Long Island peace groups call for nuclear disarmament action on 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

Fewer and fewer Long Islanders remember firsthand when the United States dropped atomic bombs on a pair of Japanese cities during World War II, but many still honor the more than 200,000 killed by telling world leaders: "never again."

Like many grassroots organizations, the South Country Peace Group hosted a community forum recognizing the impact of the United States' decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, 80 years ago Wednesday. The United States commenced a second nuclear attack on Aug. 8, 1945, in Nagasaki, Japan.

Two dozen Long Islanders from the peace group and other community organizations sang along to anthems of peace such as John Lennon’s "Imagine" and heard poetry reminding them of the consequences of the revolutionary but devastating 20th century technology that killed so many overseas and rippled through their lives here.

"When I was a kid, growing up in Queens ... they gave grade school kids dog tags" to identify their bodies in the event of an explosion "because of the fear of a nuclear apocalypse," Karl Grossman, a professor at SUNY Old Westbury, recalled outside the Bellport Community Center before the event was underway.

Grossman, the keynote speaker of the event, urged that the time is now for the United States, Russia and other major nuclear powers to sign the United Nations’ ratified Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as the Doomsday Clock is only 89 seconds to midnight. The symbolic creation of the Chicago-based nonprofit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists indicates how close the world is to global catastrophes. In 1963, the year following the Cuban missile crisis, the clock stood at 12 minutes to midnight.

Signing the treaty is "frankly, a matter of life and death," Grossman said.

"I think it’s very important that nuclear weapons be outlawed, be abolished, just like chemical weapons were abolished after World War I," Grossman said. "These gases and these chemical weapons that were used on the battlefield in Europe in World War I were deemed so horrific, there were a succession of treaties"

Since its inception in 1982, the South Country Peace Group has pushed for nuclear disarmament, a matter members of the group believe is even more necessary today as war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine. Chairperson Michelle Santantonio called on the two dozen gathered on Wednesday — and any Long Islanders worried about the threat of nuclear war — to urge their members of Congress to sign resolutions that call on the United States to steer itself and all other nations away from nuclear weaponry. The bill calls on President Donald Trump to "actively pursue a world free of nuclear weapons as a national security imperative and lead a global effort to move the world back from the nuclear brink."

"The ordinary person can certainly communicate with their elected representatives that are supposed to be ... wisely spending our tax dollars and let them know ‘we don’t want to keep spending money on nuclear weapons,’” Santantonio said.