A Moment on PEACE
Photo by Jaume d'Urgell
On this day 61 years ago, the world’s first wartime use of an atomic bomb occurred. The bomb, code named Little Boy, was dropped from an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan at 8:15 a.m. The death count on that day topped 140,000 and leveled the city. Three days later the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate with more than 74,000 victims. These horrific events in history are credited with marking the beginning of the end of World War II.
Hibakusha is the Japanese word that refers to victims of the blast and literally translates as “explosion-affected people.” Each year on the anniversary of the bombings, those who have died the previous year due to rare cancers and radiation-related illnesses are added to the cities’ memorials. To date, nearly 400,000 people were either killed by the blasts, died later due to fallout, or were a child born to a pregnant mother exposed to the bombings.
The decision to drop the A-bomb in 1945 was motivated and rationalized as vengeance for Pearl Harbor as well as a desire to limit American casualties in the Pacific theater. In a twisted bit of irony, what mankind learned from these events was that what ended one war had the future potential to incite a conflict that would be the end of civilization.
The peace sign is an internationally recognized symbol of anti-nuclear sentiment. In the U.S. it is synonymous with the hippie culture of the ‘60s and opposition to the Vietnam War. But what does this circle with an inverted, three-pronged claw literally symbolize? Is it a plane flying overhead--the fateful flight of the Enola Gay--perhaps? A man standing with hands splayed at both sides in utter defeat? Or is it a broken and inverted cross, symbolic of man turning his back on his creator in acts of war?
In 1958, a designer and conscientious objector named Gerald Holtom was commissioned by the British organization, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for a logo to be used for an upcoming march against a center for nuclear weapon development called, Aldermaston. The symbol was derived from the naval flag code, or semaphore letters of “N” and “D,” for “nuclear disarmament,” layered upon each other—the superimposition meant as a message against the military.
British anti-nuclear activist and artist, Eric Austin made the first badges or buttons from white clay with the symbol depicted in black. The distribution of the badges to fellow activists included a written explanation that after nuclear annihilation, these tiny pieces of fired pottery would be among the few human artifacts to survive the ensuing fires.
The buttons were first imported from England to the United States in 1960 by a college freshman for the Student Peace Union. The CND logo was never copyrighted, and quickly became a moniker for nonviolence and peace on everything from clothing and jewelry to tattoos and graffiti, which enforced its worldwide recognition. Soon after the logo was adopted by U.S. civil rights marchers, further embedding it in our culture.
In Hinduism, the “split Y” is the mystic letter “Aum,” used in religious chanting. An ancient Teutonic letter, or rune that meant “death,” also bears an undeniable resemblance to the mark enclosed in the circle of the peace sign. As an appendage of the anti-nuclear message, in the 1980s, the peace sign with a world globe became a logo for the environmental movement.
Holtom, as the originator admits his intentions of mimicking the symbol for anarchism, or a capital “A” enclosed in a circle, as well as his early sketches depicting himself, standing with hands out to each side in despair, as elements of his creative process. In Eric Austin’s interpretation accompanying his badges, he claimed the design represented this same gesture of despair synonymous with the death of man, and the circle signifying the unborn child.
The communist leanings of the CND later tarnished the peace symbol’s image. The South African government under Apartheid made an official attempt to have it banned. A design so entrenched with meaning and potential interpretation, it was condemned by American fundamentalists, as a satanic symbol--due to its similarity to an inverted cross, a symbol of pagan culture. Odd about this argument is the fact that ancient Christian symbols documented in the Bible—a circle representing “earth” as “waste or void” and the inner crow’s foot as “God reaches down with the gift of salvation”—signify more the intention of its designer than otherwise.
With the current state of our world, its people engaged in acts of retaliation and bloodshed, it is difficult to imagine peace. A simple circle with lines pointing down causes its own disagreements about meaning and explanation, affiliation and desecration, but ultimately reminds us to hope for that potential.
