First-time participants are invited to light the candles inside the two dozen traditional Japanese lanterns.
NORTHAMPTON – If previous years are an indicator, it will be crowded on the dock at Paradise Pond Sunday when the foes of nuclear weapons send the peace lanterns floating.
Now in its 12th year, the lantern ceremony is the climax of an annual event sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee in remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 67 years ago. An estimated 150,000 people were killed or wounded when the first atom bomb detonated above Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. The toll rose by 75, three days later when the second U.S. bomb hit Nagasaki.
Those bombings have been the only two nuclear strikes in history, and the American Friends Service Committee wants to keep it that way. The day-long event usually draws close to 100 participants, who gather for a meal at First Churches and listen to a speaker before marching in procession to Paradise Pond at Smith College.
This year’s speaker, Cecile Pineda, is the author of “Devil’s Tango: How I learned the Fukushima Step by Step.” The book looks at how damage to the Japanese nuclear power plant by last year’s tsunami has impacted the environment.
The lantern lighting is scheduled for 8 p.m. Jeff Napolitano of the American Friends Service Committee said the ceremony at Smith’s boathouse is usually packed.
“It’s a struggle to get them all on the dock,” he said.
First-time participants are invited to light the candles inside the two dozen traditional Japanese lanterns. They are then towed around the pond at dusk.
In Japan, Napolitano said, the lanterns are set loose to float freely, but Smith College, ever conscious of the environment, prefers that they be retrieved and reused. Nonetheless, Napolitano said, the sight is moving.
“These are our hopes,” he said, noting that the lanterns symbolize the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons and nuclear power.