The Vocal Seniority and the Sierra Club Juniper Group have organized a Shadow Project to commemorate the Hiroshima bombing. We will outline with chalk the stencils of our bodies on the sidewalk in front of the Deschutes County Services Building, 1300 NW Wall Street, Bend. We will use appropriate social distancing in recapitulating the shadows of the Hiroshima victims whose bodies were vaporized by the blast, leaving only shadows of where they fell victim.

Activists will do the outlines as couples from 2-4 pm on Aug 6 to avoid creating a crowd. Spokespersons will be available to the press from 2-5 at the gazebo near the sidewalk.

Zoom Film Festival Aug 6, 7, and 8 at 7:00 pm, each of three evenings, followed by Zoom discussion. 

Beginning on Aug 6 (Hiroshima Day) and ending on the 8th (the evening before Nagasaki Day), we will encourage people to join in a virtual film festival featuring these classic movies:

• The Day After Trinity (Aug 6 at 7pm)
• Fail Safe (Aug 7 at 7pm)
• Dr. Strangelove (Aug 8 at 7pm)

Zoom discussion groups will follow each film. Synopses of each film are attached. Register here.

Background on the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings

Seventy-five years-ago today, August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan followed three days later by a second nuclear detonation over Nagasaki, resulting in approximately 129,000 and 226,000 deaths, respectively. Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 15th, ending World War II.

The Trinity Test

One of the most profound scientific accomplishments occurred at 5:30 am on July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. It was the first detonation of a nuclear device, called “The Gadget” by the Manhattan Project scientists charged with developing the atomic bomb. The experimental above-ground detonation was named the “Trinity Test”, taken after the John Donne (1572-1631) poem which invoked the dominion of the Trinity “By power, love, knowledge be”, implying a transference of godly power to humans who have now mastered the power of the universe in splitting the atom and unleashing its supreme destructive power.

In a 1965 TV interview, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, reflected: “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed; a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’; I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”