Sadae Kasaoka

When I have an opportunity to tell my experience to children, I always say to them, “Please think about what you should do to realize the world free of war.  A conflict is not only war.   There are some conflicts around you, such as in your family and between your friends.  Please consider how to overcome differences in thinking.  It will be true of conflicts between countries, won’t it?  Each person’s voice is very small; however, if we put our voices together, they will become powerful.  Nothing will change if you keep silent, thinking that your voice is just small.  Please raise your voices.”

I believe that we can surely realize the abolition of nuclear weapons if everyone who listens to our testimonies raises their voices.  So, I’ll continue to tell my A-bomb experience.

At the time of the A-bombing, we lost everything, such as hospitals, doctors and nurses, and we couldn’t even have medicine applied on the burns all over our bodies.  Knowing the plight in Hiroshima, Swiss doctor Marcel Junod, Representative to Japan of the International Red Cross Committee, brought tons of medical supplies to Hiroshima to treat the A-bomb survivors.  Norman Cousins, an American, supported A-bomb orphans who lost their parents in the bombing, launching a moral adoption activity.  Dr. Floyd Schmoe, an American forestry scientist, built houses in Eba, where I lived, for the A-bomb survivors who lost their houses in the bombing.  Many other foreign people gave Hiroshima needed assistance.  Can you hate a country with such people?  Can you start war with a country with such people? 

I think that peace means having love in your heart.  I think that we can build peace if we build our interpersonal relationships with love.  First of all, I want everyone to start with their close friends or family.