Hiroshima Day Candle Float preparations

Posted: 15th July 2021

Salisbury CND has a long tradition of staging a candle float on Hiroshima Day.  Traditionally this has been a large public event on the river flowing through the centre of Salisbury.

https://www.facebook.com/salisburyjournal/videos/salisbury-cnd-hiroshima-candle-float-2018/175921121…

Last year Covid intervened and we made a film instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQ07ylZma4

Our links with Hiroshima have been growing over the years and last year we were privileged to have a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima sending us good wishes for our candle float and many wise thoughts.

This year we have received a wonderful parcel from Hiroshima, with 5 of their lanterns in it, together with another letter from the Mayor.  Covid is again making us cautious about a large public event.  We plan to make another film, celebrating the words of the Mayor and the symbolism of our lanterns and those from Hiroshima floating together.  Our team has already been disrupted by Covid contacts, but we will do our very best to commemorate this important day.

To see the gifts we have been sent, please look at the document below and share in the feeling of the links between us that they represent.  The writing on the white lantern means “Peace” and “Ties”.  The paper of the white lantern is recycled from the paper used to make cranes in Japan in previous years.  The Mayor’s letter is also printed on this paper.


Our special thanks go to Hideko Okamoto, who arranged for all this to be sent over from Hiroshima.  I hope the film we make will be a suitable tribute to the warm links that exist between our two groups as well as a profound commemoration of the days the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We have in mind all victims of those events and all who have suffered from nuclear weapons and their testing, throughout the world.