Associated Press
TACOMA — The Rev. Bill Bichsel, a Tacoma Jesuit priest who was arrested dozens of times at anti-military protests, died Saturday at the age of 86.
Bichsel had a history of heart problems and was in a coma when he died in hospice care at the Catholic community home where he lived, a longtime close friend, Joe Power-Drutis, told The News Tribune.
Bichsel protested Trident submarines and nuclear missiles at the Navy’s Bangor submarine base. He chained himself to the doors of the federal courthouse in Tacoma after the U.S invasion of Iraq. And he repeatedly protested at the Army’s School of the Americas in Georgia, alleging that it trained Latin American soldiers involved in human rights abuses.
Bichsel estimated he was arrested 45 times. He was convicted more than a half-dozen times and spent more than two years in jails and prisons.
When asked during an interview if he had any regrets, Bichsel said he wished he had done more.
“I wish I had been more conscious of the call to peace and nonviolence” earlier in life, Bichsel told The News Tribune in August.
Bichsel called his protests civil resistance, not civil disobedience, because he didn’t believe he was breaking the law. He said he was upholding international laws, such as the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which prohibit war crimes and crimes against peace and humanity.
In 2009, Bichsel helped lead a group that traveled to Japan to ask forgiveness for the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The “Journey of Repentance” sparked an outcry from those who said it ignored the attack on Pearl Harbor and atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II.
In 2011, Bichsel expressed no regrets when he and four other war protesters were given prison sentences by a federal judge in Tacoma for breaking into the Bangor Navy base in 2009 to protest nuclear weapons there.
More quietly, he also helped feed and shelter homeless people in his hometown. Bichsel was part of the Tacoma Catholic Worker community he co-founded in 1989.
Before the civil resistance phase of his life, Bichsel served as dean of students at Gonzaga University, taught religion at Seattle Preparatory School and was assistant pastor at a Tacoma church.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
