Densho Digital Repository - Stanley N. Shikuma Interview II (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-520-11)

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BY: Oh my gosh, Stan, you're involved in so many things, but I want to hear about them all. [Laughs] Okay, how about Hiroshima to Hope?

SS: Okay. From Hiroshima to Hope was another thing we started under Karen Seriguchi and the JACL. In the early ('80s), there was the Nuclear Freeze movement, which was precipitated by the U.S. planning to place cruise missiles in Europe. It was during the Cold War, and it was considered to be very provocative because if you have a cruise missile based in, like, Germany, at that point West Germany, or France or Belgium. And it was nuclear-armed, you could reach Moscow in twenty minutes, fifteen minutes, versus if you had to shoot an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, ICBM, from Kansas or Wyoming, it would take thirty, forty, fifty minutes to get there. So the feeling was if you got an alert saying, "the Russians are attacking us," or, "the Soviets are attacking us." And so we have thirty or forty or minutes to decide whether that's a false alarm or it's really happening before we have to launch our own. If you put cruise missiles in Europe, then the Russians are only going to have half that amount of time. So basically it's a hair trigger on nuclear war. So then there was this big Freeze Movement. Mike Lowry, our congressperson, one of our congresspeople from Washington state who was also the first congressperson to submit a redress bill in '78, was still in Congress and involved in the Nuclear Freeze Movement. So we invited him to give a talk on the dangers of nuclear war on Hiroshima Day at Blaine Methodist church. And we weren't sure how it would go over, but I think because it was Mike and it was Hiroshima, there's a pretty big Hiroshima Kenjinkai in the Seattle area. We got, like, over three hundred people, almost all Japanese American. And we co-sponsored with Physicians for Social Responsibility. So anyway, that was the first Hiroshima Day event that I know of in Seattle. It was probably '84.

Then we continued to do it annually another year, '85 or '86, there was also the war in Central America, so we had that as kind of a theme of remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also being anti-war and including current wars like going on in El Salvador and Nicaragua with the Contras. And other people were getting involved, like Martha Brice in particular, and Mary Hanson, and they scouted out... oh, and then in one year, in '88, I think, we did it on the UW campus, because the JACL was holding their convention there. And we floated lanterns in Frosh Pond, that big pond in the middle of UW campus, which was very pretty, but it was also very difficult. Because it's actually a big drop from the edge into the water. So to get them into the water, then to fish them back out was a big deal. So Mary and Martha figured out, well, we could do it at Green Lake. So from the late '80s until today, every year, there's been a From Hiroshima to Hope event on the shores of Green Lake. My taiko group started playing at the '88 one at Frosh Pond, it was the first time we played, and I think we played every year since then. I've missed maybe four or five in that time.

BY: And then are you a member of the organizing committee of that?

SS: Yeah. So I came and went and came back. So I was helping organize it through the '80s and then I kind of dropped out other than playing taiko and helping arrange the taiko performance into the next fifteen years maybe. So around 2010 maybe, I don't remember exactly, I got back involved with the planning committee, and I'm on the board of From Hiroshima to Hope now.

BY: Okay, let's see. So it sounds like Hiroshima to Hope was sort of a coalition of different organizations, not all Japanese American. Your other activities, I think, reflect that as well.