Mark Babson finds long walks are a good way to get to know people.
That belief has motivated him for years to organize a small annual Salem tradition: one leg of the Northwest Interfaith Peace Walk for a Nuclear-Free Future.
“It’s good to make it real, spend some time with something and realize this affects real people,” he said.
The walk has happened annually for almost two decades, led by Senji Kanaeda, a Buddhist priest living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
It occurs near the anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
Salem’s portion is a 12-mile walk starting at 8 a.m. Friday, July 28, at the fountains on the north side of the Oregon Capitol grounds. Walkers will stop for lunch at Geer Park and finish at Salem Mission Faith Ministries, a church at 4308 Hillrose St. S.E.
Drinks, lunch and car transportation for people needing it are provided.
Participants walk through communities in Oregon and Washington, ending in the Seattle area and walkers often visit sites significant in U.S. nuclear history and policy.
Previous iterations of the annual walk have included legs traveling to the Hanford site in Richland, Washington, where plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was made; and Naval Base Kitsap, on Washington’s Puget Sound, which houses hundreds of nuclear warheads.
Babson has organized the Salem walk for about a decade and said Salem is tied to U.S. nuclear testing because of the large Marshallese population here.
Many Marshallese people were displaced by U.S. nuclear tests, which began in 1946 at Bikini Atoll.
On March 1, 1954, the U.S. tested its first hydrogen bomb at the atoll. The day is still recognized in the Marshall Islands as Remembrance Day.
“They weren’t notified that the test was being planned. Fallout fell on them for several days, they were evacuated later,” Babson said.
He got to know many Salem Marshallese people when working as a bilingual aide at South Salem High School. Though he only spoke English and Spanish, he ended up working with Pacific Islander students as well.
“They just assigned me to random people who didn’t speak English,” he said. That piqued his interest in participating in the walk, which he said draws about 10 to 15 people annually in Salem.
Salem’s walk will conclude at 5 p.m. with a program at the church featuring two Marshallese Salemites from Bikini Atoll, though neither was alive during the U.S. nuclear tests there. The program will also discuss nuclear weapons policy and the history of the peace walk.
Babson said anyone is welcome to join for either the walk or the program. The walk’s goal is to forge connections in the peace community, he said.
“Meeting other people is significant, and talking with them,” he said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
