Interview with Peter Ediger, June 24, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Peter Ediger June 24, 2005 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Peter Ediger June 24, 2005 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: birth, family background, Mennonite heritage, registers as conscientious objector and works in civilian public service during World War II, beginning of work in peace movement 1 Remembers feelings about dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later visit to Hiroshima which reinforced commitment to cause of peace 4 Talks about education in college and at a Mennonite seminary, call to ministry and moves to Fresno, CA; Chicago, IL; and Denver, CO, involvement in civil rights movement and resistance to nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War 5 Marriage, family, and divorce 8 Joins Nevada Desert Experience [ NDE] in 1987, later becomes founding member of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service in Las Vegas, NV 9 Recalls Lenten desert experience with NDE at the Nevada Test Site [ NTS] and sense of incongruity between what our government says and what it does 10 Participation in protests against nuclear weapons at the NTS and by the Nevada Semipalatinsk Movement in Kazakhstan ( USSR) in the 1980s 11 Discusses influence of movements such as NDE, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [ CTBT], and growing public awareness of continued testing 13 Remembers particular standout moments while working with NDE, including relationship with Sheriff James Merlino 14 Talks about continuing relationship with NTS workers, especially Robert Nelson 15 Reflects on the role of the desert in his personal spirituality 17 Enumerates children, including Duane Ediger [ sp] who works for Christian Peacemaker Teams in nonviolence intervention 18 Recalls initial meeting with Louis Vitale and talks about work with Pace e Bene and development of “ From Violence to Wholeness” program 18 Conclusion: relating theology and spirituality to real life through “ Creation and Chaos” 21 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Peter Ediger June 24, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Suzanne Becker: If you could begin by stating your name, where you’re from and when you were born? Peter Ediger: My name is Peter Ediger, I was born in Kansas in 1926. I grew up in a rural community, a Mennonite community, just after the Depression, and still feeling some of the results of that. So what was it like where you grew up? Where in Kansas was it? Central Kansas, in wheat country. I grew up on a wheat farm with the usual milking of cows and slopping of hogs, et cetera, et cetera. Good Midwestern stuff. Yes. It was a good growing- up. But the clouds of World War II were hanging over us, and with my Mennonite heritage, I became conscious of the war in some particular ways. We have this history of thinking that to be Christian and follow Jesus means not participating in war. I struggled with that question in my adolescent years, and when it came time to register for the draft I registered as a conscientious objector. So that’s sort of the beginning of my participation in peace activities. Now, I definitely want to talk about that because I think that that’s interesting, but if we could just back up, I’m curious as to how large of a community you grew up in and a little bit about your family. I was one of six children, and with lots of relatives in this community, we had our get- togethers during holidays when about sixty, seventy cousins from each side of the family would come UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 together. So there was a strong sense of family in my childhood, and a strong sense of participation in the church. The church was sort of the base of the community life. Rural school, small one- room school. In fact, I taught for one year in one of those one- room schools way back, where I was everything from janitor to principal, and teacher of all the grades. Interesting. A lot of changes since then. This was pre- television, pre- radio for us in our community, pre- electricity. We had electricity coming on when I was about in high school. Before that, it was without. And I drove to school in a horse and buggy. Did you. Interesting. And you went through high school and then started— Went through high school, and then the draft caught up with me, and I was in Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector for two years. OK. I’m curious about that because that’s something related to World War II that you actually don’t hear very much about— the conscientious objectors. So you decided to register, but registered as such, and what happens from there? I mean how was that experience? The so- called peace churches— the Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, and the Quakers— had been working for several years, when they saw the draft coming on, to try to make arrangements with Selective Service for an alternative to serving in the Army, or the armed forces. So there was this provision for the alternative, being in what was then called civilian [ 00: 05: 00] Public Service. The process to get that was quite something. You have to apply for it and then you had to meet with the draft board and answer all kind of questions, be pushed for how serious you were about your convictions and where do these ideas come from and what would you do if— all that kind of stuff. But partly because the Selective Service was well aware of the Mennonite position, it wasn’t so difficult for Mennonites to get this provision. So I was in UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 civilian service with the [ U. S.] Forest Service in California for a year, and with a mental hospital in Pennsylvania. What did you do for the Forest Service? I was on a timber survey crew and did some fire fighting in the back country, the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And then in the mental hospitals, actually one of the I think fairly creative things that came out of Civilian Public Service with the mental hospitals is that they brought about a lot