9 Months: Our Nuke Free Baby

Now, just because we`re heading home in less than a day (we arrive in SEATAC before we leave Tokyo, apparently), don`t go getting comfortable and thinking this Journey is done. It`s not, we`re just getting started.

But beginning on August 12th the mission is no longer peace, the mission is no longer apologies, the mission is not even reconciliation (although each remains important to our group in particular). No, mission from this day forward is ensuring that there is never another Hiroshima, never another Nagasaki. Starting August 12th, we begin preparations for the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat review, which will take place in New York on May 10th. We have nine months to leave out the kitchen sink and focus on this one effort: to ensure that no more nuclear weapons are used in our world. It doesn`t matter what you think about the Just War doctrine, it doesn`t even matter whether you think it was right or wrong for the US to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; what matters is that we as a world cannot continue to improve the technology which brought hell to earth 64 years ago, which deported an entire community from Bikini indefinitely, which has left countless of our own country treating radiation sickness in Nevada.

What can you expect from the 18 of us in the next nine months? Dialogue with our leaders, mayors, the Bangor Commander. Presentations and panels, including visits from the Hibakusha we`ve met while here in Japan, discussion groups, and video screenings of a documentary based on this very journey. Direct preparations for the NPT Review Conference, including sending as many people as we can from as many backgrounds and perspectives to New York, and getting support from all our communities for the Hiroshima Nagasaki Protocol. You can expect this and much more, and we need your help. Stay posted for ways that you can get involved in the action.

For now, check out the text of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Protocol at http://www.2020visioncampaign.org/filestorage/409/File/2/Hiroshima-NagasakiProtocol.pdf.