Worldwide Demonstrations Mark Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing

Ghostly silhouettes of children, adults and animals appeared on sidewalks in Los Angeles, British Columbia, Australia and Hungary on Wednesday as people gathered in cities around the world to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The spray-painted images--which first made their appearance in New York four years ago and became familiar to millions of Americans during the 1985 Hiroshima commemoration--are intended as grim reminders of the first nuclear blast ever directed at a human target. The names of more than 140,000 dead are inscribed at the bombing site.

Locally, this year’s protests against nuclear testing--and celebrations of hopes for peace--were subdued and modest when contrasted with the 40th-anniversary events of 1985. Last year, 3,000 demonstrators lined Wilshire Boulevard from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica and a bevy of Hollywood stars displayed a “peace ribbon” in front of the Federal Building in Westwood.

Appearance by Joan Baez

About 300 people gathered for the demonstration that began at noon Wednesday at the Triforium plaza in downtown Los Angeles, and the only star was singer Joan Baez, whose efforts as a peace activist made her name a byword in the 1960s.

Despite a sound-system failure that forced the audience to crowd around the stage to hear her, Baez won applause when she sang a song of her own composition, “Warriors of the Sun,” about people who are “fighting postwar battles that somehow never got won. . . . “

Kim Cranston, son of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and chairman of his reelection campaign, extolled his father’s efforts to obtain a test-ban treaty as he urged voters to return a Democratic majority to the U.S. Senate in November.

Eerie Silhouettes

Others addressing the audience included representatives from Asian Pacific Americans for Nuclear Awareness, the Latin Community for the Test Ban and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Spokesmen for the International Shadow Project, which whitewashed hundreds of eerie silhouettes on sidewalks throughout Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Long Beach in the Southern California area, said the stenciled images also appeared Wednesday morning in Australia, Canada, Italy, Hungary and dozens of cities across America.

About 100 people turned out in Portland, Ore., to paint shadows before dawn on Wednesday, some of them adding their own slogans, such as “Find Your World Within Ours.”

Organizers of the Shadow Project said the paints they used were water soluble and would easily wash off, but in San Diego, four members of another group--the Peter Maurin Catholic Worker--who painted figures on sidewalks were arrested on suspicion of defacing public property.

Other Arrests

And there were other arrests.

Liza Apper, 34, of Pacoima and Valerie Sklarevsky, 41, of Malibu were booked on suspicion of trespassing after they were taken into custody Wednesday during an anti-war demonstration at the Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park.

Apper’s husband, Brian, said both women are lay members of the Benedictine Order of the Roman Catholic Church. He said the women were among a group of about 20 handing out leaflets protesting Rocketdyne’s participation in the MX missile project.

To the north, in Alameda County, 41 protesters were arrested Wednesday morning as they tried unsuccessfully to block entrances to testing facilities for atomic weapons.

Sheriff’s Lt. Max Benitez said 35 of the arrests occurred at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory’s Site 300 facility about 18 miles south of Livermore, and six took place at the laboratory headquarters in Livermore.

Groups Involved

Groups involved in the Livermore-area protests included the Arms Control Research Center in San Francisco, the Peace Life Center in Modesto, the Livermore Action Group, Greenpeace and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign.

In Nevada, protesters braved 105-degree heat at the nation’s nuclear test site, calling for an end to the tests. Ninety people were arrested, including 11 who blocked the two-lane road leading to the top-secret site, Department of Energy spokesman Jim Boyer said.

Cargo trucks and cars containing workers were stopped for about 45 minutes until security guards and Nye County officers moved in to arrest those blocking the road, Boyer said.

Organizers estimated the crowd at 300 to 400, while Boyer said security guards counted 200 to 250.

Hiroshima fell silent for one haunting minute Wednesday in remembrance of the day the United States dropped “Big Boy,” a 20-kiloton atomic bomb, in the cataclysmic attack that hastened the end to World War II.

“Hiroshima repeats its appeal,” Mayor Takeshi Araki, a survivor of the attack, said at the annual memorial service sponsored by the city. “We offer our prayer for the repose of the victims’ souls . . . and rededicate ourselves anew to the cause of peace.”

Araki, calling for the “total abolition” of all nuclear weapons, urged the superpowers to convene a summit meeting in Hiroshima to “take the first practical steps toward nuclear disarmament.”

Among those attending the service this year were three Nobel laureates: 1984 Peace Prize recipient Desmond Tutu of South Africa, American chemist Linus Pauling and British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin.