Peace ship crews reunite in the Delta
The Golden Rule first set sail in 1958, with Capt. Albert Bigelow, William Huntington, Orion Sherwood and George Willoughby, Quaker peace activists, attempting to sail into a nuclear bomb testing zone in the Marshall Islands.
The 30-foot wooden sailboat was stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard, and all four men were arrested and jailed in Honolulu. Inspired by the Quaker activists’ courage, Dr. Earle L. Reynolds and his family, including his daughter Jessica, decided to complete the Golden Rule’s mission in their own 50-foot boat, the Phoenix of Hiroshima.
Jessica was only 14 at the time, and would spend a total of 10 years aboard the Phoenix, from its maiden voyage in 1954 until she left for Tokyo to attend college in 1964.
Jessica, along with her husband, Jerry Renshaw, organized a reunion of the two crews at the Tower Park Marina west of Lodi in the Delta, offering tours of the Golden Rule with the help of the Veterans for Peace (VFP) Golden Rule Project.
Jan Passion, current skipper of the Golden Rule, took guests on the sailboat around the Mokelumne River on Thursday and Friday.
Helen Jaccard, manager of the VFP Golden Rule Project, accompanied the Friday tour that took guests on a one-mile cruise along the Mokelumne River. Jaccard lent a hand in painting the Golden Rule, which was restored by VFP starting in 2010, before the refurbished vessel set sail once again on June 20, 2015.
During Friday’s excursion, the Golden Rule was stopped briefly when it was gently aground, although the crew was able to rectify the situation quickly and safely, aided by the passengers moving to the bow to help balance the weight.
“If you haven’t been aground, you haven’t been around,” said Michael Matthay, crew member, reassuring the passengers with his lighthearted remark.
Today, Passion will transport a dive team to a spot near the eastern shore of Tyler Island on the Mokelumne River, where the Phoenix sunk in 2010. The dive team will first use cameras to attempt to find the exact location of the Phoenix, Passion explains, before a salvage team attempts to retrieve the vessel from its underwater resting place.
The Phoenix was built by Dr. Reynolds near Hiroshima, where he had been sent to study the effects of the first atomic bomb on the surviving children’s growth and development. Jessica recalls meeting several of those survivors, one of whom had the left side of his face melted, leaving only a small nub where his left ear used to be.
“These people went through hell and we caused it. Their message was, and our message still is, ‘Don’t let this happen to anyone ever again,’” said Jessica.
In addition to Japanese children in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, Jessica also mentioned U.S. service men who were subject to nuclear weapons testing. She said that men were taken to the Marshall Islands in T-shirts, shorts and sunglasses, and were given sunscreen mixed with iodine.
Many of these men, she said, were later diagnosed with cancer caused by the radiation, although she claims that the U.S. has yet to compensate those men or their families, or even admit responsibility for their disease.
“Our own veterans, our own people, are dying from atomic testing,” said Jessica.
In part due to the amount of attention drawn by the Reynolds family’s act of civil disobedience in 1958, President John F. Kennedy, along with the United Kingdom and USSR, signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned the testing of nuclear weapons in air, space or water, but still allowing such tests to take place underground. Despite this initial victory, Jessica has continued her crusade to end the testing and use of nuclear weapons across the world.
“We know how they work, there is no reason to keep testing nuclear weapons,” said Jessica, who then added, “We’ve practically turned the Southwest into an atomic wasteland.”