WHILE we have just marked 80 years since Victory in Europe, I think more about how it is 80 years since our government, together with our American allies, dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it will be 80 years since my paternal grandfather, a rubber estate manager, died of malnutrition in Changi Internment Camp, Singapore, aged 56.

I visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1976.

I was 25 and felt appalled and guilty that we could have wrecked such inhumane devastation, with suffering continuing for decades.

In Hiroshima I met and spoke to citizens who presented me with a book “Hiroshima in Memoriam and Today” to thank me for agreeing to be photographed laying flowers at the war memorial for their civic publication.

spent half the night writing to my MP and to the Prime Minister. Harold Wilson had only just resigned and I wasn’t sure who the PM was.

A few days later, while sharing a room in a Youth Hostel with a group of young women who spoke English well, I was asked, “Do people in Britain know about the Bomb?”

I dithered in my reply, trying to cover up by saying what I knew, later realising that I hadn’t answered what they wanted to know.

I was ashamed that people in UK know so little.

“Think it possible that you may be mistaken” (Advices and Queries 17) is part of how Quakers try to live, doing all we can to treat others fairly and with respect.

Only this way will there be peace and justice in our desperate world.

On behalf of Exeter Quakers, I am organising two half hour vigils, with simple home made “Hiroshima” “Nagasaki” banners, so that we can stand together, in silence, with possibly some words if people feel moved to speak briefly from their hearts.

In Crediton, Wednesday August 6, from 8am to 8.30am on St Lawrence Green for Hiroshima Day, and in Exeter on Saturday, August 9 from 10.45am to 11.15am on the wide steps west of the main door of Exeter Cathedral, with permission from the Dean, on Nagasaki Day.

On both occasions the percussionist of Crediton Town Band, will crash a cymbal at the time of the bomb, 8.15am in Crediton, 11.02am in Exeter.

I am grateful to her and to Crediton Town Band.

There will be more publicity nearer the time. Please come.

Laura Conyngham

Crediton