Nagasaki Day
9th August 2025
Come celebrate New Zealand's anti-war movement.
Come commemorate 80 years of nuclear militarism.
Explore our exhibition, listen to music, inspiring talks, have a drink and a chat with people who want to work for an independent, nuclear-free Aotearoa.
Jump to: Programme Speakers Bios Exhibition Events around NZ Brain Food
Aro Valley Community Centre
48 Aro St, Wellington
(Next to The Garage Project brewery).
Contact for further details and updates:
Look back to look forward
Learn Aotearoa New Zealand's long history of anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance from 1945 until the present day.
80 years since the bombing of Japan in 1945
40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
40 years since the signing of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga).
Exhibits
The event will include an exhibition documenting the NZ Peace Movement in posters and pamphlets from August 1945 to the present day. More below.
Speakers
A host of guest writers, journalists, poets, cartoonists and activists will speak on the history of New Zealand's anti-war movement, its past, present and its future More below.
Music, food and more
We’re lining up the music and food, and a re-declaration of the Aro Valley's (and Pōneke Wellington's, Aotearoa New Zealand's, the Pacific's and the World's) Nuclear Free status!
Saturday 9 August - Nagasaki Day
Aro Valley Peace Talks.
9.00am: Opening ceremony.
9.30am: Raising the banner - an official re-declaration of Aro Valley's (and Pōneke Wellington's, Aotearoa New Zealand's, the Pacific's and the World's) nuclear weapons free status!
10am: Maire Leadbeater - writer and activist.
10.30am: Mark Derby - writer and historian talking about the life and work of activist Owen Wilkes.
11.00am: Helene Ritchie - former local council politician and writer talking about declaring Wellington a nuclear-weapons free zone in 1982.
11.30am: Graeme Clarke, former Trade Union Secretary discusses the trade union movement's role in opposing nuclear ship visits and its influence upon the anti-nuclear policies of the NZ Labour Party.
12.00pm: Kai and music
1.00pm: David Robie - journalist and activist in conversation with Jeremy Rose.
1.45pm: Karl Geiringer - doctor and activist speaking to his documentary about the role of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War's bid to have nuclear weapons ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice.
2.15pm: Trace Hodgson - cartoonist and activist.
2.45pm: Peace poems: Glenn Colquhoun - poet and activist doctor.
Inshirah Mahal - artist, educator, poet and author.
3.15pm: A cup of tea and a lie down (with biscuits).
3.30pm: Valerie Morse – author and peace activist discusses 25ish years of Peace Action Wellington.
4.00pm: Sonya Smith – activist and spokesperson for Wairoa-based group Rocket Lab Monitor.
4.30pm: Final group discussion and resolution.
5.00pm: Kai. Stay and talk over dinner.
6.00pm -late: Drinking and dancing
Musical performances (details to be confirmed).
All-day activities:
All day - Exhibition, info stalls, book and zine sales.
Sunday 10 August (The Day After)
9.00am-2.00pm: Exhibition, info stalls, book and zine sales.
2.00pm-4.00pm: Aro Valley Jazz Jam - Peace tunes - music and dancing - tea and biscuits.
Other related events during the week
Wednesday 6 August - Hiroshima Day
Movie Tau te Mauri – Breath of Peace at Lighthouse Cuba, 8pm tickets available from cinema. Fundraising to Just Defence for Nagasaki Day.
This film tells the story of how Aotearoa New Zealand became nuclear free and anti-war. A fascinating story of effort towards global peace, featuring eight peace people of Aotearoa New Zealand - spanning some seven decades: peace walkers, petitioners, and folk in small boats and on surfboards sailing out into the harbours and way further afield across the Pacific, in the face of huge warships, bedded in the movement of aihe (dolphins), tohora (whales), kotuku (white herons), kautuku moana (blue grey heron) and toroa (albatross), with an original score blending contemporary waiata and traditional Maori musical instruments.
Friday 8 August 5:30pm
Pacific Journalist and former university professor Dr David Robie will reflect on the 1985 Rainbow Warrior mission to Rongelap atoll to help US nuclear refugees and the bombing of the Greenpeace campaign ship by French secret agents. Hosted by the Fabians at 2/57 Willis Street. David talk will be lived streamed here: https://www.youtube.com/live/LoVj1SMdYcM
9 August 2025
Speakers for Nagasaki Day
Marie Leadbeater
Maire Leadbeater is a veteran peace and human rights campaigner. Books include Peace, Power and Politics; How New Zealand became nuclear free (2013 OUP) and The Enemy Within (2024 Potton & Burton) which examines state surveillance in Aotearoa and its intrusion into the lives of individuals and movements that challenge the social order, including the anti-war movement. Leadbetter will talk about discuss the role Hiroshima/Nagasaki days in New Zealand peace movements and of past.
Mark Derby
Mark Derby is a New Zealand writer and historian whose work has also been published in Britain, Spain and the US. He has recently edited, with May Bass, an anthology of essays on the life and work of peace researcher and activist Owen Wilkes - Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, published by Raekaihau Press.
Helene Ritchie
Helene Ritchie is an author and former Wellington City Councillor and Deputy Mayor. Ritchie led WCC's declaration of Wellington as a nuclear weapon free zone, passed by a majority of that Council in 1982.The action was one of many repeated around the country by local councils during the early 1980s and preceded New Zealand's national Nuclear Free legislation in 1987.
