Join the World March for Peace & Nonviolence • Abolition Flame Ready to Go • Japanese leg scheduled for Oct. 17-19 (Everyone welcome!)

A new global nuclear abolition and peace movement begins today.

At a school in the non-nuclear country of New Zealand, Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey is lighting the Abolition Flame with fire taken from the Peace Flame at the Hiroshima Peace Park. The Hiroshima Peace Flame was lit from the embers of the 1945 nuclear explosion in memory of those who perished and will remain alight until all nuclear weapons are eliminated.

Mayor Harvey's visit to Japan coincided with the annual assembly of Mayors for Peace, an international movement of 3,104 cities calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Mayor Harvey explains the significance of location of the ceremony is to bring the message of peace to youth:

“The flame is a message about what kind of world we want these children to inherit…our homes, neighbourhoods and schools are responsible for passing on a peaceful culture.”

On Oct. 2 (the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth and the UN Day for Peace and Nonviolence), World March for Peace and Nonviolence marchers starting at the Gandhi statue in Wellington, New Zealand will take the Abolition Flame around the world before reaching New York for the 2010 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (signed by most countries in the world; includes an obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament).

The World March for Peace is the first of its kind--a transnational march for the end of nuclear weapons and all forms (economic, racial, religious, sexual, psychological) of violence. It will continue for 90 days and span 90 countries, ending in the Andes Moutains on January 2, 2010. A permanent base of a hundred people of different nationalities--joined by others throughout the world––as the march passes through their locality, will complete the journey.

Sato Makiko is in charge of the Japan leg (Oct 17-19) of the march which will touch down in Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Makiko said she's still finalizing plans and welcomes all interested participants and supporters. So far, Mayors for Peace, Peace Boat, the International Campaign to Ban Uraniun Weapons, HANWA (Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition) and Peace Not War Japan have joined. For additional information (in Japanese): http://www.anatakara.com/petition/index2.html. We'll also post the latest at this site in English.

More background from the Organizers:

Why:

Because we can end world hunger with 10% of what is spent on arms. Imagine how life would be if 30-50% of the arms budget went toward improving people’s lives instead of being used for destruction.

Because eliminating wars and violence means leaving human pre-history behind and taking a giant step forward in the evolution of our species.

Because in this aspiration we are accompanied by the strength of the voices of hundreds of prior generations who suffered the consequences of war, and whose echo continues to be heard today in all those places where it continues to leave its sinister trail of dead, disappeared, disabled, refugees and displaced.

Because a “world without wars” is an image that opens the future and seeks to become reality in every corner of the planet, as violence gives way to dialogue.

The moment has come for the voiceless to be heard! Out of agonizing and urgent need, millions of human beings are crying out for an end to wars and violence.

We can make that happen by uniting all the forces of pacifism and active non-violence worldwide.

Who is participating:

The March was initiated by “World Without Wars”- an international organization launched by the Humanist Movement - that has been working for 15 years in the fields of pacifism and non-violence.

The World March, however, will be created and shaped by everyone. Open to any person, organization, collective, group, political party, business, etc., that shares the same aspirations and sensibility, this project is not something closed. Instead, it is a journey that will be progressively enriched as different initiatives set their contributions in motion...

What is going to happen:

As it passes through cities there will be all kinds of forums, conferences and events (sporting, cultural, social, etc.) that will be organised according to the local initiatives that are emerging.

At this time hundreds of projects have already been set in motion by different individuals and organizations.

What are our goals and objectives:

To denounce the dangerous world situation that is leading us closer and closer to nuclear war, which would be the greatest catastrophe in human history – a dead end.

To give a voice to the majority of world citizens who want peace. Although the majority of the human race opposes the arms race, we are not sending out a unified signal. Instead we are letting ourselves be manipulated by a powerful minority and suffering the consequences. The time has come to stand together and show our opposition. Join a multitude of others in sending a clear signal, and your voice will have to be heard!

To achieve: the worldwide eradication of nuclear weapons; the immediate withdrawal of invading troops from occupied territories; the progressive and proportional reduction of conventional weapons; the signing of non-aggression treaties among nations and the renunciation by governments of war as a way to resolve conflicts.

