A scrapbook documenting the protest of the dropping of the nuclear weapons on Japan during World War II by a San Francisco preacher during the war.

Wilder V. Immel, 1906-1987, a member of the 1935 class of Chapman College, served as a Disciples of Christ minister in Sacramento, California, affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. His ministry began on December 7, 1941, coinciding with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, Immel wrote to the editor of the Sacramento Bee, a local perodical, protesting the bombing. His letter was published on August 13, setting off a storm of debate over the "atomic bomb question". Immel continued in his ministry until 1971. After Immel's death in 1987, Harmon Wilkinson donated money in his name for the Wilder and Mary Immel Scholarship, awarded to those students in Peace Studies. Protest against World War II and the use of the atomic bomb was rare, but still a major part of American sentiment about the war. Though the majority of Americans supported use of the bomb, particularly after the war came to an end, there were a few who felt that the bomb would bring more ill than good. Many understood the dangerous possibilities that came with the atomic bomb, possibilities which would come to haunt Americans from that moment forth. Others, many of them clergy such as Immel, felt that use of the bomb against civilian populations was tantamount to the Nazi slaughter that had just been uncovered.

1.0 Linear feet 1 scrapbook

There are no restrictions on the use of this material.

This collection is open for research.