Slate's Explainer: The Symbolism of White Doves

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MADELEINE BRAND, host:

Today marks 60 years since US forces dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Thousands of people gathered in Nagasaki's Peace Memorial Park for a ceremony today featuring a performance by Japanese school children.

Japanese School Children: (Singing in Japanese)

BRAND: Last Saturday, huge crowds gathered in Hiroshima to commemorate that city's destruction in the world's first nuclear attack. As part of the ceremony, a bell rang at 8:15, the exact time of the blast, and 1,000 doves were released into the sky.

These anniversaries raise all sorts of big questions, but today we're going to consider a very small one. What happens to the doves after they fly away? Here with an Explainer is Andy Bowers of the online magazine Slate.

ANDY BOWERS reporting:

It depends on what kind of birds they are. Newspaper accounts don't identify the species released in Hiroshima, but actual white peace doves fare very badly in the wild. After centuries of domestic breeding, the white ring neck dove is ill-equipped for urban survival. Bird rescue workers say that a ring neck dove released in a city will likely starve if it doesn't get hit by a car or even by another bird first. Since white ring necks are so fragile, companies that release so-called doves at special events use white homing pigeons instead. Pigeons and doves are in the same family of birds, and the differences between them are more semantic than scientific.

After a trained release coordinator lets the birds go, they immediately fly back to the place where they're kept. Trained homing pigeons can find their way over distances as far as 600 miles. Even if it doesn't get all the way home, a pigeon stands a much better chance in the urban wild than a ring neck dove. According to the voluntary standards created by the American White Dove Association, homing pigeon releases can only take place outdoors on a clear day with ample time for the birds to fly home. A typical company might charge $250 or more to release 12 white pigeons.

BRAND: Andy Bowers is a senior editor at the online magazine Slate. And that Explainer was compiled by Daniel Engber.

NPR's DAY TO DAY continues. I'm Madeleine Brand.

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