Harold Willens was born in a small village in the Ukraine in 1914. He escaped with his mother when he was eight, joining his father in the U.S. After becoming a successful businessman, husband and father, he entered a new phase of his life that involved activism against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Though I've shared some of his oral history previously in my blog, yesterday's anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima seems like a good time to share Harold Willens' comments. He was the author of the California Bilateral Nuclear Freeze Initiative that passed, in spite of Ronald Reagan's attempt to prevent it, in 1982. In this short excerpt from our interview, Harold Willens talked about what led to his anti-war activism. He passed away in 2003.
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