Chieko Kiriake
Waiting for Peace Doesn’t Make It Come
9. How I Started Testimony
When the Sanyo Shinkansen was fully opened in 1975, the number of areas that could be viisited within the rule of 72 hours for public school excursions from Tokyo expanded dramatically. Tamotsu Eguchi, a teacher at Kami-Hirai Junior High School in Katsushika-ku, Tokyo, realized that you could make a round trip to Hiroshima within 72 hours, and decided to take a school trip to Hiroshima. Mr. Eguchi himself was an atomic bomb survivor in Nagasaki, but Nagasaki could not be visited in 72 hours, even with the bullet train.
Before the school trip, Mr. Eguchi went around the monuments in Hiroshima and came up with the idea of having hibakusha talk about their experiences to a small group of students in front of each of the monuments. This style of peace education, which is now commonplace on school excursions, was established by Mr. Eguchi at this time.
However, in those days, most hibakusha did not want to talk about their painful experiences of the atomic bombing, and it was very difficult to find hibakusha who were willing to talk to the students. Also, some parents did not want their children to hear such horrific stories. There were heated discussions in the teachers’ room, making it extremely difficult to realize the project.
At that time, I was the caretaker of the Monument to the Mobilized Students of the Prefectural Second Girls’ Secondary School, so Mr. Eguchi contacted me and asked me to give my testimony. However, I declined because I didn’t want to remember the harsh memory and asked Ms. Arita, who was a mathematics teacher at the school, to give her testimony, and she willingly agreed to do so. This style of peace education, known as the Kami-Hirai method, in which students listen to hibakusha directly, spread to other schools in Katsushika-ku in Tokyo, and then to other schools in the Kanto and Kansai regions.
After giving several talks in front of the Monument to the Mobilized Students, Ms. Arita fell ill and was unable to continue giving her testimony. She recorded her testimony on a cassette tape and asked me to use it. However, when I actually tried using it, I had to give up because the monument was located near a busy road, and the noise made it difficult to hear her voice. Mr. Eguchi strongly pleaded with me to give my testimony, so I formed a team of three of my former classmates to talk about our experiences. For a few years, the three of us gave our testimonies, but then one of us died and one became ill, so now I am the only one left.
When I first started, some students turned away or tried to walk away. However, as the talk went on, those students had tears in their eyes. In their written comments, many of the students wrote, “Thank you very much.” and “I will work hard for peace.” The teachers told us that the students changed after they went to Hiroshima, and I was very happy to hear that.


