400 Protesters at Los Alamos Mark Nuclear Destruction of Nagasaki
Actor Martin Sheen was among 400 anti-nuclear protesters who rallied at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday, the 54th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. Sheen and 75 others were briefly detained.
The group protested the lab’s production of new plutonium pits, which is the core of a nuclear bomb.
“We are the generation that brought the bomb in. We have got to be the generation that should take it out,” Sheen said.
Lab officials allowed the crowd to protest in a parking area outside a lab building. Sheen was taken into custody after he stepped over a yellow cord into a restricted area.
He knelt and said the Lord’s Prayer, then told security agents: “I’m all yours.”
Sheen, 59, and the others detained during the 45-minute rally were put on buses and driven a mile to a downtown park, where their plastic handcuffs were snipped off. The U.S. attorney will not prosecute any of the 76 people, a spokesman said.
Los Alamos was the birthplace of the atomic bomb, created during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. Nagasaki was bombed Aug. 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima. Japan then surrendered.
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