Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Peace Witness at Pentagon and White House

When: Monday, August 7, 2023 @ Pentagon 7-8 AM

Where: Designated Protest Zone on the Southeast Side of Pentagon (Take South exit from Pentagon Metro station–Walk a short distance on sidewalk toward South Parking Lot–vigil site is on left behind bicycle fences)

When: Wednesday, August 9 (Anniversary of the U.S. Nuclear Bombing of Nagasaki): Noon-1 PM

Where: Outside the White House on Pennsylvania Ave.(North side) 

Sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker

Nagasaki, September 1945

Dear Friends, 

To commemorate the 78th anniversary of the sinful and criminal U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker invites you to attend a prayer vigil and witness on Monday, August 7th outside the Pentagon, and on August 9th, outside the White House. 

We will remember and pray for the victims of these unspeakable nuclear atrocities and all those who have witnessed the destructive power of nuclear weapons use, testing and mining–hibakusha, pacific islanders, Native Americans, downwinders,  and all other victims of nuclearism–and call for nuclear abolition. 

Pope Francis has declared that the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral and 68 countries have now ratified the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on January 22, 2021, thereby making nuclear weapons illegal under International law. The nine nuclear-armed nations — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — have not signed the treaty, nor has any nation from the NATO alliance. The Biden Administration is committed to the modernization of U.S. nuclear forces, spending over $43 billion this year and proposing to spend over $56 billion in 2024.  The U.S. nuclear arsenal upgrade now underway is estimated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next several decades, while poverty increases, the climate crisis worsens and basic human needs go unmet. On January 24, 2023, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. This is due to the existential threats of nuclear war and the climate crisis, the mounting dangers of the Ukraine war, bio- and cyber threats, nuclear proliferation, State-Sponsored Disinformation and Disruptive Technology. The Ukraine war has further exacerbated the nuclear peril between the two foremost nuclear powers as both Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals are now on high alert. 

As we call on the nation to repent for the nuclear sin, abolish all nuclear weapons, ratify the TPNW and redirect exorbitant military and nuclear expenditures to meet urgent human needs, we do so in solidarity with actions taking place around the U.S. and worldwide. In the U.S. see: 

The Hibakusha plead to the world: “Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.” 

Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorts us: “The choice today is…either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

Pope Francis declares: “Nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned…The total elimination of nuclear weapons is…a moral and humanitarian imperative of our time.”  

Please join us and share this invitation with friends.  

For more information contact: Art Laffin (artlaffin@hotmail.com) and Paul Magno (pmagno56@gmail.com) 

In hope for a disarmed world, Art