Members of the Great Neck chapter of the pacifist non-profit organization Peace Action gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset on Wednesday to commemorate the 69th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
The ceremony was highlighted by speeches from Michael D’Innocenzo, a professor of history and the study of non-violent social change at Hofstra University, and state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck), who spoke about learning of the start of ongoing violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza shortly after learning that a Long Island Railroad strike had been averted.
“We hold this ceremony every year to remind us that the bombings had a profound effect on the world and out of a moral obligation to see the U.S. never uses [atomic bombs] in the world again,” said Shirley Romaine, a board member of Peace Action’s Great Neck chapter and the founder of the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, in her opening remarks.
The event was co-sponsored by the Long Island Alliance for Peace and the congregation’s social justice committee and focused on a search for diplomatic alternatives in settling international disputes, touching on the conflict in Gaza, civil war in Ukraine and the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash.
The commemoration, whose theme is “It is time to abolish nuclear weapons, climate change and war,” was dedicated in memory of Jonathan Schell, an anti-nuclear activist, teacher and writer who died in March.
“He was as gentle a person as he was articulate, eloquent and passionate in his writings,” D’Innocenzo said of Schell, whose book, “The Fate of the Earth,” kickstarted an anti-nuclear movement after its publication in 1982.
Schimel recalled preparing for a quiet summer when she read of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight and violence in Gaza within minutes of learning of the agreement averting the Long Island Railroad strike.
“Now, in the grander stream of things, the subsequent international headlines caused an even greater threat to my equilibrium,” Schimel said. “Tranquility, I have learned, is just an illusion. Just around the corner, some oligarch, a dictator or a Supreme Court judge can make a decision that can rip through people’s lives whether they reside steps away or thousands of miles away.”
The evening also included a poetry reading and a musical performance by the congregation’s Willow Interfaith Women’s Choir.
Mark Lukens, the chairman of the Interfaith Alliance of Long Island, and Margaret Melkonian, the director of Long Island for Peace Alternatives, also held a discussion about the potentiality of nuclear disarmament and the human costs of war.
“The world was really shaken by the first nuclear explosion. It was so devastating. It took years for people to really understand it,” Romaine told Blank Slate Media in mid July. “The earth could really be devastated. The program is a time to remind people of that.”
Peace Action was founded in 1957 as the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy in response to the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the United States and former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Peace action formed in 1987 after SANE merged with another antiwar organization, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.
