving our
children. . . . This bill is about to discard 50 years of American
foreign policy and 50 years of American nuclear policy. It is going
into uncharted territory with a new approach which invites danger,
retaliation, and proliferation. It will, in my mind, increase the
likelihood of nuclear confrontation in the future.”
There are 30,000, roughly, nuclear weapons, and we
have people here worried about not having enough of the right
kind. If 30,000 isn't enough, I am just wondering what hours of
the night you are awake worried about your lack of protection. . . .
Last week I couldn't get one-fourth of $1 billion through this Senate
that had been approved previously to try to feed hungry kids in Africa
who are on the abyss of starvation. Forty-thousand people a day die
because they do not have enough to eat, mostly kids. We have plenty of
money for all the nuclear weapons we are talking about today. We didn't
have enough money to deal with the issue of hunger and famine in Africa
a couple of days ago. . . . We have the capability to do awfully good
things. But it requires our leadership. It requires our character and
our judgment to decide there is a right direction and a wrong
direction. The wrong direction, in my judgment, is for our country to
say to the rest of the world, let us all build some more nuclear
weapons. Let us worry about some threat or some rogue nation digging
tunnels so deeply we can't catch them or explode them. So let us deal
with new nuclear weapons.
I can't think of a more destructive course or
a more destructive set of policies than those coming to us in this bill
dealing with these issues.
Senator Kennedy elaborated: “Mr.
President,
this issue is as clear as any issue ever gets. You are either for
nuclear war or you are not. Either you want to make it easier to start
using nuclear weapons or you don't.
Our conventional weapons already have vast power and
accuracy. We can make them even more powerful. No one at the Pentagon
and no one in the administration has given us any examples--none at
all--of cases where a smaller nuclear weapon is needed to do what a
conventional weapon cannot do.
For half a century, our policy has been to do
everything we possibly can to prevent nuclear war, and so far we have
succeeded. The hardliners say things are different today: A nuclear war
won't be so bad if we just make the nukes a little smaller. We will
call them mini-nukes. They are not real nukes. A little nuclear war is
OK.
That is nonsense. Nuclear war is nuclear war is
nuclear war. We don't want it anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Make no
mistake, a mini-nuke is still a nuke. Is half of Hiroshima OK? Is a
quarter of Hiroshima OK? Is a little mushroom cloud OK? That is absurd.
After all the argument, the bill passed with
51
votes for and 43 against. Florida Senator Nelson voted
against. Senator Graham did not vote.
LITANY OF REMEMBRANCE
In the year [ ]the people of the earth
remember the beginning of the Nuclear Age on July 16, 1945; we remember
the image of the first mushroom cloud of the Trinity atomic test,
rising 40,000 feet above the earth near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
We remember each child born since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, the
miracle and sacredness of each living being.
We remember the words of Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan
Project, “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”
We remember Albert Einstein, the scientist responsible for splitting
the atom, who lamented that “the release of atom power has changed
everything except our way of thinking . . . the solution to this
problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I
should have become a watchmaker.”
We remember “Little Boy,” and “Fat Man,” the atomic bombs that
destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and
August 9, 1945.
Today, we remember the terrible destructive power and violence latent
within us, and made manifest in the bomb. We look into our hearts
and draw from the deep wells of beauty, creativity, and humanity’s
spiritual traditions, to nurture a culture of peace and health.
We remember the visionaries who have come before us, calling us to our
best selves. We give thanks for their witness and their
commitment to life.
We remember the cost to all life of our commitment to death. We
remember the ever-increasing militarization of our society that
directly results in dire cutbacks in social services, education, health
care, environmental protection, and the arts, and creates serious
threats to our civil liberties.
We remember the indigenous peoples of the earth, on whose lands we mine
for uranium, test our nuclear weapons, and fill with our nuclear waste.
We remember the deserts of New Mexico, Nevada, Lop Nor, Maralinga,
Algeria, Rajasthan, and Kazakhstan, where the atomic violence creates
deserts in our hearts and souls.
We remember the islands of Bikini, Christmas, Eniwetok, Fangataufa,
Johnston, Monte Bello, and Moruroa, where the atomic destruction makes
us islands unto ourselves.
We remember the plants and animals of the earth, whose waters, soil,
and air we contaminate in the name of “national security.”
We remember our children and grandchildren and all beings of the
future, and ask their forgiveness for the radioactive legacy we leave
to them.
Today, we remember our nuclear history so that we will not repeat it.
—adapted and used with permission from Pamela Meidell, Co-organizer
of
the Trinity Vigil, 2000.
FROM PSALM 51
All: If you kept a record of our
sins, Lord, who could escape condemnation.
Side 1: Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness.
In your compassion blot out my
offense.
