Chieko Kiriake

Waiting for Peace Doesn’t Make It Come

10. I have to hand it down

I saw a lower grade student at my school saying to her mother in her last breath, “Mother, don’t cry when I die.  You didn’t cry when my brother died.  Although I’m still a child, my death should be honorable.”  Also, during the war, we often sang a military song called the “The Field Encampment Song”:

To prevail and return
home with courage
Is why we have left
our home country
Vowing to achieve
glory, or die trying.

Our generation was given a military education from childhood and taught that it was an honor to give our lives for our country.

Today, we never think of dying for our country.  When I ask children, “Raise your hand if you can die for your country,” no one raises their hands.  This change has not been achieved overnight.  This has only been possible because of the steady post-war peace-making efforts.  If we do not sincerely face the past and continue to convey the horrors caused by war, those times will quickly return.  If we do not continue to watch our society carefully and speak up when we feel something is wrong, we could find ourselves in a situation where according to Hakusen Watanabe, “War is standing at the end of the corridor.”  The seeds of war have to be desperately pushed back down the corridor, or they will be at the point of no return before we know it.

We must not only talk about what was done to you by others, but what we did to others.  When we talk about Hiroshima, we tend to focus only on the damage aspect.  But before and during the war, Hiroshima was a military center of aggression.  I think we must talk about our participation in the war as a city as well as the damage caused by the atomic bombing.

I always tell children that whether you are an elementary or junior high school student, being young does not mean that you cannot do anything.  Peace will not come without raising your voices.  Think about what you can do to make peace.  Current nuclear weapons are hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  If war broke out and nuclear weapons were ever used, the earth would be destroyed.  It is important that each of us continues to try to push the seeds of war deeper down the corridors so that war will not happen.

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