Nuclear supporters infiltrate Hiroshima event.
The gray Toyota was out of its element. A singular voice of dissent among the liberal bumper sticker brigade parked next to Ashley Pond.
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Stop the War Machine.
Love Overcomes Fear.
Nuke 'em All.
One of those messages clearly didn't belong.
But "Nuke 'em All" wasn't the only missive scrawled with white liquid wax on the canopy of the Toyota. The truck also was adorned with "Nuclear Power Straight Up," "Bomb Support Squad" and hastily drawn renditions of a falling missile and a skull and crossbones.
Subtle, it wasn't. But the driver of the pickup-18-year-old Jonathan Roybal-wasn't particularly interested in subtlety. There is little room for nuance when you're outnumbered 100 to one.
Roybal-along with friends and fellow Los Alamos High School graduates Jimmy Doyle and Scott Hardy-was certainly voicing the minority opinion among those gathered at Ashley Pond Park in Los Alamos on Aug. 6 to call for nuclear disarmament and to commemorate the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago.
"It's not like we're saying that [Hiroshima] was a good thing," Doyle said. "We're obviously not advocating for 200,000 people to die. But we did what we had to do to end the war and save American lives."
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It's possible something could be lost in the translation of the "Nuke 'em All" on Roybal's truck or the "Go to hell hippies" on one of the handmade T-shirts the teens sported. Either way it didn't have a huge impact on the hundreds who had gathered for the all-day event organized by the Los Alamos Study Group.
"I don't know how much they really understand about it," LASG volunteer Elyzabeth Stow said. "They're certainly sticking out like a sore thumb, but I don't see that type of group getting a rise out of anyone here. This event is not about reacting to violence with violence."
No, this event was about sunflowers. The international sign for peace. Prominently on display in the hair of little girls in summer dresses and in blue plastic buckets lining the shores of the pond. Musicians stood on the stage (adorned with a "Stop the New Bomb Factory") and sang self-penned songs like "Uranium Blues" when activists and atomic bomb survivors weren't denouncing the horrors of nuclear war.
"It's a good idea to get rid of all nuclear weapons," Doyle said. "But getting rid of ours doesn't do anything other than put us at a disadvantage. North Korea will still have them. Iran will still have them. China will still have them. The deterrence factor is what's keeping us safe."
Roybal and his pals insisted their purpose was to open a dialogue. They didn't find many takers for spirited conversation, but they did find kindred spirits sitting across the street from the Green Party and Veterans for Peace booths in a tent for the Los Alamos Education Group.
The LAEG was started in 1995 as a pro-nuclear reaction to the LASG. A sign sitting in front of their tent read, "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima."
"We all abhor the demonizing of the bomb," 80-year-old LAEG volunteer Stephen Stoddard said. "The bomb ended the war and saved lives. I think it saved as many Japanese lives as it did American lives that would have been lost had the invasion [of Japan] gone on as planned."
Stoddard, a World War II veteran and former employee at LANL, was no stranger to the opposition hunkered down across the street. The two groups have been butting heads for a decade, but he says their relationship is nonetheless affable.
Stoddard and the LAEG were there to make the message more balanced, if not more palatable. No one else talks about Pearl Harbor, Stoddard said. No one talks about the treatment of American prisoners of war. Which is why he was sitting in the rain at Ashley Pond to represent the opposing view. His reward was seeing young folks like Roybal, Doyle and Hardy score one for parity.
"I don't think we've seen so many young people come up and tell us 'Thank you for what you did.' That's a good feeling for an old veteran like me," Stoddard said.
Roybal and his pals-who will all be off to college in a couple of weeks-were happy to oblige. And they had their say.
"[Hiroshima] was bad," Roybal said. "But it wasn't as bad as losing our freedom. Freedom has a big price. But it's worth the cost."