O wash me more and more from my
guilt
and cleanse me from my sin.
Side 2: My offenses truly I know them;
my sin is always before
me.
Against you, you alone, have I
sinned;
what is evil in your sight I have
done.
Side 1: That you may be justified when you give
sentence
and be without reproach when you
judge,
O see, in guilt I was born,
a sinner was I conceived.
Side 2: Indeed you love truth in the heart;
then in the secret of my heart
teach me wisdom.
O purify me, then I shall be
clean;
O wash me, I shall be whiter than
snow.
Side 1: Make me hear rejoicing and gladness,
that the bones you have crushed
may revive.
From my sins turn away your face
and blot out all my guilt.
Side 2: A pure heart create for me, O God,
put a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your
presence,
nor deprive me of your holy
spirit.
All: If you kept a record of our
sins, Lord, who could escape condemnation.
READING FOUR
War is the work of man. War is destruction of
human life. War is death. Nowhere do these truths impose
themselves upon us more forcefully than in this city of
Hiroshima. Two cities will forever have their names linked
together, two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the only
cities in the world that have had the ill fortune to be a reminder that
man is capable of destruction beyond belief. Their names will
forever stand out as the names of the only cities in our time that have
been singled out as a warning to future generations that war can
destroy human efforts to build a world of peace.
To remember the past is to commit oneself to the
future. To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war. To
remember what the people of that city suffered is to renew our faith in
humanity, in our capacity to do what is good, in our freedom to choose
what is right, in our determination to turn disaster into a new
beginning. In the face of the . . . calamity that every war is,
one must affirm and reaffirm, again and again, that the waging of war
is not inevitable or unchangeable. Humanity is not destined to
self-destruction.
—from Pope John Paul II, “Appeal to Peace,” Peace Memorial Park in
Hiroshima, February 25, 1981.
LITANY OF PEACEMAKERS
Leader: We pray today in the spirit of the Beatitudes and in
union with those past and
present who have led us and blessed us in the pathways of peace,
justice, and loving
service. Let us pray to the God who calls us all to renew our
hearts that we may come to
be more like the peacemakers of our world.
All: LIFE GIVING GOD, RENEW OUR HEARTS.
Leader: God, creator of the universe, author of our
covenant of
peace,
All: RENEW OUR HEARTS.
Leader: God, our way of peace,
All: RENEW OUR HEARTS.
Leader: Mary, Queen of peace, wellspring of
reconciliation,
mother of peacemakers,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Moses and Miriam, nonviolent liberators,
architects of
the covenant of justice,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Amos, Micah and Hosea, voices for the oppressed,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Gandhi, the force of non-force, leader of wave
after wave
of peaceful resistance,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Martin Luther King, a voice from the mountaintop,
overcoming hatred with love, violence with nonviolence,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Franz Jagerstatter, true Christian, martyr for
peace
executed by Hitler because he refused to fight in an unjust war,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Mother Jones, “the most dangerous woman in
America,”
tireless organizer of factory workers, children’s strikes, mop and
broom brigades, and labor unions,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Philip and Daniel Berrigan, prisoners of
conscience,
advocates of civil disobedience beating warheads into plowshares,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Oscar Romero, voice of the Salvadoran poor,
defender of
the most fundamental human rights,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Cesar Chavez, peaceful warrior who made farm
workers a
power to be reckoned with rather than an invisible minority to be
exploited,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Dorothy Day, refuge of the hungry and homeless,
witness
to the radical gospel of peace,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Charles Foucauld, poor monk, universal brother who
refused to hate the alleged national enemy, the Muslim people of
Morocco,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Mother Theresa, comforter of the poorest of the
poor,
humble servant of the dying,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: St. Francis and St. Clare, brother sun and sister
moon,
barefoot humility with nothing to lose, resolving hatred with peace,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Thomas Merton, monastic wisdom, contemplative
silence
speaking in the midst of war about the Christian vocation to
peacemaking,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: All you holy peacemakers,
All: PRAY FOR US.
Leader: Jesus, Prince of Peace,
All: RENEW OUR HEARTS.
READING FIVE
Sadako and the Peace Cranes
JEREMIAH
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamenting and weeping bitterly:
it is Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.
RESPONSE
All: Gracious God, You who created
the whole universe and set us on earth to live in harmony with all,
send your Spirit to grace us and enlighten us. Teach us to be
aware of the profound oneness that exists among all people. May
our lives witness to you presence and to your promise that, “Nations
shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war
again.” Amen.
CLOSING PRAYER
All: “Prayer for World Peace” by Joan
Chittister, OSB
+
All rests ultimately
in the disarmament
Of the human heart
and the conversion
of the human spirit to God
who alone can give authentic peace.
—“The Challenge of Peace,” p. 284
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