10,000 San Diegans Raise Voices Against Nuclear Arms Race

An estimated 10,000 people--the largest protest crowd in San Diego since the Vietnam War--joined in a “Walk for Peace” in Balboa Park Tuesday evening, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and to protest nuclear proliferation.

Police reported only one incident among the peaceful crowd, which one police sergeant said was the largest peace demonstration he had ever seen in San Diego.

“This is the largest peace rally seen in San Diego, and the most peaceful . . . I can’t believe there was only one arrest (for public drunkenness). We sort of felt like the Maytag repairman out here today,” said Sgt. T.R. Packer.

March organizers, who had expected 5,000 people, were clearly pleased by the turnout and outpouring of sentiment for an end to the arms race. March organizer Linda Smith could hardly hide her satisfaction when told that all of the information packets put together for the rally had been passed out.

The orderly crowd began assembling at 5 p.m. near 6th Avenue and Laurel Street, before marching to Cypress Grove, near Quince Street and Balboa Drive. Mothers, many pushing strollers or leading children by

the hand, predominated, striking home a point stressed by Smith, who said, “Mothers are going to begin marching all across this country.”

Some of the placards carried by the marchers read: “Disarmament Is Patriotic” and “Our Kids Deserve Peace.” A group of punks with spiked hair carried signs that read: “Nukes Make Me Burn.”

“This is real middle America,” said marcher Cheryl Dexter, who has two daughters and is a part-time preschool teacher.

However, retired Adm. Eugene J. Carroll and Kaz Suyeishi, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, captured the crowd’s attention.

“In the Pentagon I held in my hands plans to destroy the Soviet Union,” said Carroll, who spent 37 years in the Navy. “I tell you, nuclear weapons serve no rational purpose. There’s no military purpose to be achieved. The only purpose is to destroy and be destroyed. Both nations will be annihilated in a nuclear war. And there is no way to be dead in a superior fashion.”

The crowd listened silently to Suyeishi, vice president of Atomic Bomb Survivors in the U.S.A. After her speech, she said, “This was my dream. Look at this. They used to call me crazy. They used to call me communist. With the people’s power . . . that’s the only way to keep the peace.”

Carroll and Suyeishi were joined by entertainers Robin Williams and Melissa Manchester, who spoke and performed for the crowd. The rally was organized by the La Jolla-based group Mothers Embracing Nuclear Disarmament.

MEND founder Smith said the “Walk for Peace” was organized to “inform and empower people to save mankind.” The goal of MEND, she said, is to educate people about the imminence of nuclear destruction and to urge world leaders to reach a multilateral, verifiable disarmament agreement. Eventually, MEND would like to see the disarmament of all nuclear weapons, she said.

Smith, wife of Padres President Ballard Smith and daughter of Joan Kroc, owner of the Padres, formed MEND in April. She said an emotional visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington with her four daughters inspired her to do something to help ensure that they have a world to grow up in.

“The absurdity of it all struck me,” Smith said. “There wasn’t even a nuclear warhead exploded in that war. I felt such despair at that moment.”

She said that her love for her children is all the expertise she needs in lobbying citizens and world leaders to work for a nuclear-free world. MEND is based on the idea that maternal love and the instinct to protect one’s children are powerful forces, she said.

The next goal of MEND is to establish chapters nationwide.