MUM: The Conscience, Courage, and Compassion of Barbara Reynolds

 

Wikipedia describes her as an American author who became a Quaker, peace activist and educator.

Barbara Leonard Reynolds was best known for her 18 years in Hiroshima being a friend and advocate for survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the 1960s, she escorted two groups of hibakusha (bomb survivors) around the world so they could plead with members of Congress, delegates to the United Nations, teachers, students, churches, and peace groups never to let nuclear war happen to anyone again.

For her humanitarian efforts on their behalf and for founding the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima (1965) the mayor of Hiroshima gave her the key to the city and made her an honorary citizen of Hiroshima. Barbara dined with the Prime Minister of Japan and was declared a "National Living Treasure." Posthumously (2011) a monument was erected to her in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, their Ground Zero.

She spent the last 10 years of her life in Southern California helping Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees but she never stopped helping the hibakusha.

She wrote 8 books—including a murder mystery, four children's novels and her spiritual autobiography, The Phoenix and the Dove. She co-authored (with her husband) All in the Same Boat.

This look at both Barbara's public and private lives was written, with admiration and candor, by her daughter Jessica.