National Gathering in Eureka, California
The Saturday, June 20 (summer solstice) Christening and Splashdown celebration for the Golden Rule peace boat is turning into a momentous occasion. The sail masts were raised this week and local media in the northern California coastal town of Eureka, California is abuzz with news of the big party. Orion Sherwood, a member of the original 1958 crew of Quaker nonviolence activists, now 85 years old, will be present. Sally Willowbee, daughter of original crew member George Willoughby, has arrived in Eureka already. Other children and grandchildren of crew members of the Golden Rule and its sister peace boat Phoenix are also expected.
Shigeko Sasamori, who survived the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima, will be an honored guest. Shigeko was one of the “Hiroshima Maidens,” young Japanese girls who were disfigured by the A-bomb and later brought to the U.S. for plastic surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. The Hiroshima Maidens were a strong motivation for the original Golden Rule crew, some of whose families had hosted them.
Speakers at the Splashdown celebration will include national leaders of Greenpeace and Physicians for Social Responsibility. VFP president Barry Ladendorf will welcome the Golden Rule, a national project of Veterans For Peace, into the water. VFP vice president Gerry Condon, who along with his partner Helen Jaccard, has been working on the restoration of the Golden Rule and planning its future missions, has also been invited to speak.
“This is a historic occasion,” said Gerry Condon. “Before Australia’s Pacific Peacemaker, before Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, was the Golden Rule, the first nonviolent direct action boat, a 34-foot wind-powered sailboat at that.
With the restoration of the Golden Rule and its mission, the torch of bold peacemaking on the high seas is being passed across generations. The Golden Rule will educate hundreds of thousands of people about the renewed threats of nuclear war, the dangers of nuclear power, and the global catastrophe of carbon-fed climate change.”
The first captain of the renewed Golden Rule will be Steve Nienhaus, a veteran sailor and a member of Veterans For Peace. Associate Member Helen Jaccard has been selected to be one of five crew members who will make the maiden voyage to San Diego, just in time for the Veterans For Peace national convention, August 5-9. The theme of the San Diego convention, which will take place during the 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, is “Peace and Reconciliation in the Pacific.” Japanese-American organizations are working closely with Veterans For Peace on this commemoration, and Japanese media will report from the Convention.
The Voyage of the Golden Rule, Past and Future
In 1958, four brave Quakers attempted to sail the boat into the Marshall Islands to stop U.S. nuclear atmospheric testing. They were stopped and arrested in Hawaii, but the crew of another boat, the Phoenix carried on in their stead, and managed to make it into the test zone. Worldwide media attention raised awareness of the dangers of radiation, and led to the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban, which banned testing nuclear devices in the air or the water.
After the Golden Rule was discovered at the bottom of Humboldt Bay five years ago, VFP member Fredy Champagne kicked off a campaign to restore it. Members of VFP chapters 22 (Garberville) and 56 (Eureka) have played leading roles in its reconstruction, along with Quakers and community members. Much thanks goes to VFP member Chuck Dewitt, who has coordinated the reconstruction effort, and made it his daily labor for nearly five years. VFP member Skip Oliver from Ohio has also done a lot to make this all happen. Leroy Zerlang and his staff at Zerlang & Zerlang Marine Services have made many indispensable contributions.
The Golden Rule’s mission will now resume. After the VFP Convention in San Diego, the Golden Rule will stop in several California coastal cities for events, fundraising and activism. Please let us know if you are interested. The Golden Rule will spend the winter back in its homeport of Eureka, before heading to the Northwest in the Spring for visits to the Hanford Nuclear Facility and the Bangor Trident Submarine base. A ten year journey is being planned that will take the Golden Rule to the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic Coast and up the Mississippi River. Invitations to visit
Japan and the Marshall Islands are being considered. A radiation detector has been donated that will allow the Golden Rule crew to measure radiation in the water as it sails on its mission for a peaceful, nonviolent world.
For more information, visit www.vfpgoldenruleproject.org, or call Helen Jaccard at 206-992-6364.