The Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) holds its 40th annual commemoration Monday, Aug. 5, in conjunction with the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The event will begin with a Bring-Your-Own Picnic at 6 p.m. (no alcoholic beverages permitted), followed by a program from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Hinds Plaza, adjacent to the Princeton Public Library at 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, N.J.
The program will include a minute of silence at 7:16 p.m., which corresponds to the Japanese time that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (8:16 a.m. Aug. 6), killing approximately 140,000 civilians and gravely wounding hundreds of thousands more.
The program’s keynote speaker will be Mira Nakashima, daughter of woodworker and author George Nakashima. She will speak about her family’s experience in the Japanese internment camps of WWII.
Also speaking will be Princeton University physicist and nuclear weapons expert Dr. Rob Goldston, who will give an update on the nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea. There will also be music, and a candlelight closing around 8:30 p.m.
“The purpose of this commemoration is not to look back with 20-20 hindsight to question whether the atomic bombings in 1945 were justified. What’s done is done.
“Rather, our reason for having these commemorations is to remember the absolute horror that nuclear weapons represent, and the real and growing threat they present today.
“On this 73rd anniversary, we call for building on the passage of the Nuclear Ban Treaty at the U.N., and we re-commit ourselves to working for the global abolition of nuclear weapons so such total destruction can never again be inflicted,” said the Rev. Robert Moore, CFPA’s executive director.
For information, contact 609-924-5022 or
cfpa@peacecoalition.org, or visit
peacecoalition.org.
