By Leonard Eiger
For most of humanity’s recorded time on Earth people have tried to follow the Golden Rule, which is essentially the principle of treating others as we would like to be treated. And yet today it seems that in far too many ways and situations this fundamental axiom has been turned on its head, especially when it comes to relations among nations.
Racism, xenophobia, militarism, and their ultimate manifestation – nuclear weapons – rule the day as a symbol and tool of power in many nations. As for the United States, we have twisted the Golden Rule, expecting others to treat us with respect while doing unto others in violent ways, all in the name of Freedom and National Security. And, as the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against another, we continue to hold humanity under the threat of nuclear annihilation every day, and set the tone for other nations to do the same. This is utter and complete insanity. Yet, there are those who have challenged the nuclear status quo since the beginning of the nuclear age.
In 2010 Tom Rogers, a retired U.S. Navy Captain who had commanded nuclear submarines during the Cold War, testified in a federal trial on behalf of peacemakers known as the Disarm Now Plowshares Five. They had broken into a Navy nuclear warhead storage facility in Washington State to bear witness to the abomination that nuclear weapons truly are and call for disarmament. Rogers’ long journey from Cold Warrior to Peacemaker had brought him to an understanding of the need to abolish these horrible weapons of mass destruction, that the government was not paying attention to people’s “legal” means of free speech, and that the Plowshares activists’ nonviolent methods were justified. Rogers has also risked arrest in nonviolent direct actions at that same Naval nuclear submarine base. 
About 55 years earlier another retired U.S. Navy Captain embarked on his own journey of conscience and civil resistance when he and his peacemaking crew sailed the 30-foot ketch the Golden Rule toward the U.S. government’s atmospheric test site in the Marshall Islands in the first attempt to stop nuclear weapons testing despite government prohibitions and a court injunction against them. They were arrested, tried, convicted and put on probation, and undaunted, set sail a second time. This time the government decided to put Captain Albert Bigelow behind bars.
Bigelow had not acted on a whim. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima horrified him, and in the postwar years he took a number of steps on his peacemaking journey. Among them, according to historian Lawrence Wittner, “working with the American Friends Service Committee, Bigelow sought to deliver a petition against nuclear testing to the White House, but was rebuffed by U.S. government officials.” Bigelow made every effort to get the government to listen, but his words fell on deaf ears.
Shortly after the end of WWII, in 1948, Bigelow’s wife, Sylvia, joined the Society of Friends (Quakers), and Albert joined in 1955. In that same year, the couple housed two Hibakusha of Hiroshima who had come to the U.S. to undergo reconstructive surgery for the severe disfigurement they suffered from the effects of the atomic bombing. Bigelow was humbled by the experience, particularly because the women “harbored no resentment to us or other Americans.”
The year before Bigelow and his crew set sail for the Marshall Islands, on August 6 and 7, 1957, he and others, attempted to enter the nuclear test site in Nevada in a nonviolent direct action and were arrested. The following day they returned and sat with their backs toward the test site as a nuclear test was detonated. This and other involvement in attempts to stop the nuclear arms race led Bigelow to an understanding that more direct action was necessary, and from this came the fateful voyage of the Golden Rule, and the beginning of modern-day protests at sea.
Bigelow said of his nautical actions: “In the face of the threats that nuclear warfare preparations put to all mankind, it is my duty, as a man and as an American citizen, to voice both my protest against these preparations and my pleas for a constructive policy instead. If I remain silent, how am I to answer later, should some high court ask: ‘…and what, knowing these things to be wrong, were you, a free, responsible citizen of a democracy doing to prevent them?’”
As for the Golden Rule, it suffered years of decay in a shipyard after being raised off the sea floor near Eureka, California, and its fate seemed sealed until two Northern California chapters of Veterans for Peace (VFP) established the VFP Golden Rule Project. VFP volunteers painstakingly restored the ketch and, like Phoenix from the ashes, the boat was relaunched in 2015.
Since then the Golden Rule has sailed up and down the U.S. West coast and to Hawaii, and is currently on its Great Loop Tour circling the entire eastern U.S. It has visited Cuba on a goodwill mission, and has sailed the mighty Mississippi on its mission to educate the public about nuclear, peace and environmental issues, and motivate people to take action to protect the people and planet from the ravages of the nuclear and war-making industries.
In April 2023 the Golden Rule crew and friends were in Washington, D.C. delivering the VFP Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to the offices of every member of the U.S. Congress, and had positive conversations with many staffers. In contrast with the government’s NPR, which continues to set the stage for a disastrous nuclear war, the VFP version promotes reducing the very real risk of nuclear confrontation and accelerating the global reduction and rapid elimination of nuclear weapons. It recognizes that our nation needs to shift our focus to addressing “the climate crisis rather than preparing for every conceivable military threat.”
All aboard for the Peace Flotilla; Tom Rogers is second from left.
In August 2016 the Golden Rule sailed into the Salish Sea in Washington State, and down the Hood Canal (on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki), under the command of Tom Rogers, joining with other vessels for a water-based nonviolent protest and witness for peace and an end to the threat of nuclear war, to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. Bangor is homeport to eight of the U.S. Navy’s fourteen OHIO Class “Trident” ballistic missile submarines, and represents the largest operational concentration of deployed thermonuclear warheads in the entire U.S. arsenal.
Some of us from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action were on board the Golden Rule while activists in other vessels met and escorted the Golden Rule in a Peace Flotilla to Bangor. We were vastly outnumbered by the many Navy, Coast Guard and Sheriff’s boats protecting the base and its nuclear weapons. Yet our small numbers belied the strength of our spirit and commitment to protect humanity from the certainty that, so long as governments continue to rely on the false security of nuclear weapons, one day they will cause the annihilation of much, if not most, of human life on our small, blue planet, which will remain an unlivable wasteland for generations!
The Golden Rule, surrounded by some Peace Flotilla vessels, with the Bangor Delta Pier with an OHIO Class ballistic missile submarine in the background.
As we sailed past the base and the Trident submarine (with some missile hatches open) being serviced at the pier, I thought about the Navy’s ongoing testing of the Trident missiles. Although the tests do not involve nuclear detonations, they do involve launching missiles (loaded with dummy warheads) from submerged submarines to a test site in the Marshall Islands. This is essentially a test to ensure that the missiles will function as intended in a nuclear war. Just one Trident sub carries enough thermonuclear firepower on its 20 Trident II D5 missiles to incinerate every major city in Russia, resulting in enough particulate matter rising up into the stratosphere, causing major climatic changes that would cause global famine and at least hundreds of millions of deaths. Just imagine what a full-scale nuclear exchange would do!!!
In a reflection written just prior to the Golden Rule arriving for the 2016 Peace Flotilla at Bangor, VFP member and Golden Rule crew member Gerry Condon wrote of its importance: “We will point out to the world that these weapons of truly mass destruction are here, and that they are holding the entire world hostage to nuclear terror. This obscene cache of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to all life on earth. It is therefore immoral and must be resisted by all people of conscience. As Veterans For Peace says in its mission statement, war itself must be abolished.”
The Golden Rule much more than an important piece of history of the nuclear abolition movement; it is a living tribute to the legacy that earlier peacemakers left for today’s peacemakers who have the vision and commitment that brought the Golden Rule back from the briny deep to have a second life sailing the world “in opposition to militarism and the use of nuclear weapons.”
We desperately need more efforts like the Golden Rule Project to build awareness of, and educate people about, the alternatives to militarism and nuclear weapons. There is another way, and when enough people come to understand that nuclear weapons are totally incompatible with human survival, they will rise up and demand an end to the nuclear madness.
It is time to ask ourselves, When will we finally relegate nuclear weapons to the dustbin of history? Perhaps when we learn to follow the Golden Rule!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: As someone committed to leaving a better world for future generations I have supported VFP’s Golden Rule project since the boat’s rebirth in that small boatyard in Northern California, and I hope that you too will support this important work in some way. There are many ways to help, and you can learn more at the Golden Rule Project website. You can also contact VFP Golden Rule Project for more information at vfpgoldenruleproject@gmail.com.