of reform. At that time, there was a lot of warehousing of mental patients and some pretty rough treatment. So I think we were instrumental in bringing about some more humane treatment of people in mental hospitals. But that was the beginning of my struggle with the whole question of war and peace. What years was this? You were right out of high school? Yeah, 1945. And so this brought about— The other complication for me personally and for many of us in our community was that we were third- generation immigrants still speaking German. So here we were speaking German and being conscientious objectors to fighting Hitler. That complicated stuff, to sort that all out. So we experienced a lot of ridicule and a lot of harassment. From other people that you were working with? Yes, here and there along the way. Most of the people around us in our community were well aware of our situation and our convictions, so we had respect from most of the people who knew us personally. The general public was less understanding. But that whole question of violence and the war— the question of how to respond to the violence has been a part of my agenda since that time. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 [ Do] you remember the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes, I remember very well getting the news about the bomb. I was at that time in California with the Forest Service, and I remember vaguely some feelings of relief that the war was over and some questions or curiosity about what this bomb was all about. In looking back, I don’t think I realized the horror of that reality. That came many years later, particularly, and I’m getting ahead of my story here, but many years later I had the privilege of visiting Hiroshima, and that was an awesome experience. That came about as a result of an invitation from a Buddhist community, international Buddhist community, but particularly the Buddhists in Japan [ 00: 10: 00] who invited people from different religious groups in different countries to come for a peace conference. And I was selected of one of their delegates. What year was that? That was in 1981, I think, ’ 80 or ’ 81. This was a time when I was participating in protests at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, where I was living at that time. Pastor of a church there at that time. In Denver? In Arvada, near Denver. And we were vigiling there every Sunday afternoon, protesting the nuclear bomb there. And one of the people who was also often there was a Buddhist monk, Sawada, good friend. He came to me one Sunday when we were there and he said, Peter, you go to Japan. And I said, Ohhh? He said, Yes, you go to Japan. I said, I can’t go to Japan. He said, Yeah, yeah, I’ll come talk to you. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 So he came and visited, and then he told me about this conference and that he had been designated to select someone from the witness over there. He wanted me to come to this and the Buddhists would pick up all the expenses, which they did. So there was a three- day peace conference in Tokyo, and then for all those who wanted to, they invited us to go to Hiroshima. So I went there, and I went through that museum. What was that like? Very, very awesomely awful. Awfully awesome. One of my feelings was that they should provide a place for people to go and cry. They should have a place for people to go and weep when they go through there. That reinforced the call which had been there before to take more seriously the horror of what we had done and what was still being thought of as something that we’ve got to do if circumstances dictate. So it was a time for more commitment to the cause of peace. So that was a catalyst for further involvement? It encouraged [ me] further, yes. I had before that already been arrested numerous times in Colorado for crossing the line into Rocky Flats. Now we skipped a little span of time, but how did your evolution of the awareness and your involvement in this come about? After my service with Civilian Public Service, I went to college and majored in sociology, by the way, and then went to seminary and had some sense of call to ministry. Where was this? Where did you do that? Seminary was in Chicago, a Mennonite seminary. We were affiliated with the Church of the Brethren at that time. The seminary is now located in Elkhart, Indiana. And those were also times for more integrating of a foundation from which to kind of observe what’s going on in the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 [ 00: 15: 00] world. The church had always been very central in my growing- up years. I had some sense that there was something pretty significant in the history of the Mennonite Church and appreciation for that somewhat unique peace position, but also some sense that Mennonites were becoming assimilated and adopting many of the values and world views of the general culture. So that was part of some of my quest for clarification and deepening in the seminary. After seminary, I went to serve as a pastor at a Mennonite church in Fresno, California. And that was when the civil rights movement was in its early stages. I became somewhat aware of that— This is early sixties or—? Late fifties. And then I was called to be a kind of a resource person for the Mennonite Church. Mennonites were moving, along with a migration of the general population, from rural into urban communities, and so Mennonites were struggling with the question of how do we maintain an identity, particularly also a peace church identity, in urban culture? And so I was invited to be a roving consultant with churches that were being planted in urban centers. In that process, I became aware also of some of the racial realities and the racial prejudice and the challenge of racism. We had several churches in black communities. And then I served as an interim pastor in a black community in the south side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn community. This was in the early sixties when Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were emerging. And that’s where I really became aware of structural violence and institutionalized violence, state violence, so that violence became not so much only individual stuff but a structured reality. Right. Sounds like sociological training was a good basis for this. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 Yeah, it’s useful. So the whole question of racial violence became very much a part of my guts. And it was that also economic structural violence related to that. I remember driving out every once in a while from that inner city community to the suburbs and feeling a lot of anger within myself [ and thinking], something is wrong here. Here are people living in these— two, three families living in a small apartment, and here are these huge houses. So the whole question of economic injustice became part of the mix. When I went from there to a suburb of Denver, I was challenged to face my own class reality; that I had been and am in a privileged, white, educated, sort- of- making- it economic situation, and then talking to my fellow church people, OK, what do we do with all this? What [ 00: 20: 00] do we do with all this? We had some interesting experiences in that suburban situation, both with race stuff, the fair housing realities, and then also being aware that just a few miles from where we were located was this weapons plant. So I got involved in the resistance to the nuclear weapons, and the Vietnam War. There was certainly a lot going on at that time. Yes. So all of this was a part of the mix. Were you fairly active in some of those other movements, as well? I know there were a lot, especially with the burgeoning civil rights movement at that time and the protests for the war. Yes, my experience in Woodlawn, in the inner city church in Chicago, helped me to take the pulpit out to the street, so to speak, to know that my being a fellow human, also particularly being a person of faith and a pastor, meant not just preaching about this stuff in the sanctuary but taking it out in the street. So I participated in marches in Chicago and elsewhere, and that freed me when the Vietnam War came along to become a part of the marching and resistance movements to Vietnam. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 In all of that another component that got into the mix was the whole question of homophobia and the movements for human rights and recognition of gays and lesbians. We had some gay and lesbian people in our church, and they became more free to express themselves. So we worked with that question in our congregation. And before that, also, the question of women’s role in the church. Mennonites didn’t have a strong history of working for women’s rights in the church, but in those years we began to address that question also. We took on a woman as a co- pastor in the sixties, and that worked very well. So that helped us also to face, I think, the homosexuality question and so forth, the package of issues. By now Mennonites, they have a number of women pastors. The struggle for the rights of gays and lesbians is still in process in the church, in the Mennonite Church, as well as in others. But that will come. We’re heading in that direction, at least. With all of this involvement, one of the things that I wasn’t really giving enough attention to and wasn’t really being aware enough was strains in my relationship with my wife. There were some gaps. It’s one thing to preach about and talk about love to people out there, another thing to really know what that means in close relationships. So we divorced at my initiative. And when had you gotten married in that time frame? Right after college. And [ we] have four children. Beautiful children. Three godchildren now. And that was painful. That was painful for the church where I was pastor, painful for all of us. So in the [ 00: 25: 00] process, I needed to make a change, and I applied for and was accepted to work with Nevada Desert Experience here. So that was what brought me to Nevada. This was mid- eighties? Eighty- seven. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 OK. So Nevada Desert Experience [ NDE] had been in existence for about five years at that point? Right. Were you familiar with what they were doing? Had you heard of them before? Yes, I had come here for one of their Lenten Desert Experience for a couple days, so I was familiar with the witness and I received their information, their publications. I came here as co- director with another person [ Denise Stephenson], and worked with them for five years, and then again made some shifts which brought me finally to work here with Pace e Bene. One of the questions some of us began to ask from all this history but particularly also from the bomb years, what are the roots of this violence? Where’s all this coming from? And so that was what stimulated the formation of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, to try to look more at the roots of violence in ourselves, in our culture, and to look more deeply at the nonviolence practitioners through the centuries and particularly, recently, King and Gandhi. Were you one of the founding members of Pace e Bene? Yes, I was one of their committee, a member of the committee that founded it. And that was with Rosemary Lynch and Louis Vitale? Louis Vitale, Alain Richard, and Julia Occhiogrosso. Yes, we were part of an ordinance. Backing up a little bit to when you first came out to the [ Nevada] test site for a Lenten Desert Experience, what did you think of it? I know that’s a broad question, but people have such varying reactions when they first get out to the test site and then actually participate. I’m assuming you crossed over the line at that point, as well? The cattle guard, I guess, at the time. When I first came out— One of the gifts that God has given me is the capacity to forget, so I don’t remember. I don’t remember whether I crossed any lines on that first visit here. I crossed UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 the lines numerous times after. But among my recollections of coming out with folks is the sort of amazing quiet solitude of the desert and contrasting with the awareness of what was going on just a