Earle L. Reynolds

Dr. Earle L. Reynolds (October 18, 1910 - January 11, 1998), born into a circus family, became a physical anthropologist, educator, author, Quaker, and peace activist. In 1951 the Atomic Energy Commission sent Dr. Reynolds to Hiroshima to study the effects of the first atomic bomb on the growth and development of exposed children. His professional discoveries concerning the dangers of radiation later moved Reynolds into a life of anti-nuclear activism. In 1958 he sailed with his wife Barbara, two of his three children and a Japanese yachtsman in a ketch he had designed himself into the American nuclear testing zone in the Pacific. In 1961 the family sailed to the USSR to protest Soviet nuclear testing. 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.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION Earle Landry Reynolds, an only child, was born Earl Frederick Schoene to William and Maude Schoene as the circus of which they were a part passed through Des Moines, Iowa. Earle's father and uncle Frederick performed as The Landry Brothers, trapeze artists and tightrope walkers for the John T. Wortham Shows(also known as John T. Wortham Carnival). Billboardnoted, "The Landry Brothers work a neat and classy rope acrobatic turn for six minutes, in full stage, which brought the brawny lads one legit." . Before WWI made German names unpopular, according to Reynolds, the pair were billed as Schoene Brothers Aerial Artists. Depending on the season and the family's financial status, their circus acts alternated with vaudeville.

When Earle was eight, Maude told him his father had been killed falling off a trapeze. She married circus electrician Louis Haviland Reynolds on the condition that he leave the circus and they settled in Mississippi. Earle took his stepfather's surname, earned the rank of Eagle Scout and graduated from Vicksburg High School in 1927. He went on to earn his BA and MA from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, all in Anthropology. He married Barbara Leonardin 1936 and they had three children: Tim (1936), Ted (1938), and Jessica (1944). From 1943 to 1951 Reynolds was Associate Professor of Anthropology at Antioch College and Chairman of the Physical Growth Department at the Fels Research Institute for the Study of Human Development, also at Antioch College During this time he wrote plays: Solitude, No Pace for a Lady, Americana, Bite the Dust and I Weep for You, and directed them at the Little Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His plays met with local success, and even attracted attention from Broadway producer, Jose Ferrer He also won tri-state tennis championship in (date?)

RESEARCH In 1951 Earle joined the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), established under the direction of the National Research Council's Division of Medical Sciences in March 1947. He was sent to Hiroshima to research the effects of radiation from the first atomic bomb on the growth of Japanese children. Dr. Reynolds and his family, their "Woody" station wagon and dog Cappy took the President Wilson to Tokyo and drove south to Hiroshima. They spent three years (1951-54)in Nijimura, an American (and for the first year)Australian occupation base near Kure, Japan while Earle completed the first of a series of longitudinal studies meant to be resumed after a one-year sabbatical. He wrote up his findings as a 4-inch thick book, The Growth and Development of Hiroshima Children Exposed to the Atomic Bomb, 1953. 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. Because strontium 90 (produced by the atomic bomb) sought the same areas of the bodies of growing children, such as the thyroid, as calcium, children exposed to the bomb were subject to thyroid cancer.

Earle took advantage of his free time in Hiroshima to design a 50-foot yacht, the Phoenix, and supervise its building at nearby Miyajima-guchi. Having sold the Woody as a hearse and traded Cappy in for a cat (because a cat could grip better on a heeling boat), Earle, Barbara, son Ted,16, daughter Jessica, 10, three Japanese men from Hiroshima, Niichi ("Nick") Mikami, Motosada ("Moto") Fushima and Mitsugi ("Mickey") Suemitsu, moved aboard. Earle's elder son Tim, 18, opted to enter return to the States and enter Tufts University.

From 1954-1958 Earle was able to fulfill his lifelong dream of sailing around the world, inspired by Joshua Slocum's autobiography. . During this trip he acquired the nickname "Skipper." The first leg of the voyage, from Japan to Hawaii, took 48 days (with an 18-hp kerosene engine, stove and lamps; electricity wasn't installed until Honolulu). Ted, using measurements from a hand-held sextant, navigated the 30-ton yacht to Honolulu in 1954 and again, after circling the globe, in 1958.

In Honolulu for the second time, what had been a pleasure cruise took a serious turn. Near the Phoenix was docked a small yacht, the Golden Rule. Its crew, four Quaker pacifists, Albert Bigelow, [Wikipedia: 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. 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.

Dr. Reynolds was at that time one of the world's experts on the effects of radiation. In determining whether to deliberately enter the test zone, he considered the effects the radiation from the series of nuclear tests would have on the world environment, specifically increasing incidents of cancer, and the effects of this additional radiation on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki population, since both wind and ocean currents from the test site would carry radiation that direction. He held unconstitutional the United States government's injunction declaring 390,000 square miles of ocean off-limits to American personnel during the series. The forbidden zone blanketed any route by which the Reynolds family could conveniently sail back to Japan, as they had hoped to do as soon as possible to complete the circumnavigation. Also, as the Marshall Islands were a Trust Territory of the U.S., Reynolds objected to the forced removal of Marshallese from their home islands for the purpose of detonating weapons which would almost certainly render their islands uninhabitable for years to come.

PROTESTS Earle, Barbara, Ted (20), Jessica (14) and Mikami cleared "for the high seas" on June 11, 1958. The family were still not fully decided but Mikami, whose mother and brother had been in the bombing, never had to wrestle with the question. For days after the A-bomb was dropped, his mother had crawled through the radioactive rubble, searching for her brother-in-law. She never found his body. By July 1, at the edge of the invisible perimeter of the zone, everyone came to a consensus. 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 miles inside the forbidden zone, the Phoenix was intercepted and stopped by the American Coast Guard cutter Planetree. Two armed Coast Guard officers jumped aboard and put Earle (only) under arrest. Reynolds pointed out that Mikami was a Japanese citizen and was not subject to the injunction. The officers did not discuss Mikami's rights or any possible abridgement thereof. Reynolds was ordered to sail the Phoenix to Kwajalein with Navy cruiser Collett as escort.

On the way, at 0430 in the darkness of July 3rd, Barbara and Ted were startled by a brilliant light which briefly lit the entire sky. Ted described it "like a gigantic flash bulb, oval in shape and at about five to fifteen degrees above the horizon." A Japanese newscast later confirmed the explosion of an American nuclear device in the Hardtack series.

From Kwajalein, Earle, Barbara and Jessica were flown by MATS plane back to Honolulu for trial. Barbara later flew back to Kwajalein to help Ted and Nick sail the Phoenix back to Honolulu. That trip took 60 days and Judge J. Frank McLaughlin refused to extend the trial either for the arrival of Earle's boat, holding all the research and documentation for their decision to enter the zone or for the arrival of the rest of his crew as witnesses. Nor would he delay the trial one month until the lawyer Earle had retained could be present. The judge had Katsugo Miho represent Reynolds although Reynolds had not retained him nor did Miho have access to any information he would need to represent Dr. Reynolds. A jury trial proceeded regardless. The merits or motives for entering the test zone were not permitted to be raised. On the basis of being an American citizen and of having entered an area off-limits to Americans, Earle was convicted.

The appeal took two years. During this time Dr. Reynolds was free to travel, lecture and write but he lost his title, his standing in the academic community and his teaching position at Antioch. ABCC had already decided not to "reactivate" the research he had been involved in due to a change in research emphasis.

When the decision of the lower court was overturned, a small announcement atypical of the publication appeared in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb. 1961 Taken from the New York Times of December 30, 1960, it read, "The conviction of Dr. Earle Reynolds, who sailed into the US nuclear test area of the South Pacific as a protest during the 1958 tests, was reversed December 29 by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The court held that Reynolds was wrongly convicted of a felony because he had committed no more than a trespass, a misdemeanor"(NYT, 12/30)

With the court case closed, the Reynolds family sailed back to Hiroshima with Mikami, who became the first Japanese yachtsman to sail around the world. Suemitsu and Fushima had left the crew and returned to Japan from Panama in 1957.

