A new exhibition is highlighting the long-lasting impacts of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Source: The Catholic Leader.
The Hanly Room in the precinct of St Stephen’s Cathedral, Brisbane, has opened its doors to a free exhibition commemorating the bombings.
The exhibition, Hiroshima and Nagasaki Never Again, opened on Monday and will close today at 4pm.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945, then Nagasaki three days later.
The attacks killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people and the radiation continued to affect survivors’ health for years.
Brisbane Archdiocesan Ministries’ Emma Beach said she was advocating for the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
In 2021, Catholic bishops in Australia urged the government to sign the treaty, but as of 2025 it still had not.
“I’m a big believer that peace is an action, it’s not just a noun or something that we experience; it’s something we do,” Ms Beach said.
Ms Beach, who is Brisbane Archdiocese’s Catholic Justice and Peace Commission executive officer, said she hoped the exhibition, spanning nearly 200 items covering the atrocities of war, would move people towards actions of peace.
Donna Weeks’s visit to Hiroshima as a 20-year-old set in motion her research work on international relations.
“I’ve sort of dedicated myself since then to working out why leaders, when they get the power, they don’t use it for good. For them, the idea of security is to build up a big defence.”
Now, as a member of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, Ms Weeks said she hoped visitors would be moved to make real change.
“Out of the people who come through here, if 10 per cent then step up and do something, we’ve probably achieved more than we’ve anticipated,” she said.
Mercy Sister Wendy Flannery, a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, said the exhibition featured samples of peace activities in the Brisbane area.
“The whole aim of the exhibition is to promote peacemaking and peacebuilding,” she said.
FULL STORY
Never again – new exhibit a reminder of gruesome impacts of nuclear war (By Kymberlee Gomes, The Catholic Leader)