To expose the many other forms of violence (economic, racial, sexual, religious…) that are currently hidden or disguised by their perpetrators; and to provide a way for all who suffer such violence to be heard.

To create global awareness - as has already happened with environmental issues - of the urgent need to condemn of all forms of violence and bring about real Peace.

-- Jean Downey

Taiji (killing dolphins is not a Japanese tradition) & Beyond: Saving Dolphins & Whales throughout our Planet

So far, Taiji fishermen have slaughtered pilot whales, but some dolphins have been spared, according to Sea Shepherd––concluding some progress has been made. But it's not enough.

AFP's report of the start of the dolphin slaughter at Taiji inaccurately framed the story as if all Japanese people side with dolphin slaughter as a matter of "tradition." That's like thinking all Canadians side with baby seal hunters, or all French people eat horses as a matter of "tradition."

The conflict at Taiji is not about a culture war between Japan and the rest of the world––over the ostensible tradition of killing dolphins. Many Japanese dolphin sympathizers (including multi-generational vegetarian Buddhists, PETA Asia-Pacific supporters, and members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) side with millions of people worldwide who want to end the dolphin and pilot whale killings at Taiji.

Instead, the real purpose of the Japanese government's support of the Taiji slaughter is about the fishing industry's elimination of natural predatory competition and providing some extra income to Taiji fishermen from the sale of the dolphins to marine amusement parks. Taiji is one brutal facet of a larger conflict between dolphins (and other sea animals) and the global fishing industry.

Media attention generated by Ric O'Barry's activist documentary The Cove depicting the dolphin killings at Taiji as a cultural issue obscures the big picture context of this planetary drama with related scenes playing out worldwide. In Florida, angry fishermen made headlines this past summer by pipe bombing and shooting bottle-nosed dolphins playfully pulling fish from their lines. Around the world, commercial fishing nets kill 300,000 dolphins, porpoises and whales (and millions of other sea animals including endangered loggerhead turtles and sharks) every year:

“Almost 1,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die every day in nets and fishing gear. That’s one every two minutes," said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director of WWF's Global Species Programme. "Some species are being pushed to the brink of extinction. Urgent action is needed - and we developed this ranking to help governments and aid agencies know where their money and efforts can really make a difference." 

The large scale deaths of sea mammals is euphemistically called "cetacean bycatch." And political leaders, commercial fishermen's organisations, supermarkets, fish processors, and consumers of fish are not addressing this tragedy. Some fisheries even use captured dolphins as bait to catch more fish. Environmental pollution and insensitive development projects also impact cetaceans.

(Baiji Photo © Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Dolphins at special risk include the Pink Dolphins of Hong Kong; Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins and Bottlenose Dolphins in the Indian Ocean; Irrawaddy dolphins in the Malampaya Sound in the Philippines, the Mekong river, the Mahakam river in Indonesia, and a few thousand newly discovered Irrawady dolphins along the Bangladesh coast. The Yangtze River dolphin (the Baiji) is the world's most endangered cetacean––or the most recently extinct. 2002 marked the last documented sighting of the species; 2006 surveys failed to find any in its native Yangtze River––the Three Gorges Dam destroyed its habitat. According to the ICNU Red List of Threatened Species, fishing nets, electric fishing practices, boat propeller strikes, dam construction, river siltation (from deforestation and agricultural expansion), and pollution all contributed to the Baiji's plight. (The ICNU asserted in July that the global wildlife and biodiversity crisis is worse than the economic crisis. The reasons: overfishing, overhunting and loss of habitat. One third of the ocean's sharks are also at risk, killed by the same commercial fishing nets killing cetaceans). Dolphin species are also at risk in Hawaii, Tahiti, Patagonia, Peru, New Zealand, and the North Atlantic (where 50-70% of the native whales bear scars from net entanglement).

