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Nuclear weapons denounced at Tacoma seminar
Panel: Survivor recalls horrors of attack on Japan


JOYCE CHEN; Staff writer, Tacoma News Tribune
Published: 03/29/1012:05 am | Updated: 03/29/10 1:21 pm
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She never saw her mother’s body. “We got a small envelope with a little of her hair and some ashes,” she said. “We didn’t even know if those were her ashes.”

Kasaoka’s survivor testimony was part of Sunday’s anti-nuclear-weapons seminar. “Survival: Conversion to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World” was at the Urban Grace Tacoma Church, 902 Market St. The event, which included a panel discussion and a documentary screening, explored the environmental, international and economic effects of nuclear weaponry.

Steven Leeper, the chairman of the Hiroshima Foundation, made an impassioned plea to ban nuclear weapons.

“They cannot distinguish between combatants and noncombatants; they cannot be contained to the battlefield,” he told the crowd. “The bomb that exploded over Hiroshima is a toy compared to the bombs we have now.”

The seminar is one of several awareness-raising events leading up to the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference, May 3-7 in New York City. It came two days after President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to sign a treaty next month to reduce both countries’ nuclear arsenals to the lowest level in a half-century.

Ashley Michael Karitis filmed a short documentary on 18 people from the Northwest who visited Japan last summer seeking forgiveness for the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There is a generational gap in understanding the importance of nuclear disarmament, said Tamara Power-Drutis, 23, of Tacoma, who went on the trip.

“I don’t see in my peers the desire to learn about nuclear weapons, and that’s scary,” she said.

Vivi Bartron, 62, of Tacoma found the seminar eye-opening. “I’ve been interested in the prohibition of nuclear weapons all my life,” she said. However, until Sunday’s event she “thought nuclear weapons was an old subject and we didn’t have to worry about it.”

Joyce Chen: 253-597-8426

joyce.chen@thenewstribune.com

DREW PERINE   staff photographer
Tom Rodgers, retired commander of a nuclear submarine; Glen Milner, activist and researcher with Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action; sister Jackie Hudson, anti-nuclear weapons activist; and Swaneagle Harijan, American Indian peace worker, lead an anti-nuclear weapons discussion Sunday.

Sadae Kasaoka has harrowing memories of seeing her father’s burned-black skin after the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of their hometown, Hiroshima.

“His body was shiny, as if covered with paint,” she told a crowd of 100 in a Tacoma church Sunday afternoon through a translator.

Her father soon died of his wounds. Kasaoka, 13 at the time, and her siblings cremated him on the beach.