By JESSA LEWIS
6 News Reporter
OAK RIDGE (WATE) - Protestors remain at the entrance of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, one week after a security breach at the facility.
Security around the complex was tight Monday as members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance marked the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by reading the names of victims of the bombing.
The group says they have no connection with the July 28 intrusion by three anti-nuclear weapons activists.
Peace Alliance members held their vigil to remember victims of the detonation of a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima at the end of World War II, as well as to protest continued nuclear weapon production at Y-12.
"The purpose of looking back is so that informs the way we try to work to shape the future. What we do here is in solidarity with the people of Japan, who lived through the bombing, the survivors, who, very courageously, have come out into the world to call on the world to remember and to say never again," said OREPA Coordinator Ralph Hutchison.
The group is also fighting efforts to spend several billion dollars to upgrade the facility.
The protest comes amid an investigation into the security breach last week, though the group says their plans for the remembrance ceremony did not change in light of the event.
One participant drives in from Michigan each year for the event. "Last year, I didn't even read through any of the reading. I just kept remembering. It's like every time I go back there, I remember something else or some of the readings and go oh, yeah," Kim Bergier said.
Members of OREPA say they hope the UN can eliminate the use of nuclear weapons, just like they did with chemical weapons with the 1925 Geneva Protocol and with the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu released a statement Saturday reporting that guards involved in the July 28 incident have been suspended and three managers have been removed from their positions.
A National Nuclear Security Administration official has been reassigned from the agency's oversight office at Y-12.
Residents of Hiroshima, Japan mark the 67th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack with their own call for the elimination of nuclear arsenals.
About 50,000 people gathered in Hiroshima's peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 blast site.
The atomic bomb destroyed most of the city and killed 140,000 people.
A second atomic bomb detonation three days later over Nagasaki killed thousands more and prompted Japan to surrender to World War II allies.
Security around the complex was tight Monday morning.
Members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance marked the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by reading the names of victims of the bombing.
