Earle L. Reynolds
In 1958 he sailed with his wife Barbara, two of his three children and a Japanese yachtsman in the Phoenix of Hiroshima, a ketch he had designed himself, into the American nuclear testing zone in the Pacific.
During the Vietnam War Reynolds and his second wife, Akie sailed the Phoenix to Haiphong to deliver humanitarian and medical aid to victims of American bombing.
Billboard noted, "The Landry Brothers work a neat and classy rope acrobatic turn for six minutes, in full stage, which brought the brawny lads one legit.".
Earl took his stepfather's surname, added an "e" to his first name, earned the rank of Eagle Scout and graduated from Vicksburg High School in 1927.
[3] In 1951, Earle joined the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC),[4] established under the direction of the National Research Council's Division of Medical Sciences in March 1947.
In summary he had found children exposed to radiation to be smaller than their counterparts with lowered resistance to disease and a greater susceptibility to cancer, especially leukemia.
From 1954 to 1958, he, his wife Barbara, son Ted (16), daughter Jessica (10), and three young Japanese men from Hiroshima, Niichi ("Nick") Mikami, Motosada ("Moto") Fushima and Mitsugi ("Mickey") Suemitsu, sailed around the world.
[6][7] Its crew, four Quaker pacifists, Albert Bigelow, George Willoughby, Bill Huntington and Orion Sherwood were attempting to sail to the Marshall Islands to protest the United States' testing of 35 nuclear devices there.
[8] An injunction against American citizens entering the test zone was passed after the Golden Rule left port and it was brought back by the Coast Guard.
Impressed by the reasoning and character of these men, Earle and Barbara joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and considered taking over their protest in the Phoenix.
He considered unconstitutional the United States government's injunction declaring 390,000 square miles (1,000,000 km2) of ocean off-limits to American personnel during the series.
Earle announced by radiotelephone, on the international frequency for ships at sea, "The United States yacht Phoenix is sailing today into the nuclear test zone as a protest against nuclear testing..." The next morning, 65 nautical miles (120 km) inside the forbidden zone, the Phoenix was intercepted and stopped by the American Coast Guard cutter Planetree on July 2, 1958.
[14] In 1962, Reynolds was invited to captain the Everyman III, on which members of A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) sailed from London to Leningrad via Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.
[16] After these attempts to sail to China, the Japanese government passed a new immigration law cracking down on "undesirable aliens" (1970) and Reynolds was expelled from his adopted country of 13 years.
His seminar class founded the Peace Resource Center at Merrill College on the UCSC campus in 1975 but it became a casualty of financial cutbacks in the 1980s.
