Peace Groups Lay Plans for Summer Arts Festival

A coalition of entertainers, clergy and members of local peace groups announced preliminary plans Tuesday for a weeklong arts festival in Los Angeles this summer to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It will be part of a nationwide effort to create public support for a nuclear test ban treaty.

The festival, called “August 1945/August 1985: Imagine There’s a Future,” coordinated by the Hollywood Women’s Coalition and the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race, is the most ambitious effort being planned in response to an appeal made by the Center for Defense Information in Washington, center spokeswoman Patricia Morgan said.

“We want to generate the public will necessary to pressure the government to conclude a limited test ban treaty, as in 1963,” Morgan said in a telephone interview.

Hope for Rose Bowl

The week of symposiums, films and staged readings, beginning July 28, will culminate with an event at a local stadium. Negotiations for a site are still under way, but festival organizers hope that they can line up the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Organizers are appealing to South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu and rock singer Bruce Springsteen to appear at the stadium event, Alex Rose, of the Hollywood Women’s Coalition, told a press conference at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo.

There will also be a mobile photography exhibit, featuring copies of prints by local artists, displayed on Southern California Rapid Transit District buses and taxi-top signs, Rose said.

Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings will speak at various events, Jennifer Pirie, festival coordinator, said.

But the aim of the festival is not to show documentaries on the horrors of nuclear war, she said. “We are not using Scared-Straight tactics.”

‘Want to Celebrate’

“We want to celebrate the things worth saving,” said Holly Harp, a member of the coalition.

Rabbi Laura Geller of the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race said material is being prepared by the center to enable 2,000 churches and synagogues throughout Southern California to hold religious services during the weekend of Aug. 2-4 focusing on the issue of nuclear disarmament.

The $1-million effort, Mayor Tom Bradley told the press conference, “is essential for all to better understand the disastrous force of nuclear weapons.”