Hiroshima ~ Peace Declaration

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Website: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html
Location: Hiroshima City 730-0811, Japan
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Latest Activity: Mar 24, 2015

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Indian Hindu and Muslim students pray for those who were killed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima and to promote world peace inside their school in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad August 6, 2008. Tens of thousands bowed their heads at a ceremony in Hiroshima on Wednesday, the 63rd anniversary of the world's first atomic attack, as the city's mayor hit out at countries that refused to abandon their bombs.

Hiroshima ~ Peace Declaration 2009

That weapon of human extinction, the atomic bomb, was dropped on the people of Hiroshima sixty-four years ago. Yet the hibakusha's suffering, a hell no words can convey, continues. Radiation absorbed 64 years earlier continues to eat at their bodies, and memories of 64 years ago flash back as if they had happened yesterday.
　
Fortunately, the grave implications of the hibakusha experience are granted legal support. A good example of this support is the courageous court decision humbly accepting the fact that the effects of radiation on the human body have yet to be fully elucidated. The Japanese national government should make its assistance measures fully appropriate to the situations of the aging hibakusha, including those exposed in "black rain areas" and those living overseas. Then, tearing down the walls between its ministries and agencies, it should lead the world as standard-bearer for the movement to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020 to actualize the fervent desire of hibakusha that "No one else should ever suffer as we did."
　
In April this year, US President Obama speaking in Prague said, "...as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." And "...take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons abolition is the will not only of the hibakusha but also of the vast majority of people and nations on this planet. The fact that President Obama is listening to those voices has solidified our conviction that "the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished."
　
In response, we support President Obama and have a moral responsibility to act to abolish nuclear weapons. To emphasize this point, we refer to ourselves, the great global majority, as the "Obamajority," and we call on the rest of the world to join forces with us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. The essence of this idea is embodied in the Japanese Constitution, which is ever more highly esteemed around the world.
　
Now, with more than 3,000 member cities worldwide, Mayors for Peace has given concrete substance to our "2020 Vision" through the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, and we are doing everything in our power to promote its adoption at the NPT Review Conference next year. Once the Protocol is adopted, our scenario calls for an immediate halt to all efforts to acquire or deploy nuclear weapons by all countries, including the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which has so recently conducted defiant nuclear tests; visits by leaders of nuclear-weapon states and suspect states to the A-bombed cities; early convening of a UN Special Session devoted to Disarmament; an immediate start to negotiations with the goal of concluding a nuclear weapons convention by 2015; and finally, to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. We will adopt a more detailed plan at the Mayors for Peace General Conference that begins tomorrow in Nagasaki.
　
The year 2020 is important because we wish to enter a world without nuclear weapons with as many hibakusha as possible. Furthermore, if our generation fails to eliminate nuclear weapons, we will have failed to fulfill our minimum responsibility to those that follow.
　
Global Zero, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and others of influence throughout the world have initiated positive programs that seek the abolition of nuclear weapons. We sincerely hope that they will all join the circle of those pressing for 2020.
　
As seen in the anti-personnel landmine ban, liberation from poverty through the Grameen Bank, the prevention of global warming and other such movements, global democracy that respects the majority will of the world and solves problems through the power of the people has truly begun to grow. To nurture this growth and go on to solve other major problems, we must create a mechanism by which the voices of the people can be delivered directly into the UN. One idea would be to create a "Lower House" of the United Nations made up of 100 cities that have suffered major tragedies due to war and other disasters, plus another 100 cities with large populations, totaling 200 cities. The current UN General Assembly would then become the "Upper House."
　
On the occasion of the Peace Memorial Ceremony commemorating the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing, we offer our solemn, heartfelt condolence to the souls of the A-bomb victims, and, together with the city of Nagasaki and the majority of Earth's people and nations, we pledge to strive with all our strength for a world free from nuclear weapons.
　
We have the power. We have the responsibility. And we are the Obamajority. Together, we can abolish nuclear weapons. Yes, we can.

Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima

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Comment by David Sparenberg on July 26, 2009 at 5:53pm: my apology for a couple of errors in the previous post... it is still early and i got ahead of myself, intending to write in conclusion: "and no part of that cause is more important than removing weapons of mass destruction from the Earth." sorry to have cluttered the page with the error of haste!

Comment by David Sparenberg on July 26, 2009 at 5:50pm: It is truly an honor, and for me of personal significance, to participate in this groud. When I was 18 years old, and that is a distance in the past, I published my 1st poem, a commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima. At another time, some years later, I had the distinguished and unforgetable experience of having dinner with a group of Hiroshima survivors, who were returning from Moscow and on their way to Washington to plead for nuclear disarmament. Since that summer of my 18th year when I decided to oppose the war in Vietnam until this time I have continued to write and march in the cause fo world peace and no of that cause is more important that remove weapons of mass destruction from the Earth.