In October, 1961, the USSR resumed its own nuclear testing. The Reynolds family plus Tom Yoneda sailed to Nakhodka in protest. (The nearest military port, Vladivostok, was inaccessible in winter.)They carried with them hundreds of letters from people around the world appealing for all governments to disarm. Soviet Coast Guard officers intercepted and boarded the Phoneix well offshore. Capt. Ivanov wrote a page in Jessica's diary echoing the desire for peace but he would not accept the letters. Before ordering the yacht to return to Japan, he had his crew bring aboard legs of mutton, fill every available container with sauerkraut and two 55-galolon drums with diesel fuel, for which they had no use. In her book about the trip, Earle's 17-year old daughter Jessica called this encounter "surreal." Of all the scenarios they had envisioned, this had not been one of them!

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, Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. This 48-foot boat, too, was stopped at sea by armed soldiers. This time the crew were tied up with ropes. That same year, Dr. Reynolds and Professor Tatsuo Morito of the University of Hiroshima co-founded the Hiroshima Institute of Peace Science (HIPS). Reynolds became a spokesman for the Japanese peace movement and attempted to work with the Gensuikyo branch of it but found it too political for his taste. He was quoted by the press as saying, "Peace cannot be achieved in an atmosphere of hatred."

Meanwhile Barbara, with two survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, was taking the letters refused by the captain of the Soviet ship around the world to appeal for peace before congressional hearings, in churches and in schools.

Divided on approaches to peace, among other things, Earle and Barbara divorced in 1964 and Earle married his secretary Akie Nagami, a citizen of Hiroshima and a graduate of Hiroshima Women's College where Earle was Professor of Anthropology. Together Earle and Akie continued his voyages in the Phoenix, delivering humanitarian and medical aid to the Red Cross Society of North Vietnam for civilian victims of the Vietnam war (1967). The crew spent eight days visiting hospitals in Hanoi and Haiphong and observing the effects of American bombing on outlying villages.

Earle and Akie made two attempts to sail the Phoenix to Shanghai as a gesture of "friendship and reconciliation" from an American and a Japanese citizen to the people of China, although the Japanese government refused to grant Akie a passport on the grounds China and Japan had no diplomatic relations. In 1968 the couple was stopped on the high seas by the Japanese government. Two years of litigation followed in Japanese courts. In 1969, with a crew of six Americans, they were stopped offshore by Chinese authorities and their entry was prohibited.

After these attempts to sail to China, the Japanese government passed a new immigration law cracking down on "undesirable aliens" (1970) and Dr. Reynolds was expelled from his adopted country of 13 years. He and his wife sailed to San Francisco and settled in Ben Lomond, California where they became the resident hosts of Quaker Center. Reynolds sold the Phoenix, giving the money from the sale to Quaker Center in exchange for a lifetime residence on the property. He taught Peace Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Cabrillo College while Akie earned an MA in Peace Studies from Antioch College and worked as a career counselor at UCSC, specializing in peace-making careers and in placing students in overseas jobs. 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. For the next 24 years he continued an active schedule of teaching, writing, meetings, lecture tours, and protests against nuclear testing in Nevada and against nuclear weapons research.

After Akie's death from breast cancer in 1994, Earle Reynolds spent the last four years of his life in a home for Alzheimer's patients in Garden Grove, California. His daughter wrote a novella based on their relationship during those last years.

In a 1986 interview, Earle commented on his life work: "I've been ahead of the game. I was pointing out the dangers of nuclear weapons 30 years ago. . . I've been a kind of a renegade scientist. As soon as I stepped over the boundaries, as soon as my findings became politically sensitive, I lost my credibility as a scientist. Now a scientist will stand on a podium and say what I was saying 30 years ago. I'm like a voice in the wilderness that finally begins to hear answering voices."

