Nagasaki Day Vigil at Lockheed in Sunnyvale

A group of dedicated protesters gathered at Sunnyvale's Bay Trail at 6:30am on August 9th to greet the sun's rising, then marched to the Lockheed main gate at 7:00am. The date was the 66th anniverary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

This group meets every 4th Friday beginning at 12:10 pm at Lockheed main gate, Mathilda & Java Dr., in Sunnyvale. They welcome everyone's presence in saying “NO” to the nuclear madness that is escalating in our world.

On August 9th, they made short presentations about Lockheed-manufactured Trident missiles' nuclear capabilities and delivered a letter to a Lockheed representative.

Part of the text of that letter follows:

We chose this direct method of delivery because we hoped to draw attention to the purpose of our regular vigils at your gates...We continue our call for you to ponder and recognize the monstrous capacity of the weapons program you manage as prime contractor for the Trident II D5 missile.

Two reasons require us to be here today: first, it is now 66 years since our country dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, larger in power than the uranium bomb that hit Hiroshima.  Second, we remind you and all supporters of nuclear weapons that the power of that 21 kiloton Nakasaki bomb is multiplied 181 times in just one D5 missile fully armed with W88 warheads.  Since each Trident submarine in the fleet can carry 24 of those missiles, one submarine alone can potentially carry weapons 3,800 times more powerful than the Nagasaki bomb. Recent arms reductions do little to limit that immense power to destroy.

We ask you again to question how the production of these missiles can be seen as morally justified. And how can the threat of this massive overkill be an effective deterrent to attack by the kinds of enemies we face in this country today.

Perhaps you would say that if you don’t make these weapons, another company would. It is beyond your control. But you do have a choice.  Profit or shareholder value can’t justify continued nuclear weapons production.  The Nuremberg Principles (cf. IV) state that “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government does not relieve him of responsibility under International law, provided that a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” 

We would like to meet with you to engage in dialogue regarding [our] reasons... .  We all share the same planet, facing a somber choice in each of our lives to end our complicity with production of horrendous weapons of mass destruction.