August 29, 2006
Dear Friends,

Greetings of love and peace from Kyoto.

At 8:45 AM on 6 August 1945 the first atom bomb used against a human population exploded over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. In the instant of that explosion, the city was destroyed - unimaginable white heat followed by black radioactive rain. Over 140,000 people would die from the explosion and, within months, from its effects.

Today I walked through the park dedicated to remembering that evil day and to drawing from that evil an unswerving commitment not to revenge but to a peace that will assure that no other human population will ever again experience what the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced.

Years ago as I immersed myself in nuclear arms issues, I saw films of the explosion over Hiroshima and its aftermath. I read about it and prayed about it. But none of that prepared me for the experience of standing on this now beautifully green ground with a river on either side and imagining what it must have been like on that day.

I had plenty of help imagining.

The Hiroshima Peace Dome, which is in fact the skeleton dome sitting atop what is left of one of the few buildings to survive the explosion, sits naked, surrounded by the tall buildings and bustle of this once again thriving city. No matter where you walk throughout the peace park, you can always see the dome standing lifeless against the sky, a striking monument to the most destructive moment in human history.

The Peace Museum joins, in my experience, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, as experiences that are horrifyingly compelling in their depictions of two of the darkest chapters in human history. As you move through the museum, you move through the increasing militarization of Hiroshima over decades (I had to keep reminding myself that this was a Japanese museum because the exhibit was so unflinching in explaining how this city that had been known as a center of education had become perhaps the most powerful military center in Japan). You realize this was government policy.

You move through the build-up to the U.S. decision to drop an atomic bomb, and the decision to target Hiroshima with that bomb. Again, government decisions.

And then the bomb falls and ordinary people are obliterated in an instant. Going through the museum, it’s easy to conclude that those who died instantly were the fortunate ones, because many of those who were within several kilometers of the hypocenter of the explosion died only after suffering excruciating deaths from horrific burns and radiation poisoning. Most of them died with no medication to ease their pain, with no water to ease their thirst.

And yet, inexplicably, out of the ashes of this horror has arisen an unprecedented peace movement. One small example: successive mayors of Hiroshima have written letters to the perpetrators of every nuclear weapons test since the bombing of Hiroshima urging, indeed demanding, an end to this madness.

I walked through these experiences for nearly four hours. And, at last, I found myself in the memorial to those who perished, weeping.

The memorial is simple. You descend a curved stone hallway until you enter a dimly lit circular room. The upper part of the wall is a tile mural in muted browns against a sandy background showing a 360 degree view of Hiroshima after the explosion. Nothing but devastation. The mural is made of 140,000 tiles - one for each person who died.

In the middle of the room is a fountain -- white and circular like a low table, but the top, where water upwells and flows down the sides, is like the face of a watch forever frozen at 8:15. The time of death flowing with the water those dying aflame with thirst lacked.

I sat in the room for a long time in prayer and meditation -- with and on behalf of and for the whole URI community.

There’s much more to say about the peace park. Much more to say about nuclear arms issues. But, for now, I just want to say that, after so many hours of sharing in some small way this enormous pain all I could do was weep. And I’m still weeping inside.

I pray that out of my weeping for me, as out of the ashes of Hiroshima for the people of Japan, will arise a deeper, stronger commitment to building peace.

And I thank God for all those who are doing extraordinarily important work for nuclear disarmament and for all those who give their lives to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

I will carry my prayer and my thanksgiving with me tomorrow as I fly home.