Rising from the ashes

The Phoenix, a yacht that circumnavigated the globe and later was significant in protests against nuclear weapons during the Cold War, was intended to be a symbolic figure— structured out of Japanese wood, but also figuratively rising from the ashes of Hiroshima, destroyed by the first atomic bomb during World War II.
A phoenix, in mythology, is a bird that is cyclically reborn from the ashes of its predecessor. It is also hailed as a creature that only appears during times of peace.
Dr. Earle Reynolds, an anthropologist and educator, designed the ship in the 1950s in Hiroshima with the goal of fulfilling his lifelong dream of traveling the world, but what would start as a leisurely voyage around the globe quickly evolved into a worldwide tour of peaceful protests against nuclear weapons.
In a time of tension, the Phoenix was living up to its namesake as a symbol of peace, rising from a city ravaged by the fires of war.
Over half a century later, the ship currently lies at the bottom of a river, sunken and lost to time. But, Earle’s daughter, Jessica Reynolds Renshaw, now aims to raise that same Phoenix from the ashes once again.
Renshaw, the original first cabin girl of the Phoenix and a Long Beach resident for 44 years, is raising funds through her nonprofit, the Phoenix of Hiroshima Project Incorporated, in hopes of extracting the vessel from the Mokelumne River in Northern California and making the required reparations.
The Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association (BKBIA) will present a 24-minute video about the ship entitled Phoenix of Hiroshima: An Odyssey Interrupted at the Expo Arts Center Theatre on Aug. 4 for First Fridays as part of a sneak peek for a full-length, serialized documentary about peace boats.
“This is something that needs to be brought to life, brought to knowledge,” Renshaw said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “My goal in having it for First Fridays is to help people know an amazing story— just know about it. And stick this little bit of history back into place.”
Blair Cohn, executive director of the BKBIA, said in a phone interview on Tuesday the business administration received an email from the Phoenix of Hiroshima Project Incorporated about the ship and its story in March. Cohn said it’s good for First Fridays to have a unique story to share with the community.

Brian Cowden, who is producing the short documentary about the Phoenix and the full-length video about peace boats, first expressed interest about the vessel 20 years ago when he was researching another yacht— the Golden Rule, a ship that originally inspired the creation of the Phoenix.
According to Renshaw, it had been years since Cowden had first reached out to her father Earle, and it wasn’t until recently that he got in contact with her about being featured in his documentary.
The Phoenix first set sail in 1954.
The original Reynolds family crew, including two cats, consisted of: Renshaw, who was 10 years old when she first boarded the ship with her family; Dr. Earle Reynolds, Renshaw’s father who was the skipper and captain of the ship; Barbara, Renshaw’s mother; and Ted, Renshaw’s brother, who was 16.
The Japanese crewmen— Niichi Mikami, Motosada Fushima and Mitsugi Suemitsu— were members of the Hiroshima University Yacht Club. Fushima and Suemitsu returned to Japan three years later in 1957, but Mikami opted to stay with the crew as first mate of the Phoenix until 1960.
In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission, an American agency established after World War II to control the peacetime development of atomic science, tasked Earle— an anthropologist and educator— to study the effects the 1945 atomic bomb on Hiroshima had on the growth and development of children who were exposed to the radiation.
In Hiroshima, Earle decided to take action on his dream to travel around the world.
Renshaw said that, when her father was 17, seaman Joshua Slocum’s autobiography Sailing Around the World had instilled the drive in Earle to fulfill that passion of venturing the globe.
Earle used his own private finances to gather materials— some of which consisted of Army and Navy surplus from World War II— and had a boat builder, Mr. Yotsuda, assist in building the ship.
As he studied radiation’s effects in Japan, he was focusing on the construction of the Phoenix during the weekends, Renshaw said. She humorously recounted how Earle had originally only factored himself into his traveling plans, but when her mother Barbara realized his intentions, she insisted that the design of the vessel be expanded to accommodate the rest of the family.
The name of the ship— the Phoenix of Hiroshima— was coined by a Japanese professor, Mr. Yamada, who detailed the symbolic meaning of the mystical bird to Earle. Built from Japanese wood and materials gathered in the area, the Phoenix was a representation of Hiroshima, almost as if the universe was foreshadowing the vessel’s fate of becoming a figure of nuclear protest years later.
When Earle submitted his research findings about the impact of radiation three years later in 1954, the Reynolds family decided it was time to take their pleasure cruise around the world.

