Port Townsend is being included in a national research project examining the relationship between local resolutions and US foreign policy — particularly nuclear weapons policy. It is funded by the Carnegie Corp. in New York City, and led by anthropology professor Hirokazu Miyazaki of Northwestern University. Miyazaki visited Port Townsend on June 18 as part of his research.

Miyazaki began the project last fall by examining city resolutions in the Midwest, and is now visiting cities in the Pacific Northwest. Originally from Japan, Miyazaki first became interested in the ways that city governments interact with international foreign policy when he was doing work in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The two cities have been very active over the last 40 years in promoting nuclear weapons abolition and Miyazaki wondered if their example could be applied to other cities. 

“People think city leaders have no say on national security policy, so they shouldn’t even get involved in the subject,” Miyazaki said. Nevertheless, “over the last seven or eight years, a very large number of cities in the U.S. have passed resolutions to call on the federal government to prioritize nuclear disarmament.” This includes major cities such as Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis and St. Paul. 

The Port Townsend City Council passed a resolution in 2019 calling for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons. Miyazaki is particularly interested in Port Townsend for the presence of Naval Magazine Indian Island and its relevance for two recent resolutions — the 2019 nuclear weapons resolution and the 2023 Gaza ceasefire resolution. 

Many municipal resolutions in the eastern United States have been part of larger campaigns such as the Back from the Brink Campaign and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) ­— winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

However, in Washington and Oregon, city council resolutions tend to be much more localized.

“Resolutions in Washington reference the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia River, the legacy of uranium mining on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and the Marshallese community in Washington who have been displaced by nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. 

“I think for this community [Jefferson County] the presence of Naval Magazine Indian Island is so important,” Miyazaki said.

“It’s not a nuclear facility but… [it is] a very strategic facility that basically services all the Pacific Fleet — including nuclear weapons-carrying submarines.”

Rather than an abstract subject, Miyazaki believes U.S. foreign and nuclear policy are quite tangible with real world consequences which have been affecting American and non-American communities for decades.

U.S. military facilities exist all over the country, and issues surrounding uranium mining, nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear waste “have had a disproportionate impact on minority groups like Native Americans and Marshall Islanders,” he said.

“We need to understand […] how public funds are used and how the U.S. military works,” Miyazaki stated. “Those are the kinds of things every U.S. citizen should know.”

While he conceded that direct impacts from local resolutions on U.S. military policy are very difficult to see, Miyazaki emphasized the potential of local resolutions to raise awareness and encourage individuals to see connections between national military policy and their own lives.

Sophia Lumsdaine is  the former editor of the Redhawk Review at Port Townsend High School and a sophomore at George Hall University in Oregon, where she is studying journalism.