Contrary to Taiji fisherman who claim dolphin killing is a traditional practice, the director of The Cove rightly notes that the Taiji slaughter only goes back to the Meiji regime (1868-1912)––when the authoritarian government instituted a slew of "invented traditions" intended to undermine more established forms of Japanese culture. Before the Meiji era, the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) prohibited meat-eating (associated with Christianity and European culture). Previously, Buddhist and folk Shinto precepts inculcated a widespread reverent attitude towards animals and nature. Meiji leaders attempted to subvert these faith traditions in their attempt to redirect religious allegiance to the cult of State Shinto they created. Moreover, large-scale dolphin killings at Taiji only began in 1969,  (Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson underscores that whaling is also not a traditional Japanese practice: "Modern pelagic whaling was initiated by General Douglas MacArthur in 1946. He established the modern whaling fleet."

O'Barry's global spotlight on Taiji is crucial for heightening awareness about dolphins and other cetaceans. The spotlight needs to grow larger and include the other hundreds of thousands of dolphins and other sea creatures being killed as collateral damage by the worldwide fishing industry.

According to Paul Watson, the reason Canadian salmon fishermen kill baby seals in British Columbia is to eliminate natural predatory competitors for Atlantic salmon brought to those waters by the fishing industry (as well as make side income from selling the pelts to the Canadian fur industry which already kills 300,000 baby seals on the East Coast along with 2 million other animals every year). Which is worse––being harpooned by a Japanese fisherman; or struggling to death in a fishing net (suffering from broken beaks and torn fins); or being clubbed and skinned alive by a Canadian fisherman? And how must a captured dolphin feel when taken from its family and sold to a marine amusement park or "swim-with dolphin" programs at theme parks, harbors, gambling casinos and even shopping malls?


Twenty years ago, Hardy Jones, founder of BlueVoice.org, went to Taiji––returning repeatedly seeking to end the capture of dolphins and pilot whales in Japan. BlueVoice.org has not only taken on the issue of intentional hunts of dolphins and whales, but also the fishing net and industrial pollution kills of cetaceans around the world. Its wonderful website offers a number of online videos on saving dolphins and pilot whales; of dolphins in captivity; and just being "Among Dolphins."

To the extent of sometimes verbally and physically clashing with fishermen and whale hunters (and even fellow environmentalist NGO Greenpeace because it chooses to "witness" but not directly confront its opposition and allegedly provides non-vegetarian food for its crew), Sea Shepherd Conservation Society pursues even larger goals of safeguarding all marine species and ecosystems all over the planet. Its website and a supporting site (Ocean Sentry) provides forthright, up-to-date news (and suggestions for action) on this subject.

 - JD

Destroying & Saving Other Species (and Ourselves)

In Alice Walker's book, The Color Purple, the protagonist tells her oppressor: "Everything you do to me, you do to yourself." For decades, ecologists have been telling us the human destruction of the natural world harms us as well.

An article in the Guardian yesterday puts hunting and loss of habitat at the top of a range of human-made threats to biodiversity––numbering endangered species by country:

...The data below shows that 11,686 species were classed as "endangered" in 2006. Of these, the US hosts the lion's share with 10% in that country. Just over 6% of the total species are in Brazil, reflecting the pressure that widespread deforestation is causing in the highly biodiverse region.

The tiny island nation of Singapore has a large number of threatened animals considering its size. Its 100 endangered species works out at over 20 per million people present on the island (compared with less than 4 per million in the United States...

Incredibly, the global consumption of frog's legs has put frogs at risk of extinction. The French eat 4,000 tons annually. People in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and China also eat tremendous numbers. Most of these frogs are hunted in the wild:

"...Amphibians are the most threatened animal group; about one third of all amphibian species are now listed as threatened, against 23% of mammals and 12% of birds," says Corey Bradshaw, an associate professor at the Environment Institute of the University of Adelaide and a member of the team that carried out the research into human frog consumption that was published earlier this year in the journal Conservation Biology. "The principle drivers of extinction, we always assumed, were habitat loss and disease. Human harvesting, we thought, was minor. Then we started digging, and we realised there's this massive global trade that no one really knows much about. It's staggering. So as well as destroying where they live, we're now eating them to death..."

