A Horsham interfaith group is inviting all to their annual ‘Remembers Hiroshima’ event at Denne Road cemetery, Horsham, on Tuesday (Aug 6).
The dedication by Horsham Interfaith Forum will open with a poem and there will be two minutes’ silence at 8.15 am, the time the bomb exploded.
The Rev Richard Boeke, 82, of Horsham, a member of the group, who this April made his fourth ‘pilgrimage’ to Hiroshima, will give haiku readings and a short talk.
A ‘Homily on Sadako’, a childhood Hiroshima bomb victim, will follow and the service will end with a ‘closing circle’, in which members will be able to share final words.
Mr Boeke said: “For some people it would be making trips again and again to Rome or Jerusalem and I consider those holy places too.
“But actually the definitive thing is that I was a US airforce chaplain back in 1955-58 during the Suez crisis.
“All 35 of our B47 bombers were landed on one of the airfields loaded with atomic weapons and I asked the pilot of the first plane - and he could tell me because he had security clearance - how powerful the bomb was and he said many times Hiroshima.
“I looked back and there were 35 planes, they had different bombs for different targets and I thought this was mutually assured destruction, which is the initials of mad.”
He added: “I’m not a strict pacifist - I’m a little like many other people, I just think the world is a special place and I don’t want to see it blown up in an atomic holocaust.”
The Denne Road cemetery event starts at 8 am Tuesday.