Comment by Angelika G. on January 27, 2009 at 8:07am: thx for inviting me to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Group.
I say, if we come over our inner war, if we are able to transform it, there will be no need for an 'outer' war. All the war over the world comes, because we are not in peace with ourselves............that's all I have to say.....thank you,
with love, light, life.............I wish liberation to all of you,
Angel

Comment by Meg on November 4, 2008 at 2:06pm: My father was sent to Hiroshima as an interpreter at the tender age of 18 years. He took photo's that are the most horrific photo's I have ever seen. He still can't talk much about what he saw there - people with their eyes melting down their faces, people who were just shadows left on the walls, desperate children crying in the parks burned by radiation and left to tend for themselves. He dug a coin out of the pavement and carried it in his uniform pocket for the whole time he was stationed between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can't look at those photo's without feeling utter horror at what was done and I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like - for the Japanese people, and for people like my father - merely a boy - just a year older than my own son.

Curiously, he has developed 5 cancers now directly under the place where he carried that coin - I thank God that he has managed to beat each one. All but one of the men that went with him are dead - all before they were 60 of various cancers. He's 81 now - and he still can't speak of it, but he has a deep love of Japan and the Japanese culture and he's now teaching himself Japanese calligraphy, which I think is wonderful.

He keeps those photo's as a reminder and in the hope that nothing like it ever happens again.

Comment by Lennart Sundström on October 30, 2008 at 10:53pm: "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasiliy_Arkhipov

Comment by Lennart Sundström on October 30, 2008 at 10:46pm: Look into this:

http://www.brightstarsound.com/world_hero/article.html

Stanislav Petrov — World Hero
He averted a catastrophe that could have shaken the foundation of the Earth
for many centuries to come — and the future of humanity forever . . .

Comment by Lennart Sundström on October 30, 2008 at 2:00am: Hiroshima, was a disaster to humankind.

It also teaches us about our capability of committing collective suicide, and what is more important, about our possible sharings of tomorrows in sister- and brotherhood. Un otro mundo posible.

Comment by Regina on October 29, 2008 at 11:36pm: Thanks Gordon!
Let's say aloud: Hiroshima never more!
Shame on humanity for the war.
Freedom and Peace to everyone in the Universe!

Comment by WORDWARRIORabc on October 13, 2008 at 8:31pm: Peace Stone Lantern

Date of completion August 6, 1955

Established by Tankokai Urasanke Tea Ceremony Group Hiroshima

Shape
A footstone in the shape of a tatami mat with a fire place and lantern on top. On the side of the footstone there is an Epigraph and a message attached at a later date on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb.

Motive for the erection

As a prayer for the happiness of the souls of the deceased A-bomb victims in the next world.

Epigraph

"Calmness, memory, peace"

Characteristics

1. About the message on the side of the Peace Lantern on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb
The message written by Tanshosai Ishii, president of the Tankokai Urasenke Tea Ceremony Group Hiroshima, reads as follows below. Also, every year on August 6 a tea ceremony is held in front of the lantern.

"As it is said, life is half of a tatami mat when awake and one tatami mat when sleeping and there is no greater happiness than to make one's first cry as a newborn on a tatami mat, to live on tatami mats and to die on top of tatami mats.
Praying that the souls of the a-bomb victims may rest peacefully, we have made this footstone particularly the shape of a tatami mat to enjoy drinking tea in all four seasons of calm and peacefulness on top of an ordinary tatami mat and we will put our hands together in prayer and forever offer tea to the gods. The height of the stone is 1 shaku 2 sun representing the 12 months of the year, the fire place has a margin of 2 sun and the lantern 1 shaku 5 sun high with a base of 4 sun by 3 sun which comes from the numbers of August (8) 6 divided by two.
On top of the tatami mat all are equal with no discrimination. The clear water reservoir is formed like the hinomaru [1] with a diameter of 1.8 sun representing the 108 evil thoughts [2] and a depth of 3 sun. At noon is receives the virtue of the sun, the origin of all things and at night the benevolence of the moon.
The reflection of the moon in the water is resembling the saving of the living beings and we regard it as an offering from the heart for hearing the teachings of Buddha." Notes
[1] round sun as on the Japanese flag
[2] Buddhist concept

Reference
1 shaku = approx. 30.3cm
1 sun = approx. 3.03cm

Comment by David Gould on October 13, 2008 at 5:40pm: Indeed Ank we owe it to the victims of both A bombs to ensure that the world never forgets them and commits itself to work toward the total abolution of these terrible machines of death...

...and yet today more countries are lining up to join the killer's club. Their argument being that it makes the world safer since no one will use it...

...the trillions of pounds, dollars, roubles, spent on something we never intend using could have fed every person on this planet...could have gone towards alieviating the suffering of Aids victims, could have gone towards Cancer research, built schools, hospitals, provided clean water, rebuilt shanty towns.....

But instead we allow our governments to pour millions we can ill afford into something we must never ever use...

I have seen madness and felt its bitter taste.