few miles from where we were sitting, and sort of pondering that incongruity. And of deep appreciation for the persistence of the witnesses who were here, who at that time went out every morning for six weeks. And more reflection about the reality of the bomb and the awfulness of it, [ 00: 30: 00] awesomeness of it. And particularly also the reinforcement of a sense that this was a crisis of faith that we were facing here, that we are being more and more led into an idolatry, that the bomb really is the ultimate expression of a God in conflict with the God who we understand as revealed in the Scriptures and particularly in Jesus, but also in other spiritual traditions, that here’s a massive sort of a golden calf, drawing on the analogy from the Hebrew experience. And that sense keeps growing, and particularly in recent years, in the current use, abuse, of religion coming from our government at this point that keeps talking religious language, even Christian language, and doing very un- Christian things. So there’s still that incongruity, these polar opposites, almost. Yes. Yes that sense keeps deepening. And with that, [ there is] the question of how am I complicit in all that? And sort of the sense of Isaiah’s dilemma: Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips living in the midst of people of unclean lips here. Woe, woe is me, I am a person of violent nature living in the midst of a violent culture. So there’s always the call, I think, to take an inward journey to look more deeply into myself, into ourselves, and at the same time keep looking out there at what’s going on and seeing that there needs to be a change, there wants to be a— there is an alternative. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 In the mid- eighties, there were some fairly large protests and actions that happened out at the test site. Were you present for those, and had you come to work— I think those were in ’ 84 and ’ 85, in that time frame? I was not there in ’ 84, ’ 85. We did have some very large protests in the late eighties also, several that were 500 and 600 people, and a few that were organized by the American Peace Test [ APT] which were even larger, a couple thousand at some points. So yeah, I was there for some of those. And I was also active in the international movement and went to a conference in Kazakhstan in ’ 89, an international conference against nuclear weapons, nuclear testing. This was prompted by a movement in Russia, the Soviet Union, which was sparked by the poet Suleimenov. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he was a nationally- known poet. [ 00: 35: 00] And he began, particularly one time when he was on the air, to speak out very strongly against the nuclear weapons testing going on in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union, their testing there. And people responded very much to that. There was a lot of fallout from their testing and people were hurting from that. He called his movement the Nevada Semipalatinsk Movement. Semipalatinsk was the site— the Soviet test site. He got some of his inspiration from our movement here. So we began to communicate more and [ more]. Interesting. Yes, you might want to get some more of that history from some people who were there. Yes, because we hear about the movement here, but you hardly ever hear, or actually I have yet to hear, about whether there was a similar sentiment or similar movements going on in Russia. There was a movement in Russia that brought even larger crowds to their test site. Really. To their test site? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 They had thousands come to their Semipalatinsk test site. So there was a strong anti- testing movement. Did you go out there? Yes. We had a conference in Kazakhstan and then went out from there to the test site. And what was that like? Well, similar to the experience here, you know, sobering and inspiring to see the movement there. Did they ever come here? Yes, they had delegations to come here. In fact, Suleimenov came here, did some speaking and touring. But I think in some ways it was the combination of the movement there and here that was pretty significant in getting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Interesting. So you came out here for the job of co- director. I’m curious about your experience with that and what Nevada Desert Experience, what they were at that time. What was going on? That was a pretty active time within the organization. Yes, it was the time of a lot of growing awareness among people, particularly people of faith which we worked with, faith communities. And it was encouraging to see how people responded to their coming to the desert. I think it helped to open eyes to different ways of seeing the world and seeing the structures particularly, seeing our own government. It was a time of growing consciousness. And the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, I think, did several things. One, it was a sign that these kind of movements have an effect and it encourages that kind of movement. At the same time, the result for Nevada Desert Experience was less people really continued to give attention to the test site and— Because of the— that everybody assumed the test ban treaty— UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 We’ve got the treaty, yes, and we sort of went to sleep again. And I think that’s another call to [ 00: 40: 00] look beyond the symptoms to more roots. And I think NDE keeps doing that in its own way with the challenges of how to keep all of us aware of the fact that in different ways the research and development of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, including the nuclear, keeps going on in different guises. The challenge is how to keep that concern and awareness alive so we don’t have the bomb bursting there as it used to. Right. Yeah, that’s something that several people have mentioned, that after the treaty, people just assumed that that meant a stop, that it [ testing] was done, there was no more testing. But really that’s not exactly what it meant. There seems to be a lack of awareness, but I think