December 7, 1941 continues to live in infamy as one of the most devastating days in American History. The Attack on Pearl Harbor rivals only the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, and August 24, 1814, when the British burned Washington, DC in the War of 1812.
Every year, we remember the 2,403 Americans that died that fateful day and the additional 400,000 Americans that died as a result of WW2.
By August 1945, weapons technology had advanced dramatically, with the American atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ flattening buildings up to 1.2 miles away. Today’s thermonuclear bombs use the fission principles of atomic bombs to trigger a much larger and more destructive fusion reaction in their payload.
An attack similar to Pearl Harbor, if it were to occur today, would be exponentially disastrous. A nuclear attack on a large metropolitan area would be devastating.
To confront these realities, the World Peace Council was founded in 1949 and APIC’s predecessor, the Peace Information Center, was founded in 1951.
During this time, McCarthyites in the U.S. State Department labeled advocates for peace and nuclear disarmament as Soviet agents, as these policies aligned with the USSR. Despite this, over 2.5 million Americans and 273 million globally signed the Stockholm Appeal, an absolute ban on atomic weapons. Nobel-winning scientist Albert Einstein, actors and songwriters like Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, and hundreds of thousands of American workers were among those that signed the petition.
The American Peace Information Center is proud to continue the legacy of these organizations and the Stockholm Appeal.
There is not a day more fitting than Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day to say that Peace is Patriotic and that the United States must prove itself as a global leader by beginning the steps of global nuclear disarmament.