Notes on Penny Arcade, Earle Reynolds' brief (8-page) memoir, by Earle's daughter Jessica Reynolds Shaver Renshaw, 2010: In his 80's, when Alzheimer's had stripped him of almost his entire memory, short-term or long-term, Earle could still remember building a boat and sailing it around the world. Until the Alzheimer's he could also remember growing up in the circus, which alternated with vaudeville. He told of "sleeping in the lid of a wardrobe trunk," on which he remembered were pasted the pictures of his "best friends: the fat lady, the man with no arms and the Wild Man of Borneo." He said he cut his teeth on the corner of a resin box. He remembered proudly working out at the age of four on his "own miniature trapeze, hung a few feet from the ground," and at five being the "howler" in the den of the Wild Man of Borneo, "with a well-resined string, a tin can, a glove, and plenty of energy." He remembered singing the sentimental song of World War I, "Over There" as a toddler and having people throw him pennies; on rare occasions I could get him to sing it for me. His version was "He climbs upstairs in his underwears (instead of "all unawares"). Please tell my daddy to COME home. Just a baby's prayer at twilight for his DADDY over there." He still resented the memory of a little girl who walked up and stood on her head once while he was singing. His parents made him split his earnings with her "and all she did was stand on her head. Anybody can stand on their head!"

Some of the stories he believed about his childhood, however, and which he describes in his unpublished memoir, Penny Arcade, must be considered apocryphal. According to Earle's birth certificate, his mother's name was Maude Landry, not Madelaine Landre, and she was born in Prentice, Wisconsin, not in Canada. Although it has not been substantiated, Maude may have run away from a convent at 16 to join the circus when it passed through her hometown. She was certainly with the circus by the time she turned 17, when she gave birth to Earle.

In order for him to have been in vaudeville with Charlie Chaplin for a season, Earle would have had to be in the Karno Pantomime Troupe and under the age of three. He was in vaudeville periodically from birth so that is certainly possible. Chaplin made his first tour of the United States and Canada in 1910, the year Earle was born, with the Karno Troupe and stayed with it until 1913. But it seems unlikely that Earle could have been offered the juvenile lead in Chaplin's first movie (which his parents turned down because moving-pictures were "a fly-by-night scheme" compared to vaudeville). Chaplin's first movie was The Tramp (1915), in which he himself played the lead. "The Kid," with juvenile lead Jackie Coogan, didn't come out until 1921, when Earle was 11 and had been out of entertainment for three years. It is doubtful Chaplin had even conceived of "The Kid" before 1913.

His father William was not blown to his death from a tightrope stretched between two buildings in downtown Dallas by a "gulf wind" while performing for WWI troops in August,1918, as Earle always believed and as he told other biographers. According to public records, William Schoene died of pneumonia in San Angelo on April 7, 1926 and was buried in public ground. William's obituary appeared in the May 8, 1926 issue of Billboard (p. 90). Maude had long since remarried.

RELATED READING, in more of less chronological order:

Reynolds, E.L., Penny Arcade (unpublished memoir)in Earle and Akie Reynolds Collection, UCSC (see link and note by Reynolds' daughter above)

Reynolds, E. L. Growth and Development of Hiroshima Children Exposed to the Atomic Bomb. Three Year Study (1951-3). Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Technical Report 20-59, 1959. Cited in Adult Stature in Relation to Childhood Exposure to the Atomic Bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki JOSEPH L. BELSKY, MDWILLIAM J. BLOT, PhD http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/65/5/489.pdf

Reynolds, Earle L., The Physical Growth in 1951 of Hiroshima Children Exposed to the Atomic Bomb, 1951, manuscript and notes are in Earle and Akie Reynolds Collection, UCSC (see link)

Reynolds, Earle L., The Growth and Development of Hiroshima Children Exposed to the Atomic Bomb, 1953, in Earle and Akie Reynolds Collection, UCSC (see link)

Review of book (above)in Human Biology, May 1964.

Reynolds, Earle and Barbara, All in the Same Boat, New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1962 Family's trip around the world in the Phoenix, 1954-60.