David Robie
David Robie - journalist and former university professor will reflect on the 1985 Rainbow Warrior mission to Rongelap atoll to help US nuclear refugees and the bombing of the Greenpeace campaign ship by French secret agents. His analysis is that far from the sabotage being an isolated incident, it was part of a cynical and sordid colonial policy that impacts on the Pacific until today.
Karl Geiringer
Karl Geiringer - doctor and former documentary filmmaker talking about his experience in documenting the process of a request being put forward to the International Court of Justice on the question of the legality of nuclear weapons 1993-1996 in his film In No Uncertain Times: https://youtu.be/PUUhCdTXjVA
Glenn Colquhoun
Glenn Colquhoun is an award-winning writer, poet, GP and health activist. He has published many collections of poems and children's books including North South (illustrated by Nigel Brown, 2009), entwining aspects of Irish and Māori mythology. In 2004 he was awarded the Prize in Modern Letters. He practises medicine on the Kapiti coast.
Inshirah Mahal
Inshirah Mahal is an artist, educator, poet and author, known also for her work in music, dance, and theatre with a focus on human rights and non-violent solutions. Mahal will read from her recent book of poems The Holy War in a Glass Jar.
Trace Hodgson
Trace Hodgson began cartooning at the Christchurch Press in 1979. From the early 1980s he contributed to the New Zealand Times in Wellington and in 1984 became political cartoonist for the NZ Listener where he became a weekly commentator during the term of the fourth Labour Government 1984-1990. Outside of his cartooning role Hodgson has been involved in both peace and conservation efforts internationally and in community health enterprises at home.
Valerie Morse
Valerie Morse is a Wellington-based anarchist, peace researcher, author and activist fighting colonisation, the oil industry, war, militarisation and weapons production. She is the author of Against Freedom: The War on Terrorism in Everyday New Zealand Life (2007) and Profiting from War: New Zealand’s Weapons and Military-Related Industry (2015), Editor of The Day The Raids Came (2010) - available here as a PDF download: https://files.libcom.org/files/TheDaytheRaidsCame.pdf - and is a founder of the Rebel Press: https://rebelpress.nz
Sonya Smith
Sonya Smith is a spokesperson for Wairoa-based watchdog group Rocket Lab Monitor. RLM works to ensure only peaceful activities take place at the commercial space launch site on Mahia peninsula. While government policy and international agreements restrict space activities to peaceful purposes, it has been confirmed that technology used to improve US military targeting systems is being launched from Mahia. (More info: https://rocketlabmonitor.com)
Graeme Clarke
Graeme Clarke was union delegate for the Coachworkers Union at Todd Motors 1974 - 77, Coachworkers Union Secretary 1977 - 1988, Wellington District Trades Council (NZFoL) Secretary 1982 - 1988, Manufacturing & Construction Workers Union General Secretary 1988 - 2015, Wellington Trades Hall President 2016 - the present day.
Exhibition: Nuclear War - a history of opposition
Posters, pamphlets and other activism artefacts displayed in an historical context, with contextual analysis and visual panache by Dr. Tim Bollinger.
The exhibition documents the history of Aotearoa's resistance to nuclear weapons and the wars that it enabled through the 20th and 21st centuries,. From the first opposition at the end of World War II (the earliest pamphlet is from September 1945) through to the 1980s, with the world-changing political movement that led to the signing of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga) on Hiroshima Day 6 August 1985 and New Zealand's Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act in 1987 - with an eye to current opposition to the nuclear power-enabled wars of the present day.
Events around the country
Wairarapa
Robin White exhibition at Wairarapa Museum of Art and History: https://www.aratoi.org.nz/exhibitions/2025-06/robin-white-and-taeko-ogawa-futatsu-no-sekai-two-worlds
Robin will also be talking with Greg O'Brien there about the work on Hiroshima Day 6th August: https://www.aratoi.org.nz/events/2025-08/futatsu-no-sekai-floor-talk-robin-white-and-greg-obrien
Ōtautahi Christchurch
Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration at the World Peace Bell in the Botanic Gardens at 11 a.m. on Sunday 10 August.
https://www.disarmsecure.org/events/80-years-on-hiroshima-and-nagasaki
Screening of Tau te Mauri at Lumiere Cinema, The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 26 Rolleston Avenue at 4 p.m. on 6 August, followed by a Q&A with Kate Dewes and Moana Cole (both of whom feature in film).
https://www.disarmsecure.org/events/tau-te-mauri-film-screening
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration, Devonport Community House, 32 Clarence Street at 2 p.m.
Screening of Tau te Mauri at the Victoria Theatre in Devonport at 4 p.m. on the same day. Celine Kearney will speak about WILPF's work at the screening.
https://www.thevic.co.nz/movie/tau-te-mauri---breath-of-peace
Brain food for Nagasaki Week
Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War: Wilfred Burchett and Hiroshima
This thoughtful article by Richard Tanter about Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist who documented the Hiroshima devastation less than one month after the bomb was dropped: https://apjjf.org/richard-tanter/2066/article
We have turned the Nagasaki 80th into a celebration of Israeli genocide
Israel’s key enablers, the G7, plus Australia and New Zealand, have succeeded in muscling Israel back onto the invite list for the commemorations in Nagasaki on 9 August. Last year Israel was excluded, triggering a refusal by these countries to attend in 2024. Does the ‘personal’ invitation that Nagasaki has just sent to Israel represent a triumph of Western diplomacy or a sick joke? https://www.solidarity.co.nz/international-stories/we-have-turned-the-nagasaki-80th-into-a-celebration-of-israeli-genocide