Changing the World One Story at a Time
On Wednesday, May 22, 2024, I had the remarkable experience of spending time with former Rocky Flats workers to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Mother's Day Fire at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. On Mother's Day, 1969, I was eleven years old. I was having holiday brunch with my mom, dad, and three siblings (age 8, 7, and 4) at a local restaurant with an outdoor patio. It was a beautiful sunny day. We had no idea there was an uncontrolled fire at the secret nuclear weapons plant just a few miles away. We had no idea that a radioactive cloud, loaded with plutonium, was traveling over our heads.
One of the costs of nuclear secrecy is the health of workers and local residents. I was reminded of this, once again, when I had (yet another) scare a couple weeks ago with thyroid cancer. Plutonium is a known cause of cancer, as well as many other issues including autoimmune disorders. It can take years, sometimes decades, for a cancer to occur. As one of the surviving employees of the Mother’s Day fire said on Wednesday, “Our bodies are ticking time bombs.”
But back to 1969, now referred to as “The Day We Almost Lost Denver.” Thanks to unbelievably brave firefighters, not only my family but all of Denver was saved from a catastrophic nuclear disaster – later termed by the Department of Energy (DOE) as a potential “Chernobyl-like event.” In my book Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, I profile two men in particular, William Dennison and Stan Skinger, who were not firefighters but security guards who happened to show up for work just as the fire started. Untrained in firefighting, they eventually contained the fire after hours of life-threatening work. More than two dozen employees were contaminated that day, and offsite plutonium contamination is still present today. (Plutonium, you may recall, has a very long half-life.)
It’s important to remember and write about these stories, and I will always be grateful to those who risked their lives that day. I would not be here to tell the story if it wasn’t for them.
But it’s important to remember other stories, too. Several years ago, I was fortunate to work with Hibakusha Stories, an organization dedicated to telling the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. (In Japanese, atomic bomb survivors are referred to as “hibakusha,” which literally translates as “bomb-affected-people.”) The stories and voices of hibakusha are powerful and lead us to consider the broader implications of living in a world with nuclear weapons.
In a collaboration with Youth Arts New York, Hibakusha Stories presented programs to thousands of students in New York City high schools and at Stony Brook University. I was fortunate to be a part of this. I had the chance to work with several hibakusha, including Reiko Yamada and Shigeko Sasamori. Other presenters included Clifton Truman Daniel, the grandson of former U.S. president Harry S. Truman. We talked about how the bomb was designed and created in the U.S., particularly at Rocky Flats; the decision to drop the bomb; and the experiences of those who survived the bombings. It was a powerful experience for me.
One of the hibakusha I met was Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Now in her eighties, Setsuko has dedicated her life to peace, and she helped bring about an important movement to help end nuclear weapons around the world. Her work, along with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), led to the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Setsuko’s personal story is profoundly moving, and it has now been made into a film. I’m so pleased to announce that you can see this film on PBS, starting this weekend.
Storytelling matters! As writers, I believe we have a responsibility to bear witness to the world, whether it’s in literary nonfiction, fiction, or poetry. Art can send a powerful message.
The focus of Hibakusha Stories is to tell the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, Indigenous Peoples, Downwinders, nuclear test survivors, and other affected communities – including Rocky Flats – to take action. You can learn more about Hibakusha Stories here, and you can learn more about Rocky Flats Downwinders here.
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