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58 The GUIDE to YELLOW SPRINGS 2019 – 20 YELLOW SPRINGS NEWS facebook.com/YellowSpringsScienceCastle cleverclue@gmail.com Amy Magnus * 767-2167 * • • innovative playful nurturing since 2014 the village serving makerspace science café and A pop up e a lt s prin ien s s e s w oÊ ll e y Home Decor & Gifts That Make Your Heart Happy! 138 Dayton St., YS | 937.416.7569 | thebluebutterfly138 This article was originally published in 2015. By LAUREN HEATON T he year 2015 marks the 70th year since the U.S. dropped the first and only atomic bombs in wartime history on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's also the 50th anniversary of the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima and the 40th anniversary of the Wilming- ton College Peace Resource Center that were both founded on a commitment to stopping such devastating warfare. Yellow Springs has a connection to the stories of all three events, through Earle and Barbara Reynolds, who lived in the village in the 1970s. The Reynolds’ actions for peace came out of the harrowing experience of war. In 1951, anthropologist Earle Reynolds, a research faculty member of the Fels Institute for the Study of Human Devel- opment established by Antioch College, went to Japan with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to study the effects of atomic radiation on humans. Barbara and their three children went with him, and were horrified by the experiences of the hibakusha, the Japanese term for atomic bomb survivor, according to Tanya Maus, a Yellow Springs resident who now directs the Peace Resource Center. The Reynolds stayed for three years NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT ACTIVISM— When war inspires lives of peace before choosing another path. Earle built a boat, the “Phoenix,” which they sailed with several hibakusha with the aim of educating people about the human face of war. They sailed to nuclear testing sites in Russia and the South Pacific, and con - fronted U.S. authorities who were testing weapons near the Marshall Islands. Earle was arrested, but when his jail sentence was commuted in 1961, Reynolds told New York Times reporter Brooks Atkinson, “The moral question is the simplest. While the mass killing of civilians may be justified under the laws of war or from a military or political point of view, it cannot be justi - fied morally.” Barbara especially absorbed the victims’ stories, which racked her activist spirit. Though she and Earle divorced, Bar- bara continued to travel with hibakusha, SUBMITTED PHOTOS Former Yellow Springs resident and peace activist Barbara Reynolds, center, is shown here in 1964 with some of the 24 survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who traveled with her in the World Peace Study Mission, aimed at educating nations about the dangers of the atomic bomb. The Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College, which Reynolds founded and which is now led by villager Tanya Maus, at right, is dedicated to “bearing witness to the historical experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing survivors and the legacies of nonviolent activists touched by the horrors of nuclear war.” encouraging them to share their stories. In 1965 she founded the World Friend- ship Center, a peace education retreat in Hiroshima that is still active today. Ten years later, she established the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College, a Quaker school with a peacemaking and reconciliation mission. The center is believed to house the Western world’s largest collection of reference materi- als related to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including much of the Reynolds’ archives of their voy- ages, survivor testimonies, and material related to anti-nuclear peace activism, the impacts of nuclear testing and the stories of the Hiroshima Maidens, a highly pub- licized group of girlhood hibakusha who came to the U.S. in 1955 for reconstruc- tive surgery. ♦