08/08/2026
81 years ago, the world entered the nuclear age. For IPP board member Sister Janet Peterworth, that history is part of her lived experience. Join us TONIGHT, Saturday 8/8 at 7pm for our 81st Anniversary Hiroshima–Nagasaki Commemoration in Thurman-Hutchins Park -- and read on for Sister Janet’s latest words about that day in August, 1945.
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"In 1945 I was nine years old, going on ten -- about fourth grade. It was August and I was not yet in school, and I remember being in the kitchen. Of course, all we had was radio. When it came over the radio that this bomb had been dropped on Japan, it was at that point a happy event.
Children who grew up during World War II saw many newsreels before movies, and we were very impressionable. And I was a pretty good movie goer on the weekends; we lived very close to a theater in Louisville, Kentucky. These newsreels socialized us to perceive the Germans and the Japanese as our enemies – especially the Japanese, maybe because they looked different.
I know hate is a strong word for a nine year old, but I guess that's what it was. We were socialized to hate this enemy.
Now that I think back on it, the war must have inconvenienced adults a heck of a lot more than they did kids -- but for kids, it was an inconvenience of their own because sugar was rationed. Ice cream was rationed. I remember how insignificant it sounds to me today that we could not get bubble gum, because the gum was full of sugar. We really treasured and saved our bubble gum.
And so when word came over the radio that this bomb had been dropped on this country, on these people, for us, there was great rejoicing because it was over. We had sense enough to know this must be the end of this terrible war. And so we did what happened at that time: we went into the street. I can remember very vividly having an old pan that my mother had, and a spoon. And we went out in the street and we banged on those things and we bumped around and we thought it was great.
And the thing is, it wasn't until years later that I thought of that again and realized in a different way what I was doing. I guess that's why the commemoration means so much to me. Somehow, I want to make it up, in terms of maybe guilt. It was an awful thing.
I was an adult – it was maybe forty years ago – when I took a values clarification course at Spalding University. We were asked to reflect on the atomic bomb, and that was really the first time I looked at my own relationship with that event. That was an awakening.
As a child, I don't think I realized the magnitude of it – the number of people who were killed instantly, or the effects of radiation afterward. More recently, when I saw Oppenheimer, there's a scene where everyone is cheering after the bomb is dropped. I saw it with my younger sister and she wasn't especially moved by that scene, but I was weeping.”
- Sister Janet Peterworth, as told to IPP, July 25 2026 (edited for clarity).