Indonesia is today the world's largest exporter of frogs by far, shipping more than 5,000 tonnes each year. Some of these may be farmed, but not many...

In Asia, the number of officially threatened species are:

• Afghanistan - 38
• Bangladesh - 111
• China - 804
• India - 569
• Indonesia - 857
• Japan - 215
• Malaysia - 917
• Nepal - 85
• Pakistan - 86
• Philippines - 417
• Singapore - 100
• Thailand - 250
• Vietnam - 310

Captive breeding programs are showing some success, according to the article. Japan For Sustainability recently reported on Hokkaido's Maruyama Zoo program to breed stellar sea eagles. The zoo is also breeding the great purple emperor, golden-ringed dragonflies, and Japanese crayfish.

Activist documentaries like The End of the Line (reveals the impact of overfishing; the website provides an online action center) and The Cove (exposes the annual slaughter of 23,000 dolphins at Taiji, Japan) are helping to build a counter-movement to save animals.

The struggle over the destruction and saving of animals is being played out on an increasingly globalized stage. I would never have guessed this, but there's a Japan link in the survival of the polar bear.

Three international wildlife organizations, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Humane Society International, and Defenders of Wildlife are lobbying the United States to help stop the international trade in polar bears––hides, trophies, rugs and other polar bear parts. They want the US to submit a proposal to stop the trade at next year's meeting of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) on 13-25 March, 2010 in Qatar. Defenders of Wildlife has an online action.

A decreasing number of polar bears (now around 20,000 to 25,000) live in the wild live within five countries: Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russian Federation, and the United States. Melting sea ice from global warming threatens their habitat. Some scientists say the complete loss of summer sea ice will result in the demise of polar bears before the end of this century.

Because of grassroots pressure, the United States finally listed the polar bear as a threatened species under its Endangered Species Act in 2008. This ended the importation to the United States of of polar bears killed by American trophy hunters responsible for large-scale commercial killing of polar bears. (American trophy hunting is a bizarre subculture and cottage industry; every year wealthy American hunters kill tens of thousands of wild animals, representing hundreds of different species––including endangered animals––in foreign countries).

Now the focus of activists has turned to the international trade in polar bear parts-skin, fur, claws, skulls and even stuffed bears. Most of the 400 polar bear skins come from Canada and go to Japan.

Beyond Japan, Asian (particularly Chinese) demand has dramatically elevated the rate of poaching of wild African animals: rhino horns are used in traditional Chinese medicine and ivory is used for decorative purposes. In July, Kenyan authorities impounded $1 million worth of rhino horns and elephant tusks. And now activists are trying to halt the killing and export of American black bears intended for the Chinese market in gallbladders and paws (again for consumption).

Some may ask what do animals have to do with the culture of peace. The answer lies in the empathy, compassion, and the kinds of interconnections (life-affirmative or life-destructive) we are all continuously co-creating.

- JD

Okinawan Lawsuit challenges new military base at Henoko, seeking protection of Okinawa dugong habitat

A group of Okinawans have brought a lawsuit against the Japanese government—challenging the legality of the planned US military base move from Futenma to an ecologically sensitive coral reef in northeastern Okinawan:

...The complainants claim construction of a new airfield on the lower part of Camp Schwab, with runways reaching into Oura Bay, would endanger the threatened Okinawa dugong, a marine mammal related to the manatee.

It was the first such legal action taken in Japan against the plan to replace the Futenma air station in urban Ginowan with a new facility in rural Henoko. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Naha District Court...

However, it was not the first such legal action elsewhere: Okinawan citizens and global environmentalists have been resisting the move since its announcement.

On a page linking to an ongoing online action on behalf of the dugong, the Center for Biological Diversity summarizes federal lawsuits dating back to 2003:

...The Center has used innovative legal tactics to secure new protections for the dugong. In 2003, we led a coalition of Japanese and American environmental groups in suing the U.S. Department of Defense to halt the construction of an American airbase in Henoko Bay. Since the dugong is protected under Japanese cultural properties law, the Center filed the first-ever international lawsuit under the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act to protect its last habitat. In 2004, we helped organize a resolution by 889 of the world’s leading coral-reef experts that called on the Japanese and U.S. governments to abandon their plan to construct the offshore airbase. And we led hundreds of international conservation groups in calling on former President Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to cancel the airbase plan.

