August 6 - 9, 2009, 64th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 6 - 9, 1945).

Memory, Hope, Peace - Hiroshima Day Action 2009 and Noontime Nonviolent Resistance at Lockheed Martin, Valley Forge, PA
Lockheed Martin, Mall & Goddard Boulevards, Valley Forge/King of Prussia, PA (behind the King of Prussia Mall).
8a.m. (time of the Hiroshima bombing) til Noon, Vigil for Peace, with hourly siren blasts, bell-tolling, and readings from the Brandywine Peace Community's booklet Journey of Death;
NOON - Hiroshima Day Ceremony and Nonviolent Action, including civil disobedience.  Those interested in participating in the nonviolent civil disobedience, call the Brandywine Peace Community, 610-544-1818, by July 25 for preparation and planning information. 

".....I climbed Hikiyama Hill and looked down.  I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared.....What I felt then and still feel now I just can't say with words.  Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that, but that experience - looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima - was so shocking that I simply can't express what I felt...Hiroshima didn't exist...Hiroshima just didn't exist."  - Hiroshima bomb survivor  

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered among the leading and most significant events in world history. Between August 6 and 9, people around the world remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  These worlwide commemorations  and observances, especially in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, signify the first steps into the nuclear age at the end of World War II.  

Historians have long argued that Japan was on the verge of surrender and indeed was sueing for peace when just two bombs decimated two cities, causing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings and the advent of radiation poisoning that would kill thousands and thousands more every year to this very day. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki signified a whole new expression of war and violence: terror and total war.  

Peace groups around the country and world, believing that there is power in memory, have remembered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an historic occasion to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons and an end to war.  For the past thirty-two years, the Brandywine Peace Community in the greater Philadelphia area has organized commemorations for peace as well as nonviolent resistance to war making and weapons production. That has meant since 1995,  and will on August 6, Hiroshima Day, mean Lockheed Martin, the world's largest war profiteer, the U.S.'s chief nuclear weapons contractor, and the focus of the Brandywine Peace Community's ongoing campaign of nonviolent direct action.

The Brandywine Peace Community invites you on August 6th to remember and to resist.  Visit www.brandywinepeace.com for much more.

On August 9, beginning at 7:30p.m., the Brandywine Peace Community invites you also to join a Nagasaki Day Candlelight Peace Dedication in front of SS Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Cathedral, 18th & Benjamin Franklin Parkway, in memory of the Urakami Cathedral, which was ground zero for the Nagasaki bombing.  The second atomic bombing of Nagasaki destroyed at the time the largest Catholic population in all of Asia.  The August 9th dedication is being  co-sponsored by Phila. Catholic Peace Fellowship.

Brandywine Peace Community, P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA 19081 
(610) 544-1818  brandywine@juno.com   www.brandywinepeace.com