Every year on August 5th at 4:15 in the afternoon (synchronistic with 8:15 a.m. on the 6th in Hiroshima, Japan; when the bomb was dropped), I release balloons for world peace.
Why do I do this?
Part of it is a cross between ritual magic and obsessive compulsion. The first year we ever did this, my wife, our two boys and I and a friend, releasing a mere fifteen balloons, I heard it; I swear to God; I heard it in my head; the Peace Bell they ring in Hiroshima every year at 8:15 in the morning on the 6th of August to commemorate the dead - a big, huge bronze bell. Halfway around the world, I heard it in my head as the balloons went up. And like a junkie chasing that first high, perhaps, I want to hear it again.
Part of it is Shin, a little boy a month short of his fourth birthday who was outside riding his tricycle that day – he was horribly burned by the flash – who died within twenty-four hours of the blast. And it was when I was four that my older brother told me that when they set off the H-bomb the sky would catch fire. I sat on my trike out on the sidewalk in front of our house, much like Shin, trying to imagine what that would look like, trying not to imagine it. Shin knows what the sky looks like when it catches fire. He found out. I want no one else to ever find out.
Part of it is because I grew up in a time when it was not uncommon to wonder if I would grow up, if I would be allowed to. When I was twenty-five I had a job driving deliveries. Quite often when I was on a freeway heading out of town on some far-suburban or rural delivery I would wonder, what if I saw the flash in the rear-view mirror right now? What would I do? When I was seventeen I had a job in a restaurant. Once when I was bussing a table the music coming from the speakers in the dining room was interrupted by the emergency alert signal. I stopped what I was doing, looked around. A middle-aged man was just getting up from his table. Together, we looked to the ceiling. “Think this is it?” he asked, and in my mind’s eye I saw missiles reaching the top of their arcs, nosecones blooming, MIRVs spilling forth and warheads tumbling to earth. It was only a test. He left his tip, went up front to pay his bill, and I finished bussing the table.
Part of it is because even though the Cold War is over and the ever-present knowledge of the possibility of global thermonuclear destruction is such a thing of the past that my children can’t even comprehend it, every Spring or Summer the North Koreans or the Iranians or the Taliban in Pakistan do something to convince me there’s a reason to release balloons; because the bombs are all still there. And someday someone’s going to use one. And when one gets used they could all get used. And even if just one or two get used that’s bad enough.
Part of it is that it’s a subversive gesture. The governments of the world, the military arms of those governments, they have radars, radars that are continuously monitored twenty-four hours a day. The balloons are seen on radar. There’s almost no point in doing it otherwise. It’s one of the first things I checked. The military leaders have to see. With enough balloons we could cloud the radar. And then they couldn’t fight their wars. It’s a metaphor, but it’s real. It sends a message. Power is not theirs alone. We, the statistical victims, have it, too. And if we did this by the millions every year they would get it. They’re not stupid.
And part of it is this sort of deal I made with God. When I got the idea on Memorial Day weekend in 2006 I was at one of the lowest ebbs in my life. I was sinking rapidly, drowning. The idea came to me and I knew it was not my own. There was no step-by-step thought process involved. It was suddenly just there, all of it at once. It was like a vision, a vision of the future. I thought about it for a week – seven days – then said, okay, I’ll do it. And I’ve done it every year since. I have to. It’s not that I don’t have a choice – there’s always choice – but that I made a promise. I have to because I promised.
And so I’m doing it again this year, even though it seems stupid and inconsequential and doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m doing it because it matters to Shin. He told me through the ether. It does matter. No one else will ever see the sky catch fire, so long as I keep releasing balloons.
If you have to thank someone, thank Shin.
4th Annual WPBR (World Peace Balloon Release)
8:15 a.m. August 6th, 2009 (coordinate with your own time zone through time zone converters on web)
Peace,
Barry
I was invited to make origami grullas for the fifth of august with my schoolkids, I´ll ask them if they want to do it and also ask for help to the math teacher, I only know how to do origami-ships! 
(at the moment we are turning the page to the flag memorial day).