given the times that we’re in now, it that awareness is starting to rise to the surface again. What kind of sense do you get of the situation? I think the awareness of the likelihood that our government is doing a lot of things that we’re not aware of, that awareness is growing. The awareness that we’re not being told the truth about a lot of things is growing. So there are both discouraging and encouraging signs. The discouraging signs are the arrogance and hypocrisy of particularly the U. S. at this point with its clear continuation of developing all kinds of weapons of mass destruction and then going to search all over the world to try to keep other people from doing this. It’s so hypocritical. And people are beginning to catch onto that a bit more. I haven’t kept up with all the latest figures, but my impression is that the amount of money invested in nuclear weapons research and development is as big as ever or bigger. Have you seen more involvement in NDE over the past couple of years? Is there an ebb and flow that happens, and where are we in that right now? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 I’ve been on the margins of NDE, so I would have the general impression that it’s probably picking up a little bit again, that there’s a little bit more awareness and interest and concern on NDE in particular. I think what’s happened is that some of the expression of dissent has been focused in other areas, like SOA particularly. The School of the Americas has received huge crowds, and some other centers, [ Lawrence] Livermore [ National Laboratory]. So there for some years wasn’t quite as much attention to the test site because the general public assumed not much was happening there, but it may be picking up a little bit. [ 00: 45: 00] Going back to your time with Nevada Desert Experience, you mentioned that you were co- director. Who was the other [ director]? Denise Stephenson came on the same time I did, and we worked together for a number of years. Are there any specific moments, events or times that particularly stand out in your mind during that time frame with NDE as being really significant or a turning point? Well, the larger actions each had their own ethos. Generally my sense is one of deep appreciation for the spirituality which was expressed in most of those actions, and in trying to maintain a human and humane perspective in our relationship with the people who worked there, in particular also the sheriff. Jim Merlino as a sheriff was a good friend for us. And that was a great learning experience for me that I’m still trying to keep in perspective; that one can be human and respectful with people who have very different world views or different views about what’s going on. Had you expected that? That was a kind of a gift from working with NDE. I think I came into the movement when the Vietnam War particularly and civil rights [ were] more from an us- against- them kind of mentality and sometimes. To learn from the Gandhi spirit, the King spirit and the Jesus spirit how to be UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 clear about what one wants to say and what one sees, and at the same time not dehumanize those who differ, that’s the challenge. It still is. Right. Merlino comes up with a lot of people. I spoke to him last summer and he’s just a really interesting man and seems like a good guy. Did you guys have a lot of contact with the workers at the test site, not just the security folks but any of the other workers that were [ there]? Not a lot. I have more now. Right now, I worship in a Presbyterian church, and there are numerous retired test site workers there. I sing in the choir with them, and they’re working at the [ Atomic Testing] museum over here. So I’m still sort of working with that. You’re still in this dialogue with people. Yes. What’s that like? Do you guys talk about that at all? Yeah, some. Sometimes I think the talk is productive, and other times you sort of know that we probably won’t change much with each other. But for me, this keeps raising some real [ 00: 50: 00] questions about the kind of a dilemma or the awareness that they’re— well, with good hearts, good hearts, engaged in what feels like really destructive and world- threatening endeavors. And I think that’s particularly true with a lot of supporters of George Bush and his cronies. Let’s see, isn��t there somebody who wrote a book on moral man and immoral society? There seems to be in our day a tendency for the individual to be used by some structures and corporate entities, including governments but not only, as in corporations also, and in very destructive ways. That’s something you sociologists can figure out, or we all need to keep working at what to do with that. But during my NDE years, I did have a few good debates with Bob Nelson. He’s the Episcopal priest and given a lot of leadership at the test site and at Rocky Flats. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 What kinds of stuff did you debate about? Well, this was some public debates basically about morality of the issues here. So I rather enjoy those kind of conversations and confrontations. And these were publicly set up? Yes. For instance, when the Episcopal Peace Fellowship brought a group of Episcopalians down, they arranged for a public debate between several of us. He seems like an interesting guy, too. He is. He’s a very personable guy. Just sees the world and the faith through different lenses, I guess. How does his view differ from yours? Well, you’ve heard his views, you’ve heard mine, so that’s up to you to say, I guess. But my perception is that his view of the Gospel is different from mine at the point of what Jesus asks of us related to the question of violence. He understands that it’s OK to use violence to meet violence. His understanding of the structures and government is different from mine, I suppose, especially in our government. So basic world views are different. Yes. I’d like to go back to something that you talked about a little bit earlier and that was this juxtaposition of being out in the desert on this land and then you’ve got at the same ti