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Peace statement by Kazumi Matsui Mayor The City of Hiroshima

Hiroshima’s Peace Declaration, Asahi Shimbun  August 6, 2014 Kazumi Matsui Mayor The City of Hiroshima “………People who rarely talked about the past because of their ghastly experiences are now, in old age, starting to open up. “I want people to know the true cruelty of war,” says an A-bomb orphan. He tells of children like himself living in a city of ashes, sleeping under bridges, in the corners of burned-out buildings, in bomb shelters, having nothing more than the clothes on their backs, stealing and fighting to eat, not going to school, barely surviving day to day working for gangsters.

Immediately after the bombing, a 6-year-old first grader hovered on the border between life and death. Later, she lived a continual fearful struggle with radiation aftereffects. She speaks out now because, “I don’t want any young people to go through that experience.” After an exchange with non-Japanese war victims, she decided to convey the importance of “young people making friends around the world,” and “unceasing efforts to build, not a culture of war, but a culture of peace.”

The “absolute evil” that robbed children of loving families and dreams for the future, plunging their lives into turmoil, is not susceptible to threats and counter-threats, killing and being killed. Military force just gives rise to new cycles of hatred. To eliminate the evil, we must transcend nationality, race, religion, and other differences, value person-to-person relationships, and build a world that allows forward-looking dialogue.

Hiroshima asks everyone throughout the world to accept this wish of the hibakusha and walk with them the path to nuclear weapons abolition and world peace.

Each one of us will help determine the future of the human family. Please put yourself in the place of the hibakusha. Imagine their experiences, including that day from the depths of hell, actually happening to you or someone in your family. To make sure the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happen a third time, let’s all communicate, think and act together with the hibakusha for a peaceful world without nuclear weapons and without war.

We will do our best. Mayors for Peace, now with over 6,200 member cities, will work through lead cities representing us in their parts of the world and in conjunction with NGOs and the UN to disseminate the facts of the bombings and the message of Hiroshima. We will steadfastly promote the new movement stressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and seeking to outlaw them. We will help strengthen international public demand for the start of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention with the goal of total abolition by 2020……..http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201408060012

August 12, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general