Candlelight Remembrance Manito Park Gathering Commemorates Those Who Died From Hiroshima And Nagasaki Atomic Blasts
Sue Yoshida was digging for clams in the ocean when she saw the Atomic bomb explode over Hiroshima in the distance.
She was 9 years old and at the beach with her classmates. The horizon lighted up.
“We saw the shining,” Yoshida said. “Teacher said, ‘Just a minute. We’d better look at the sky. Something happened to someplace.”’
Yoshida went to Manito Park Sunday night to remember the day 50 years ago when the atomic bomb blasted Hiroshima and killed tens of thousands. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki.
Yoshida was one of about 150 people who came to the Manito pond to eat food, hold hands and light lanterns to honor and remember the dead.
Yoshida, who lived in Nagoya City as a child, lost a brother in the war. She moved to Spokane 27 years ago.
“Now I’m living here and still thinking about my brother,” Yoshida said. “But there has to be peace, has to be peace, no anger.”
The Peace and Justice Action League, the Physicians for Social Responsibility and other organizations sponsored the event. Children and their parents drew symbols and words such as “peace” and “compassion” on the paper lanterns.
Jan Yoder brought her two daughters to the ceremony. Her 4-year-old, Ria, drew a tree, a lake with ducks and a snowman on her lantern. Before the ceremony, Yoder told Ria about Hiroshima.
“We talked about it before we came,” Yoder said. “That our country had dropped a bomb, that a lot of people had died, that we wanted to make lanterns to remember those people.”
One man at the ceremony remembered something different.
He stood on the side, the lone protester holding a neon green sign. “Remember Pearl Harbor,” the sign said. “America owes no apology for using the atom bomb to defend our rights to life, liberty, freedom and happiness from a war perpetrated by the Japanese warmongers.”
He left early.
W.J. Moershel, a retired psychiatrist, served in the medical corps at Walla Walla and then Fort Lewis during the war. He sat at a table Sunday evening with his hand on his cane and watched the ceremony.
When the bomb went off, Moershel said, he and others weren’t thinking about moral issues but about whether the war would end.
He said ceremonies such as the one Sunday are important so that no one forgets what happened or rewrites history.
“Things like this must be done to remember the tragedy of the atomic bomb, so that America will remember,” Moershel said.
Most of those at the pond sang songs and listened to poems of remembrance.
Then, as the rain began to pour, they carried their lanterns over to the pond and lighted them. The rain and the fountain buffeted the tiny boats about, but only a few went dark.
“This is very important,” said Holan, an artist who painted lotuses on the sides of the lanterns. “The earth is so small. The earth is this big in the galaxy,” she said, making a circle the size of a quarter with her finger and thumb. “Why are we still fighting each other? Why not peace?”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo