Former Spokane peace activist Jim Thomas made a name for himself as a researcher who investigated the history of the Hanford nuclear site. Hanford’s role was to create plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945.
Before that, Thomas, who now lives in Seattle, had one of the most defining experiences of his life. He and 19 others walked 6,700 miles to raise awareness about the dangers of nuclear war.
Jim Thomas: We walked across the United States in 1982, starting from Seattle to D.C. and then, in 1983, we walked across Europe to Bethlehem, arriving there on Christmas Eve of 1983.
DN: The Cold War was still raging and there were worries about a possible World War III.
DN: Why did you go on this long pilgrimage?
JT: There were many reasons, I think. 1982 was one of the darkest years of the Cold War. It was the year before ABC televised “The Day After,” which really galvanized people's fears of nuclear war.
DN: “The Day After” was essentially a story about the day after a nuclear explosion.
JT: Yes, and I didn't see it because by that time we were walking across Greece, I think nearing Bethlehem. There was President Reagan and his huge nuclear weapons buildup as part of the largest peacetime expansion of U.S. military. But nuclear was a big part of that going toe-to-toe with the Soviets and the rhetoric was and the actions were becoming a great concern to people all across the United States. I mean, I knew couples who were really seriously grappling with whether or not they should have children because they didn't want their kids to grow up in a nuclear devastated landscape. So it was a concern but also I was with people who were doing something about that organizing in this peace walk.
Our eldest pilgrim was a retired Catholic priest from Michigan. His name was Father George Zabelka and during World War II he had been the Catholic chaplain to the men who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You know the pilgrimage provided an opportunity for me to get to know George. But also the other pilgrims were, deeply spiritual, deeply concerned and wanted to do something. And I think that's the other thing that ties the pilgrimage in with my Hanford work is that these were very large seemingly intractable, nuclear issues, very technical, but also wrapped up in national security and how dare citizens question that. And so both with the pilgrimage and our tight-knit group of 20 pilgrims, but also with the staff and the volunteers connected to the Hanford Education Action League (HEAL), we were taking up our role as citizens and doing something about things that gave us concern and we wanted to change those policies.
DN: What do you feel like you accomplished with that pilgrimage?
JT: Well, in general, in the towns that we went through, we gave people hope and they were just so thankful that somebody was doing something about this huge threat of nuclear war. But, at the same time, for me, the pilgrimage left me with a deep sense of the wonder of creation. We spent, you know, 8-10 hours a day walking outside in all kinds of weather and getting in touch with the rhythm of the seasons. It was wonderful.
But probably the thing that has surprised me the most and stuck with me the longest and the deepest is by meeting so many people, in red states, in blue states, most of the time when you're walking between cities, you're walking out in rural areas and and through small towns. We walked through nine other countries and people were so generous and welcoming of us and it was kind of hard some days because, you know, we were trudging oftentimes. We didn't smell the best. Sometimes we'd go maybe a whole week without a shower. Same with laundry. But, yet, people opened their homes to us, gave us food, dialogued with us and it convinced me of our common humanity and the beauty of each individual person, wherever they live on the globe.
DN: After that experience, Thomas returned to the States and began looking for what would be next in his life.
JT: I started working for the Diocese of Spokane coordinating peace and justice. But that was only a half-time position. The other half of the time, I started researching what I could with HEAL about Hanford in 1984. There was very little public information available, but both with journalists such as Karen Dorn Steele, Bob Alvarez and other environmentalists teaching us how to file a Freedom of Information Act request, as well as people with the Native American tribes in the Northwest and both Washington state and the state of Oregon all clamoring for documents. What was the history of operating Hanford. But the only thing we knew was that Hanford had produced the plutonium that was used in the bomb that was that destroyed Nagasaki.
DN: So you talked about six years with HEAL. If you look back at those six years, what would you point to as the greatest accomplishments? What did you get done during those six years?
JT: The main thing is that we successfully asserted our rights as citizens to have a meaningful role in the decisions being made about Hanford. There was the dose reconstruction study about the historical releases. There were studies about the suitability of the Hanford site being that nation's high-level waste repository. And the thing that fascinated me the most, and I kind of focused on this was digging into the history of Hanford and understanding not just what happened, but how and why.
DN: And then Karen, I think as you write, broke the story about the Green Run. In other words, the iodine put into the air and then that led to the growth of the downwinders and the development of that. That's been pretty important just in helping people understand what are the medical consequences of radiation.
JT: Yes, especially with regard to the kinds of radiation Hanford released. You mentioned the Green Run, which was the largest single release of iodine-131, radioactive iodine, into the air from Hanford, about 11,000 curies. That was in December of 1949, an intentional release. The other releases far overshadowed the amount of that because, in 1945 alone, more than a half million curies were released of iodine-131 and it was from routine operations. The plant was working as designed. They didn't have any filters for the first three years and, interestingly, what the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project found, scientists at Battelle, more than half of those half million curies were released after Japan surrendered, after there was a war emergency. I still don't have the answers to that. The satisfying answers of why they increased production after Japan surrendered.
DN: Let’s circle back to the end of Jim Thomas’s atomic pilgrimage in 1983. Much happened over the next several years to lower the threat of a nuclear holocaust.
JT: Thankfully both President Reagan and the Soviet leader by that time, Gorbachev, had saner minds and the courage to start disarming. That picked up a lot of speed in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within a few years we went from 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world to under 15,000 and, currently, there's about 12,500 nuclear weapons in the world, so much reduced. I think Humanity had a collective sigh of relief. Unfortunately, Putin invaded Ukraine the first time and annexed Crimea starting in 2014. Even under the Obama administration we started to initiate a modernization, a so-called modernization or basically updating and expanding our nuclear arsenal. Subsequent to that Putin has continued to increase his nuclear arsenals and capabilities, developing new delivery mechanisms and, unfortunately, China, which had for 50 years been content with a minimum deterrence, only about 300 nuclear weapons, basically the same amount as both France and the UK have, but it started building new silos, putting new nuclear weapons in those. Now the CIA estimates that China has between 600 and 700 nuclear warheads. So, doubling its amount and that, by the end of this decade, they'll have a thousand is the projection. So nuclear weapons are very much on the back on the front burner and they need to be in people's consciousness.