Reynolds, Jessica, Jessica's Journal, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1958. Eleven-year old's diary account of sailing from Hawaii to New Zealand in the Phoenix.

Reynolds, Barbara Leonard, Cabin Boy and Extra Ballast, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958. Children's story of a family sailing from Japan to Hawaii.

Reynolds, Ted. "Voyage of Protest." Scribble, Winter, 1959

Reynolds, Earle, The Forbidden Voyage, New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1961. Non-fiction. The Reynolds family's protest voyage against American nuclear testing in the Pacific and aftermath, 1958-1960.

Reynolds, Barbara, The Phoenix and the Dove, Japan: Nagasaki Appeal Committee, 1986. Barbara's personal spiritual journey.

Reynolds, Jessica, To Russia with Love, Tokyo: Chas. E. Tuttle Co., 1962 (in Japanese translation only) The Reynolds family's protest voyage against Soviet nuclear testing in the U.S.S.R.

Reynolds, Jessica, To Russia with Love, Wilmington, OH: Peace Resource Center, Wilmington College (in English) due out in 2010.

Renshaw, Jessica Shaver, New Every Morning, Enumclaw, WA: Pleasant Word 2006

Wikipedia - Lawrence Wittner, various books on nuclear weapons and peace.

External links

Earle and Akie Reynolds Archive | University Library Earle Reynolds - Anthropologist, Quaker, and world-renowned peace activist who skippered the yacht Phoenix into waters in the South Pacific declared off ... library.ucsc.edu/content/earle-and-akie-reynolds-archive The Earle and Akie Reynolds Collection at the University of California at Santa Cruz has extensive writings by, photographs of and information about Earle Reynolds and his second wife.

In Pursuit of Peace: An Exhibit From the Earle and Akie Reynolds ... This is an exhibit covering the life of peace activists, Earle and Akie Reynolds. "It is not only the story of Earle and Akie Reynolds, but also of Barbara, ... www.clrn.org/weblinks/details.cfm?id=2101 -

http://drcdev.ohiolink.edu/handle/123456789/8331 The Peace Resource Center (Wilmington College, Wilmington, OH) was founded by activist, author, and peace educator Barbara Reynolds in August, 1975 to house the largest collection (outside of Japan) on materials related to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to teach peace skills to new generations.

Wikipedia - Lawrence S. Wittner. Author of "The Long Voyage: The Golden Rule and Resistance to Nuclear Testing in Asia and the Pacific," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 8-3-10, February 22, 2010 (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Lawrence_S_-Wittner/3308) and "Preserving the Golden Rule as a Piece of Anti-Nuclear History." (http://www.truthout.org/preserving-golden-rule-a-piece-anti-nuclear-history56895) February 14, 201, article about Golden Rule and Phoenix.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG001-025/dg017/dg017cnvamain.htm Swarthmore College Peace Collection: Committee for Non-Violent Action Records, 1958-1968

Peace Monuments Related to Boats or Ships http://peace.maripo.com/p_boats.htm

Legal Brief: Earle L. Reynolds v. United States of America, Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii, August 1958. From Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, 1873-2002 http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/catalogue/pauling12.html

Articles pertaining to the Micronesia/Marshall Islands and to experiences of anthropologist, Dr. Earle Reynolds.** (Many of the contents of these folders were LOST in the flood and all of it is flood damaged)** From Papers of Wataru W. Sutow, M.D. at http://mcgovern.library.tmc.edu/data/www/html/collect/manuscript/Sutow/Sutow_S5.htm

http://www.san.beck.org/GPJ29-AntiNuclearProtests.html

http://www.modis.ispras.ru/wikipedia/Category:American_anti-war_activists.html

http://38 10 54.86N 121 31 42.31W Last known location of the Phoenix.

Peace Anti-nuclear protests yachts wooden boats anthropologist circus Japan Hiroshima radiation atomic bomb travel 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s USSR Nakhodka Marshall Islands authors scientist Born in 1910 Died in 1998 Phoenix of Hiroshima Barbara Leonard Reynolds lawsuits