In 2005, a federal judge ruled that our lawsuit over the airbase could proceed under the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act. The international coalition reiterated opposition to the airbase and rejected an altered construction proposal by the United States and Japan that would still devastate dugong habitat. Finally, in 2008, a federal judge ruled against the U.S. Department of Defense, requiring it to consider impacts of a new airbase on the dugong in order to avoid or mitigate any harm...

Earthjustice has an entire page of info dedicated to coverage of these lawsuits: "The Dugongs vs. The Department of Defense." Its photo of a 1966 commemorative stamp of the establishment of the dugong as a national monument illustrates the environmental and cultural issues at stake in this struggle.

Hideki Yoshikawa's account of legal activism to protect the dugong, "Dugong Swimming in Uncharted Waters: US Judicial Intervention to Protect Okinawa's 'Natural Monument' and Halt Base Construction," published this year at The Asia-Pacific Journal gives details and insights on the latest.

Bon Voyage to the Hibakusha: "Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World" launches Aug. 26, 2009 from Yokohama

Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World - Peace Boat Hibakusha Project
Ship Departure on the 26 August, 2009, from Yokohama

Japan-based international NGO Peace Boat launches its second "Global Voyage for a Nuclear-Free World." The ship, SS Oceanic, departs from Yokohama on August 2, with 10 Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Over 108 days, participants will visit 20 countries to share the testimonies of the atomic bombings and exchange with citizens around the world. Three high school students join this voyage––to explore ways for the younger generations to take on the legacy of hibakusha. 500 other participants also join the voyage––including university students from Korea and Germany.

This voyage focuses on disarmament education; thus provides a space for hibakusha and young people from around the world to meet and learn from one another. As the ship travels through Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Pacific, the Hibakusha's call for a peaceful and nuclear-free future around the world provides a unique base for disarmament education to foster a new movement passing experiences of the atomic bombings beyond borders and generations.

The ship visits Viet Nam, where people continue to suffer from Agent Orange disorders; Ecuador––which recently adopted a peace constitution––; and Tahiti, where victims of French nuclear tests are now speaking out.

Participants will meet with mayors around the world to encourage participation in the "Mayors for Peace" Initiative, and seek ways to further the current global momentum towards nuclear abolition as stimulated by US President Obama's declared determination to create a nuclear-free world.

Web sites
Itinerary of the 67th Global Voyage http://www.peaceboat.org/english/voyg/67/itinerary.html
Project Outline (Japanese) http://www.peaceboat.org/info/hibakusha/index.html
First Hibakusha Project (September 2008 - January 2009) http://www.peaceboat.org/english/voyg/63/index_spec.html

Peace as a Global Language @ The University of Shimane Sept. 26-27, 2009

The theme of this year's conference will be 'Nurturing Grassroots’. Each year this conference continues to grow and change. We are all very excited to have a new venue for this year’s conference on the Sanin coast. This year the conference will be held at the University of Shimane, in Hamada.

PGL conferences began in 2002, and are now an annual event for students, teachers and activists. Whether this will be your first time or your eighth, you are welcome to join us as presenters, participants or conference volunteers. The following issues are among the many that may interest you at this year's conference:

peace
community
local activism
global issues
the environment
human rights
intercultural communication
values
health
gender
media literacy
foreign language education focusing on global issues

Help nurture grassroots change!
How might we encourage change from the bottom up in our community?
How might we educate and empower youth to become active, responsible and peaceful citizens?
In what other ways might we make this a more peaceful world?

Issey Miyake reveals he is a Hibakusha

In this Japan Times commentary on Issey Miyake's July revelation that he is a hibakusha––public scholar Jeff Kingston says we must raise awareness of the "lessons and legacies" of the atomic bombings to resensitize ourselves to the horrifying possibility of nuclear holocaust that accompanies dependence on nuclear weaponry:

Global fashion icon Issey Miyake recently made headlines by divulging in a New York Times article he penned on July 13 that he is a hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bombings of Japan...

