The official kickoff of the fiftieth anniversary of Wilmington College’s Peace Resource Center, on August 6, 2025, began with a powerful reminder: “Never Again.” An eight-hour vigil, “80 Years After: Hibakusha Call Us to Remember,” opened a campus-wide reflection on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The PRC hosted an exhibition that included the unveiling of 100 Hibakusha Peace Masks, handcrafted impressions of nuclear bombing survivors and their descendants, donated by the Peace Mask Project of Kyoto, Japan.
The Barbara Reynolds Memorial Archives at the Peace Resource Center contain the most extensive collection in the United States of interdisciplinary materials related to nuclear war. Each year, the PRC BRMA receives between 400–450 visitors, including researchers, students, and members of the public. The archive holds documents; creative responses to the atomic bombings, such as poetry, plays, and artistic works; historic poster collections; historic photos; slides; scrapbooks; photo albums; 16-mm films; reel-to-reel audio; cassette tapes; and other artifacts. PRC BRMA founder Barbara Leonard Reynolds (1915-1990) collected most of these materials from the 1950s-1970s. The PRC BRMA is unique in that it relays the arc of nuclear war experiences and nuclear disarmament history within the context of the rise and decline of the Cold War during the second half of the twentieth century.
Wilmington College is a Quaker college in southwestern Ohio, affiliated with Wilmington Yearly Meeting.
