Bomb’s shadow symbols removed by mistake

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 1

Bomb’s shadow symbols removed by mistake

By

GEOFF MEIN

Street cleaners yesterday reduced New Zealand’s contribution to an international peace project into a puddle of water beside the main entrance to Christchurch Cathedral. Women for Peace and Justice had painted human silhouettes on the ground beside the Cathedral steps as part of the International Shadow Project to mark Hiroshima Day. The silhouettes were meant to remind passers-by of the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. People who were within 300 metres of the centre of the blast were vaporised, leaving only their shadows outlined on the streets. Symbolic silhouettes were being painted on roads and footpaths by anti-nuclear campaigners in more than

15 ' countries, including Japan, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The Christchurch women, armed with buckets of paint, braved the elements at 3 a.m. yesterday to make their marks on the cobblestones beside the Cathedral steps. They painted 10 silhouettes, using whitewash which they expected would fade and disappear in three to four weeks. Christchurch City Council street cleaners had other ideas when they arrived some hours later to clean Cathedral Square. The symbolic shadows were deemed to be “graffiti and vandalism,” and the cleaners’ supervisor decided that this latest affront to the city’s pavements should

be washed away before it set. Inquiries yesterday showed that the women had sought and received permission from Cathedral officials to paint the silhouettes. The area beside the steps is Cathedral land. It seems, however, that the council staff were not told that permission had been given. Disappointed, although undeterred, Women for Peace and Justice planned to return to the Square in the middle of the night with their buckets of whitewash. The street cleaners, who have now been told that the international gesture has the Church’s blessing, have agreed to work round the silhouettes when they clean the Square this morning. Farther report, page 8