Miyake had remained quiet all these years, not wanting to be defined by his past or to become known as the "hibakusha designer." But he was inspired to speak out after an April 5 speech by U.S. President Barack Obama in Prague, in which he announced his intention to work toward abolishing nuclear weapons, declaring, " . . . as a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act..."

Creating Hope From Destruction in Iraq: Errant Home and the Visual Art of Qasim Sabti

Art, music, film, and the written word possess a powerful ability to bring us back to our own humanity. Time and again, we turn back to creative expression to help heal the wounds from the trauma of war.

One recent such work is “Errant Home”, a 2008 documentary by Nada Doumani that portrays interviews with four Iraqi artists in exile. Available online through the“Humanity Explored” film festival at cultureunplugged.com, the documentary interweaves memory with stunning artistic imagery as each of the four attempts to reconcile overwhelming loss with the human desire to keep hope alive.

Several segments of the documentary approach this tension with incredible poignancy. In one scene, artist Balasem Mohamad substitutes dialogue with a seemingly endless intense gaze--thereby conveying emotions that no human words could express. In another, journalist Maysoon Al-Mousawi comments that the pain Iraqis have experienced may in fact eventually be capable of generating a true, authentic happiness that might not have otherwise been possible had the suffering of war not occurred. While she does not elaborate further, her comment leaves viewers to contemplate the transformations that may be able to turn unfathomable suffering into opportuntities for profound growth.

Turning deep loss and pain into hope—destruction into creation—is also the theme and life work of Iraqi artist Qasim Sabti, who visited Japan last November. A painter and collage artist based in Baghdad, Qasim was devastated by the U.S. military destruction of important cultural and artistic facilities such as the University of Baghdad library collection—and decided to take action. Rescuing the books, he gave the salvageable ones new life by turning them into completely new art forms.

“When I saw 5000 books burned all at once, my feeling was beyond description,” he said to several dozen people who gathered at Mt. Takao in western Tokyo to attend an event creatively titled ‘Iraq x Mt. Takao = Peace’. Echoing Maysoon Al-Mousawi, he continued,“Far more powerful than this destruction, however, were the new creations that rose to take their place.”

Organized by the NPO Peace On and the “Kenju no Kai” eco-action group that is trying to save Mt. Takao from slated construction, the event was held “in order to try and understand the meaning behind the destruction of something that you love and has meaning for you, which describes the situation both for Iraq and for Mt. Takao,” explained Peace On Director Yasuyuki “Yatch” Aizawa.

“I kept my gallery in Baghdad open all throughout the war, which forced me to learn to live with the possibility of facing my own death,” Qasim commented during a dinner party on his last evening in Tokyo. Echoing a theme running throughout the “Errant Home” documentary, he added, “Our art was like a hidden world that was occurring in parallel with the war and violence. Because what we were doing was in line with true Iraqi culture, though, whereas the militias have absolutely nothing to do with it, we artists always knew that in the end they would disappear while our works would live on.”

Qasim Sabti with Peace On Director Yatch Aizawa (top) 

and interpreter/peace activist May Shigenobu

--Kimberly Hughes

Creating Hope From Destruction: Hiroshima's "Religion of Peace"

It is almost a question that I dread: “Where exactly have you lived in Japan?”

The eight years in Tokyo and two years in Nikko are unproblematic. “It must be so exciting to live in Tokyo!” or “Nikko—how gorgeous. Cold though!” The pleasantries are nearly automatic; the conversational flow uninterrupted.

With Hiroshima, however, it is different. As I speak its name—even before the word has left my mouth—I can already sense the eyes of whomever I am speaking with dropping downward; the voice quickly tapering off. At once both awkward and yet steeped in unspoken knowing, both of us honor the tacit understanding to take the briefest of seconds and silently acknowledge the heavy burden that this city—indeed, even the mere mention of its name—now represents.

Sometimes, the moment passes and conversation resumes. On other occasions, however, the next logical question ensues. “How was it living as an American in Hiroshima?”

