Pilgrimage 1995
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuclear Age, Yoshi Tsukishita, a hibakusha and calligrapher from Hiroshima, Japan, returned the fire of the atomic bomb to its origin at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The rest of us, twenty-five members of the Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage, watched as Yoshi presented the flame he had carried from the Peace Park in Hiroshima to Leroy Apodaca, Deputy Program Director for Public Affairs at Los Alamos. The eternal flame in the Peace Park was lit on August 6, 1945 and will never be extinguished until all nuclear weapons are abolished from the earth.
The Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage began on Friday, August 14, 1995 in Chimayo, New Mexico with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb leading us in an opening ceremony in the outdoor chapel. Shaded by Cottonwood trees and serenaded by a creek at the edge of the chapel, we listened as Chellis Glendenning, Chimayo resident, introduced us to the healing history and traditions of the community. Over 60 people gathered to launch the pilgrims on our three-week journey moving over the route of humanity's first atomic weapons. Our intention was to retrace this destructive route with compassion, to focus public awareness on the nuclear chain by making it tangible, and to encourage people to reflect and take action at every phase of it. Several of us stayed awake in a vigil the long night before the Trinity Site opened to the public at 5 a.m. on July 16 Storm clouds rolled through the sky and the moon cast its eerie intermittent light over the land, recalling similar weather conditions 50 years ago. At 5:29 a.m., we walked into the site, joining with over 1,000 people who had come to mark that fateful day. We held a small ceremony in a circle near the obelisk that marks ground zero, and left our gifts of healing earth and paper cranes at its base.
After the first weekend, at Los Alamos and the Trinity Site, our numbers stabilized at 12 and we moved in the next week through the nuclear landscape of the American Southwest. Anna Rondon, a Navajo activist and community planner, hosted us for two days on her land, and arranged for us to meet with the Navajo National Council. One evening at the Gallup Public Library, we premiered "Dreams and Life on Earth," the work-in-progress of Mark Whitney, the filmmaker who accompanied us.
From July 14 to August 9, we visited sites representing every part of the nuclear fuel chain: nuclear design laboratories in Los Alamos and Livermore, California; uranium mining areas in Navajo country, Arizona and New Mexico; the Trinity and Nevada nuclear test sites in New Mexico and Nevada; nuclear waste dump sites in Western Shoshone Country and on Mescalero Apache land; and the atomic- bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. We carried with us the four elements: earth, water, air, fire, dedicated in the opening ceremony in the forms of the healing earth of Chimayo, New Mexico (indigenous healing center and Catholic pilgrimage site); water from Mt. Shasta, California, a sister mountain to Fuji; air, represented by a fan of owl feathers, a gift of the Umatilla people in Washington state; and fire lit from the eternal flame in the Hiroshima peace park.
We began, and sometimes ended, each day with a circle of reflection, where each person could contribute their thoughts or feelings on our events or activities. We cooked together, ate together, camped out, discovered each others skills, agreed and disagreed as we faced the nuclear shadow of the United States, still dark and alive. In essence, we became a community. Together, we made public presentations calling for nuclear abolition, offered ceremonies, and gave gifts of healing to our host communities. In addition to the four essential elements, we carried gifts from the people of the Hanford, Washington area (the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and local activists) to the people of Nagasaki, and from the people of the Oak Ridge, Tennessee area (activists and the Cherokee Nation) to the people of Hiroshima. The uranium for the Hiroshima bomb was refined and prepared in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb and the Trinity Test was sent in a black box from Hanford, Washington to Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Chamorro people of the Northern Marianas Islands--which include Tinian, the island from which the B- 29s carrying the atomic bombs took off for Japan--sent traditional medicine bundles to carry over the entire route. All parts of the nuclear chain that produced, deployed and delivered the bombs that began the Nuclear Age were linked by the pilgrimage.
In Green Gulch Zen Center (Marin, California) in the main zendo and in Hiroshima, Japan, at the World Cathedral for Peace, we offered the Atomic Mirror: Reflections of Our Nuclear History, a performance piece. Mayumi Oda's larger than life-sized banners of wrathful, protective goddesses surrounded us and Edie Hartshorne's music carried us. In Honolulu, Hawai'i, we sat in a circle in the grass at the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, mourning and remembering the pain wrought by all acts of war. In Nagasaki, Japan we joined Mayor Iccho Ito on a dock in Crane Harbor to welcome the Okinawan canoe that had paddled in a journey of peace to that city. In the late afternoon light, we presented the mayor with the healing gifts we had carried the length of our journey.
We slept under trees and stars in Lone Pine, California; participated in a ritual Japanese tea ceremony in the cemetary at the Manzanar Relocation Camp; stayed with the Catholic Worker Community in Las Vegas, Nevada; swam in the sacred pool at the base of the waterfall in Kumano, Japan; joined hands with people from around the world in a circle around the Hiroshima dome; sat quietly in a 12th century Zen Temple and listened to bells toll throughout Nagasaki at 11:05 a.m. Our group of pilgrims included people from many backgrounds (artists, scientists, therapists, teachers, clergy, writers, activists) different beliefs (Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Shinto, Humanist) and several nations (U.S., Japan, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Pakistan, Germany, Britain) who have in common the belief that nuclear weapons should be declared illegal and abolished, and nuclear power should be phased out, thereby liberating human and natural resources to support genuine human needs. As part of the World Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage joined the many voices around the planet that seek a Convention on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons by the turn of the century. We delivered gifts and statements of support, along with the Citizens Pledges to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to support their call for nuclear abolition, and to join their cry, "Never Again."
