The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance will commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima Japan on August 6, 1945 with a Names and Remembrance Ceremony on Tuesday, August 6, 2013 at the gates of the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, TN, at the intersection of Scarboro Road and East Bear Creek Road.
The Names and Remembrance Ceremony will begin at 6:00am and conclude at 9:00am. Everyone is welcome to attend; participation in the ceremony by reading, is optional.
The ceremony consists of reading of names of victims of the bombing of Hiroshima by the United States; each name read is followed by a bell toll and the tying of a peace crane. First hand accounts of the bombing, readings from the historical record, and poetry by survivors of the bombing are also read as part of the commemoration. At 8:15am, the time of the detonation of the bomb, a moment of silence is observed, followed by Buddhist drumming and chanting.
A Bikes Not Bombs bike trek from the Portsmouth, Ohio, uranium enrichment site to Y12 will begin July 26 and will conclude on August 6 in Oak Ridge. (for more information, visit http://footprints.footprintsforpeace.net/?page_id=1961)
The Y12 site enriched the uranium that fueled the Little Boy atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. Y12 continues to produce thermonuclear cores for US nuclear weapons. The Hiroshima commemoration is an act of solidarity with survivors of the bombing of their city in 1945; hibakusha from Japan have visited Oak Ridge to present their simple call, “Never Again!” and their spirit infuses the annual commemoration.
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Peace Lantern Ceremony to mark Nagasaki Day
The United States destroyed the city of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. Sixty-eight years later, members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance will remember Nagasaki and say, “Never Again!” at a Peace Lantern ceremony in Sequoia Hills park at the West End of Cherokee Drive in Knoxville, Tennessee at 8:00pm on Friday, August 9, 2013.
The peace lantern ceremony will include traditional Japanese folk dancing, the retelling of the Nagasaki story through shadow puppets, music and Buddhist drumming and chanting. The evening concludes with the launching of peace lanterns into the Tennessee River accompanied by the calming music of recorders.
The public is invited; the peace lantern ceremony is designed to be family friendly, and all are welcome to help with the launching of peace lanterns.
There are several access points and parking lots off Cherokee Drive; you’ll find the peace lantern ceremony in the field off the parking lot at the far west end of Cherokee Drive.
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