While we typically think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the defining horrors of World War 2 bombing, the March 9, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo is generally thought to have been more deadly. As this article writes, “Three hundred B29 bombers dropped nearly 500,000 cylinders of napalm and petroleum jelly on the most densely populated areas of Tokyo.” The bombs killed an estimated 100,000 people according to Wikipedia, though the roundness of that number hints at the fact that death tolls for city-obliterating bombings are all guesswork.

There are some well-known ruins of early twentieth-century munition plants in South Jersey. The most well-known is the World-War-I-era Bethlehem Loading plant in Estell Manor, which is located in what is now one of the loveliest parks in the county, amidst nature trails and beautiful views of rivers and tidal marshes. The ruins are cool and in this bucolic setting, it’s easy to forget that their products resulted in thousands of deaths.

The Tokyo napalm was made elsewhere, though, at the National Fireworks plant northwest of Mays Landing. I’ve only just learned of it via Reddit and haven’t gone back there. From pictures the ruins look unremarkable (and right now is the height of tick season so I’m not trudging back there). The plant produced M69 napalm cluster bombs, built not to explode but to set cities aflame. From the book Twilight of the Gods:

The workhorse of the firebombing raids was the M69 napalm incendiary submunition, clustered in a 500-pound E46 cylindrical finned bomb. Nearly all had been produced at a remote and secret plant in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, about 15 miles inland from Atlantic City. Each M69 submunition or “bomblet” was essentially a cheesecloth sock filled with jellied gasoline, inserted into a lead pipe. Thirty-eight M69s were clustered together in an E46, bound by a strap that burst open on a timed fuse. The clusters were timed to open at 2,000 feet above the ground. Three-foot cotton gauze streamers trailed behind each bomblet, causing them to disperse over an area with a diameter of about 1,000 feet. On impact with the ground, a second fuse detonated and an ejection charge fired globules of flaming napalm to a radius of about 100 feet. Whatever these globules hit-walls, roofs, human skin- they adhered and burned at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for eight to ten minutes, long enough to start raging fires in the teeming, close-built wood and paper neighborhoods at the heart of all Japanese cities.”

While Hiroshima and Nagasaki are rightly remembered for ushering into the nuclear age—a single modern weapon could kill millions—the Tokyo bombing seems to have been deadlier and it certainly set a precedent, that it was acceptable to destroy entire cities full of civilians for military goals.

Helen Drewery, Head of Witness and Worship for Quakers in Britain, welcoming all to Friends House, said, “We are pleased to be hosting an event which honours all those – including Quakers who put the Kindertransport into effect. Their endeavours are being echoed today by nearly 100 Quaker meetings across Britain which have identified themselves as Sanctuary Meetings and are supporting people who have fled from danger in their home countries. We are glad that these Meetings and the people they are supporting are represented at today’s event. We join them in pressing for more safe passages.”

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/27200

Spoilers: no wave. Four of the candidates didn’t make it out of the primaries and a fifth was running as an independent in a long-shot candidacy. The one candidate to win major-party primary was the awesome Shawna Roberts¹ of Barnesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, people I know and it was a lot of fun to follow her campaign. Her twitter feed has been a hoot:

Last night, at the BPW forum, my opponent’s statement said his childhood home “didn’t even have indoor plumbing.”

Oh, Bill. Indoor plumbing’s still pending at our old farm house.
You can’t out-hillbilly me. Unless you eat squirrel brains. I draw the line at squirrel brains. pic.twitter.com/hGMJvQ8Yhq

— Shawna Roberts (@RobertsOhioD6) October 20, 2018

Unfortunately Shawna only got about 30 percent of the vote yesterday. This election was not kind to Democrats in rural districts like southeast Ohio’s 6 and she was running against an incumbent. From my vantage point 30 percent seems pretty good, though as my seventh grade math teacher used to intone in his weary baritone, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. ² Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Washington win had me hoping against the odds. I’d love to see her continue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updated Quakers in Politics page. For anyone wondering about Quaker politicians, Paul Buckley had a nice overview of our complicated relationship to voting a few years ago.

2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

The upcoming U.S. Congressional mid-term elections already have at least seven Quaker candidates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal

What if, instead of characterizing folks seeking home as “threats” or “invaders,” we understood them to be our neighbors, that our futures are interlocked and that how they are treated is connected to the well-being of us all? What if we understood love as not constrained by borders or walls, but abundant, and that caring for one another and those most violated by systemic oppression is the pathway toward liberation for us all? What if we, as people of conscience and faith, greeted the migrants at the border as our brothers, sisters, and kin, opened our homes and communities to them, and greeted them as resourceful contributors to figuring out the planetary threats we currently face together?

https://www.afsc.org/blogs/acting-in-faith/freedom-to-seek-sanctuary-quaker-perspective-migrant-caravan

The help we want to give — the showy, busy, selfless work — is rarely the help that is needed. And the help that is needed is often boring, with no glamour to it. So, what is to be done? I don’t know. I want to continue my spiritual journey towards/with God; however, I am worried that maybe the Quakers aren’t the home for me that I want.

The post’s title is a response Mike gave in which he channeled his mother’s voice. It’s so spot-on that I can almost hear her say it (I have never met Mike or any of his family but have friends who could deliver that kind of a line with such under-the-radar nuance that more clueless listeners might miss the acres of shade in the tone.

https://small-wire.com/2018/08/15/i‑guess-ill-read-my-bible-elsewhere/

Now imagine a parent with a screaming baby suddenly realizing they forgot the diaper bag at home. Imagine it’s their first time at your meeting. Many people are self-conscious about their baby crying, especially with unprogrammed worship.

Bathrooms as hospitality ministry

The purpose of a covenant community is to provide a home for this transforming work. That means that joining a meeting that is a covenant community invites radical engagement with our spiritual lives on the part of our fellow members, who are to be the vehicles for God’s transforming work.

Meeting as Covenant Community

I really see mental diversity as a gift to a community, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their stories about how they’ve gotten through their traumatic situations and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My family has had very avoidable and out-of-nowhere conflicts at two religious spaces—one a Friends meeting and the other a Presbyterian church—over easy accomodations for my son Francis. It seems like many of the dynamics that we’ve seen are not dissimilar to those that keep others out of meeting communities. Who are we willing to adapt for? Is comfort and familiarity our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Journal a few years ago, Imagining a Trauma-informed Quaker Community.