OSU doctoral student Linda Richards shares Linus Pauling's dedication to peace. (contributed photo)

On a quiet November afternoon, Linda Richards sat down with her origami paper, offering out paper and guidance to make a peace crane. She folded as she spoke about her recent visit to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki official 65th commemorations in Japan, and her life mission of bringing awareness to global peace and nuclear disarmament.

When Richards was 9 she opened her June 1972 issue of Life and saw a picture of Kim Phuc running away after being napalmed. The image affected her so greatly that she has dedicated her life to learning more about the relationship between science, warfare, and for the last 25 years, she has been engaging the public about nuclear issues and conflict resolution in a array of environments, from the classroom to the streets. In 1986, Richards walked across the country from, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., with the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament.

“After the march I vowed to discuss and talk to someone every day about these issues. In the process I became a nuclear historian,” Richards said.

She is currently a student in the history of science Ph.D. program at Oregon State University. During her second year in the program, she designed and co-taught a course on nuclear history. In 2009–2010 she was awarded an Oregon University System Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leadership Fellowship for International Research to study nuclear history. During this summer, Richards represented the Mayors of both Ashland and Corvallis at the official Commemorations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Over the years she has organized and facilitated the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemorations held in Ashland. Richards has yet to miss a commemoration.

Richards meets with Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima in his office. (contributed photo)

“I was told that I couldn’t teach this subject until I’ve been to Hiroshima,” Richards explained. “Going to the commemorations allowed me to learn from the survivors. It was such an honor to be able to represent the people of Corvallis in Japan.”

Before Richards could go to Japan for the commemoration she was told visitors bring 1,000 peace cranes. The peace cranes are supposed to fulfill the prayers for peace for those who have died.

“If I didn’t have those 1,000 peace cranes I just wasn’t going to be able to go,” Richards said. “I was very fortunate to be put into contact with a professional peace crane folder here in Corvallis; Diane Smith. Diane helped me gather people to spend a day folding peace cranes. Within three hours we had 900 peace cranes. I’m so grateful to the all the people who helped me fold the peace cranes”

Richards has a B.S. in science and math, with a minor in peace studies from Southern Oregon University, as well as a master’s in nonprofit management. She is a certified Oregon Mediator and a certified American Friends Service Committee Non-Violence and Direct Action trainer.

Last year she collaborated with the OSU Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics program to collect oral histories of nuclear scientists (see the blog at: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/nuclearhistory/), and she toured the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with the Oregon Department of Energy and Oregon Hanford Waste Board. Richards is building the first-ever curriculum for a history course about nuclear disarmament and nuclear science specifically designed for Oregon State students.
Richards said she wants to cover all sides of the issue, which includes teaching the history of war and disarmament.

Richards and friends fold peace cranes. (contributed photo)

Over her years of research Richards has worked with many different people from all different backgrounds, including men and women in the armed forces who have helped with her research and studies.

“Unexpected friendships have a power all on their own,” Richards said. “If a student follows their passion then life may not work out the way they thought it would, but it’s always for the better.”

View more of Richards work at her website http://atomicvigil.net.

~ Makenzie Marineau

Linda Richards, a graduate student in History of Science.

Fifty years ago Oregon born OSU graduate and 1954 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Linus Pauling with his wife Ava Helen, demanded the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union end nuclear bomb explosion tests, arguing that the fallout from the weapons contaminated the globe with dangerous radioactivity. The Paulings presented a petition to UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld with more than 11,000 signatures, seeking to end nuclear weapons testing as a first step toward total nuclear disarmament.

Later that same year, Linus Pauling and 17 others filed a lawsuit against the Atomic Energy Commission and the Dept. of Defense to end nuclear testing. He also published the seminal book No More War! In 1983, he wrote a new preface to the 25th anniversary edition of the book, which reads in part as follows:

“Twenty-five years ago the message of this book was that the development of great nuclear weapons requires that war be given up, for all time – that the forces that can destroy the world must not be used.

This is still the message of the book.

The danger of world destruction in a nuclear war is greater than ever before…I hope that when the year 2008 arrives, after another 25 years, the world will have survived and the human race still will be here (although I probably shall no longer be living) but that there will be no need to republish the book, because the goal of world peace will have been achieved, militarism and nuclear weapons will have been brought under control and the threat of world destruction will finally have been abolished.”

No More War! approached peace and disarmament in much the same way that Pauling approached science: Pauling used his genius to see the connections between the chemical bond, molecules, biology, physics and genetics to explain the dangers of nuclear weapons, radiation and fallout.

Pauling also presented alternatives to violence to build genuine, lasting security by developing systems of coexistence, human rights and international law.

The final chapter outlined his wish that resources be contributed not to weapons, but to understanding and eliminating the conditions that lead to war by researching what creates peace. He proposed, among other things, a UN World Peace Research Organization.

The book contains appendices that are actually a history of actions and petitions that contributed to the attainment of the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, including the famous Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955, the last petition signed by Einstein before his death. That manifesto ends with a plea: “There lies before us, if we choose continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom.

Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”

The day that the Atmospheric Test ban Treaty took effect — Oct. 10, 1963 — Pauling was announced as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Ava and Linus Pauling Papers in the OSU Valley Library contain more than 500,000 documents and artifacts of their lives and is the largest such collection anywhere of a scientist. The materials were donated by Linus Pauling in 1986 to OSU in hopes that his and Ava Helen’s work for a better world where human needs are met would be continued.

Masterfully catalogued by archivist Cliff Mead, researcher Chris Petersen and a staff of honor students, the papers are organized to achieve maximum impact and access with vibrant, interactive Web pages.

The Ava and Linus Pauling Papers illuminate Pauling’s ability to connect diverse concepts to find likely unifying theories, using a stochastic approach to truth, as described by his biographer Tom Hager: “Pauling used a leap of courage to make an educated guess.”

Pauling believed in generating lots of ideas that could be discarded to find one that is likely to be correct, and it is with this confidence he has left so much behind for us to continue his work.

Link to a documentary history of Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement:

http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/peace/index.html

View actual documents from 1945 debate on nuclear weapons that still rings true today:

http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/peace/papers/peace4.007.3-statement-19451106.html

A three-minute video of Linus Pauling addressing the dangers of atomic power, and additional information relating to Pauling’s book: No More War!

http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/peace/narrative/page29.html

Linda Richards is a master’s degree candidate in the History of Science program at OSU, as well as a graduate teaching assistant.