For four years, the Reynolds family toured the planet, reaching places such as Hawaii, Tahiti, American Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Cocos Islands, South Africa, Brazil and Hawaii, again. Renshaw said that, along the way, the family weathered some typhoons.
“After traveling the world, we had encountered all kinds of different people— with different cultures, different ethnicities, different viewpoints,” Renshaw said. “It was really broadening our perspective about understanding that the world was bigger than just us.”
Her mom, who was an English teacher, assigned her a diary, in which Renshaw would detail her experiences as a child onboard the Phoenix. She said her mother would consistently check her spelling and grammar, but, with time, Renshaw developed her skill in writing.
Renshaw has publicized many of her experiences over the years and is the author of many books, including The Reynolds Family, The Nuclear Age and A Brave Wooden Boat, To Russia with Love and Mum: The Conscience, Courage and Compassion of Barbara Reynolds.
“It was the most magnificent, marvelous, magical experience,” she said of her time on the Phoenix, adding that much of her education came from traveling. “I wish every child could have it; I wish my own children could have had it.”
Upon the family’s return to Hawaii in 1958, people were asking Mikami about the effects the atomic bomb had on Hiroshima. Renshaw said it was ironic, seeing as that her father was the expert on radiation, but people naturally gravitated to him because of his direct tie to his homeland.
The Japanese were the ones who had lost loved ones in the blast, after all. According to the Phoenix of Hiroshima website, Mikami’s uncle was never found in the rubble of Hiroshima.
“They were the real experts,” Renshaw said, alluding to the Japanese. “It was amazing. We had no intention of becoming activists […] It all just gelled and came together in Hawaii.”
A day before the Phoenix’s arrival in Hawaii that day, the Golden Rule, a anti-nuclear peace boat, had sailed from San Pedro to that area around the Marshall Islands where the American government was testing a series of nuclear weapons. The government issued an injunction against American citizens in that forbidden region, and when the Golden Rule crew made its attempt to leave, the sailors were jailed.
Everything about the Phoenix and its situation seemed to indicate that the Reynolds family were destined to carry on the mission of the Golden Rule and protest against weapons of mass destruction.

“’Are we supposed to carry on what they are doing?'” Renshaw recalled. “’I mean, we’ve got the knowledge, we have the boat, we are heading that direction anyway. Is there some kind of sovereign hand in all of this that we don’t know about?'”
Given time to think about it, the family decided that it was the right thing to accept the call to action and pursue a mission of activism.
Renshaw was only 14 at the time, and she had started going to school in Hawaii and made a few friends. Her family gave her the option to stay if she wanted to, but she had bonded with them so much that she said what her parents had valued was starting to become important for her as well.
“There’s this intimacy with the family when you really get to know them, appreciate them, and you bond,” she said. “You bond. I think that’s why when we came back around the world, and we had been together three and a half years on that pleasure cruise […] I said, ‘No way— it’s my world, and I have a right to fight for it.'”
On July 1, 1958, the Phoenix became the first vessel to sail into a nuclear test zone in protest when it reached another such zone in Bikini Atoll.
The official voyage objecting to nuclear arms lasted until 1961. But, the ship, with different crewmembers, continued to go on humanitarian missions until 1970. At some point during the ’70s, Earle sold the ship, and the Reynolds family lost track of the vessel.
Decades later, in 2007, the owner of the boat at the time got in contact with Renshaw and offered it to her. Renshaw said that she had no use for a vessel at the time, let alone a place to store it. So, she said she turned the offer down.
The owner then offered the ship for free on Craigslist, which elicited a response from a recovering drug addict who was interested in the vessel’s history, according to Renshaw.
As the new owner towed the ship near a friend’s residence in Mokelumne River, the Phoenix hit the dock, piercing a hole into the structure. It eventually sank.
Now Renshaw’s overall intention is to rescue the ship from the bottom of the ocean and restore it— while also recovering a bit of history and her childhood.
At phoenixofhiroshima.org, those interested can donate to the nonprofit’s goal of $87,000 to recover the vessel from the river and restore the Phoenix to its previous condition.
As of July 11, the Phoenix of Hiroshima Incorporated has raised $24,807.72. Renshaw said the nonprofit is also going to apply for grants.
On July 7, decades after the Phoenix’s anti-nuclear protest, the United Nations adopted a treaty banning nuclear weapons worldwide. She called it progress, but there is more work to do.
“These man-made weapons are killing plant life, it’s killing fish, it’s killing mammals,” she said. “It’s awful. It’s causing deformities. And it’s really depressing, but that’s the reason we have to tell our country and say, ‘Don’t develop and test these weapons.’ […] Please don’t test weapons that destroy humanity.”
A few days later, the Golden Rule, fully restored, sailed over the Phoenix at Mokelumne River in a reunion-type event.
Nearly half a century and remnants of a past thought to be forgotten are still prevalent during modern times.
Renshaw hasn’t seen her Phoenix since March of 2007. She recalled her times as a 10-year-old, writing in her diary, documenting every bit of her youth, perhaps unknowingly logging a piece of American history in the process.
She said she remembers the feeling of waking up inside the yacht and experiencing the sense of mystery of being in a new place every time.
In the process of discovering the world, she discovered herself— she discovered God, Renshaw said.
“I began to see his handiwork— in the sky, in the sea, in the people— and there was just no other way around it,” she said. “There’s got to be a creator. That was part of my development— coming to realize that.”
She remembered traveling to South Africa in the 1950s and seeing the women in the smaller villages who were barefoot, had red clay mixed into their hair to form various hairstyles and were topless, with the exception of necklaces they had crafted.
Exposing herself to different cultures helped her better understand the world around her, she said.
Her notions of life as a 10-year-old in Hiroshima when her father Earle was researching radiation had perhaps gone down into ash, rising into a new perspective on life that factored in cultures from around the world.
“I thought that was totally normal,” she said. “I thought, ‘OK, this is a different variation.’ But, I didn’t think, ‘OK, this is very different from our culture.’ It was, ‘This is just another aspect of life, and isn’t life wonderful?'”