OREPA has names, remembrance ceremony at Y-12 on Wednesday

An Oak Ridge peace organization will mark the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, with a names and remembrance ceremony across from the main entrance to the Y-12 National Security Complex on Wednesday morning.

It’s an annual ceremony for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance that commemorates the bombing of Hiroshima near the end of World War II. Uranium for that bomb, code-named Little Boy, was enriched in Oak Ridge.

The Names and Remembrance Ceremony will be held directly across from the East Bear Creek Road entrance to Y12, starting at 6 a.m. and continuing until 9 a.m., a press release said.

“The ceremony, intended to be a solemn and non-confrontational remembrance, is an effort to join our voices to the voices of the hibakusha—the dwindling band of courageous survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima to say ‘Never again!'” the press release said. “We remember so we do not repeat.”

The ceremonies occasionally include civil disobedience such as trespassing.

The Names and Remembrance ceremony includes reading a list of names of victims, followed by the tolling of a bell and the tying of a peace crane on string for each one. First-hand accounts and contemporaneous reflections, including poetry and official statements, are also included in the ceremony.

At 8:15 a.m., the time of the bombing in Hiroshima, the ceremony enters a period of silence followed by drumming and chanting by the monks of Nipponzan Myohoji, the release said.

People come and go during the ceremony.

Readers are self-selecting. Everyone who comes is welcome to participate in the reading, but no one is required or expected to, the press release said.

All OREPA events intend to conform to a simple set of guidelines: Nonviolent in tone as well as action; everyone welcome; no drugs or alcohol, the release said.