Truth be told, it was an incredibly wonderful experience. The people of Hiroshima were almost uniformly warm, gracious, and openly friendly—even to strangers on the street. When I visited the city a couple of years ago after a ten-year absence, my senses—now firmly accustomed to the frostily cordial interactions that occur between most Tokyoites (if they even occur at all)—were shocked into delightful memories of my previous experience living there, when interacting with others in this way was natural and spontaneous.

At the time, as a 21 year-old delving vivaciously into Japanese language and culture, I was shielded almost entirely from the lingering horrors of history in Hiroshima. Aside from my academic coursework in peace studies and attending several lectures given by hibakusha, I can recall only brief, fleeting instances of this shield being breached on any sort of personal level during my yearlong stay. One was when a close friend of mine—a wonderful woman who hosted me in her home every Friday evening for a shamisen (traditional three-stringed instrument) lesson—once grew serious and confided in me that she herself was a hibakusha, having experienced the atomic bomb at age 2, and still bearing miniscule scars in her forehead from where she had been hit by glass. Another instance was at the August 6th memorial, when an elderly woman came up to me and asked where I was from. After I responded honestly, she looked me up and down for a moment, seemed to ascertain that I was a peaceful person, made a hushed comment about how heinous the experience had been, and went on her way.

Other than these moments, however, the memory of the city’s history lay hidden away; deeply out of my reach. Life goes on, and indeed, Hiroshima is a city that seems overflowing with incredible energy and zest. And needless to say, for someone who has not personally experienced that which was suffered by people in the city in 1945, it is nearly impossible to wrap one’s mind around the enormity of the horror. Although we may gain some idea through visiting the city’s A-bomb museum or witnessing imagery, still it lies outside of the capacity of our consciousness to understand what took place.

This was particularly the case for me as a young university student, who at the time had yet to discover the spiritual consciousness that now informs the way that I look at the world. Perhaps—as someone who now aims to be in tune with subtle energies that lay beyond the boundaries of the straightforward, surface-level speech that I was raised to communicate with—the next time that I visit the city, I may be able to sense feelings and energies that are not directly expressed, but are nevertheless very much present.

Terry Tempest Williams, a brilliantly passionate writer and thinker who is herself a hibakusha who grew up downwind of the nuclear testing site in the American southwest and has lost family members to radiation-related cancers, said the following in “The Politics of Place," an interview by independent journalist Scott London:

“It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering. One, as we were saying, cannot exist without the other. They mirror each other. They live in the same house. And it moves us to tears. I recently got back from Hiroshima and it was fascinating to me how the Japanese accommodate this paradox. We were talking about this word aware, which on the page looks like ‘aware,’ which speaks to both the pain and the beauty of our lives. Being there, what I perceived was that this is a sorrow that is not a grief that one forgets or recovers from, but it is a burning, searing illumination of love for the delicacy and strength of our relations…Perhaps Hiroshima has given birth to a religion of peace. Aware. The active soul.”

Whether or not this may explain the openness and friendliness that seems to characterize human interactions in Hiroshima, I cannot say for sure. This deeply spiritual interpretation, however, I am sure embodies a powerful element of truth on a level that I am only just beginning to comprehend or even conceptualize.

Posted by Kimberly Hughes

500,000,000 Paper Cranes & Voices of Survivors of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Children all over the world send ten million origami cranes each year to the Children's Peace Monument at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. The monument was created in 1958; if the ten million figure is an annual average, that means that Hiroshima has received over 500,000,000 cranes.

An inscription on the 30-foot monument topped by a statue of Sadako Sasaki (who died of radiation-related leukemia in 1955 at 13) holding a golden crane exclaims: "This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in this world."

Most of the remaining survivors of the atomic bombings are from Sadako's generation and were also children or teenagers in 1945. Voices of Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provides recorded testimonies and translations of people who lived through the atomic bombings.

The site includes links to other sites memorializing horrors of the Pacific War––including the Battle of Okinawa; the story of POWs imprisoned in a Japanese military "hell ship;" and other atrocities (the Center of Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility documents many).

-- Jean Downey