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the Golden Rule will sail again, restored to its role as America’s most important peace ship

“……….The remarkable story of the Golden Rule began with Albert Bigelow, a retired World War II U.S. naval commander.  Appalled by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he became a Quaker and, in 1955, working with the American Friends Service Committee, sought to deliver a petition against nuclear testing to the White House.  Rebuffed by government officials, Bigelow and other pacifists organized a small group, Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons, to employ nonviolent resistance in the struggle against the Bomb.  After the U.S. government announced plans to set off nuclear bomb blasts near Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands―an island chain governed by the United States as a “trust territory” for the native people―Bigelow and other pacifists decided to sail a 30-foot protest vessel, the Golden Rule, into the nuclear testing zone.  Explaining their decision, Bigelow declared:  “All nuclear explosions are monstrous, evil, unworthy of human beings.”

In January 1958, Bigelow and three other crew members wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower, announcing their plans.  As might be expected, the U.S. government was quite displeased, and top officials from the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Navy conferred anxiously on how to cope with the pacifist menace.  Eventually, the administration decided to ban entry into the test zone.

Thus, after Bigelow and his crew sailed the Golden Rule from the West Coast to Honolulu, a U.S. federal court issued an injunction barring the continuation of its journey to Eniwetok.  Despite the legal ramifications, the pacifists set sail.  Arrested on the high seas, they were brought back to Honolulu, tried, convicted, and placed on probation.  Then, intrepid as ever, they set out once more for the bomb test zone and were arrested, tried, and—this time―sentenced to prison terms.

Meanwhile, their dramatic voyage inspired an outpouring of popular protest.  Antinuclear demonstrations broke out across the United States.  The newly-formed National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy went on the offensive.  Moreover, an American anthropologist, Earle Reynolds, along with his wife Barbara and their two children, continued the mission of the Golden Rule on board their sailboat, the Phoenix.  In July 1958, they entered the nuclear testing zone.  That August, facing a storm of hostile public opinion, President Eisenhower announced that the United States was halting its nuclear tests while preparing to negotiate a test ban with the Soviet Union.

Even as test ban negotiations proceeded fitfully, leading to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and, ultimately, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, the Golden Rule dropped out of sight.  Then, in early 2010, the vessel was discovered, wrecked and sunk in northern California’s Humboldt Bay.  Contacted by historians about preserving theGolden Rule for posterity, officials at the Smithsonian Museum proved uninterested.  But peace activists recognized the vessel’s significance.  Within a short time, local chapters of Veterans for Peace established the Golden Rule Project to restore the battered ketch.

Thanks to volunteer labor and financial contributions from these U.S. veterans and other supporters, the ship has been largely rebuilt, and funds are currently being raised for the final stage of the project.  Veterans for Peace hope to take the ship back to sea in 2014 on its new mission: “educating future generations on the importance of the ocean environment, the risks of nuclear technology, and the need for world peace.”

As a result, the Golden Rule will sail again, restored to its role as America’s most important peace ship. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/09/americas-peace-ship/

Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany.  His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going on at UAardvark?