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Junior Writers Reporting

Koi Elementary School holds annual ceremony to hand down desire for peace

Koi Elementary School, located in Nishi Ward, Hiroshima has held a peace memorial ceremony on the evening of August 6 every year since the year 2000.

In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the elementary school became a relief station for the wounded and about 2,000 people are believed to have died there. Many of them were boys and girls who had been mobilized for the war effort and were working outdoors in the city center when the atomic bomb exploded, helping to dismantle buildings to create firebreaks in the event of air raids.

This year about 140 students, parents, local residents, and family members of the victims attended the ceremony. Together they sang and lit candles. A girl in the sixth grade made the appeal: “It’s important for us to understand one another in order to abolish war.”

Apart from the ceremony, held in July, all the students attend a peace gathering at the school and give presentations on the actions they could take to help build peace. And each summer the students draw pictures about peace to be displayed in an exhibition of “Big Peace Pictures” organized by the Hiroshima branch of Junior Chamber International and mounted in the city center and other locations.

Kazuichi Nakayama, 56, the principal of Koi Elementary School, hopes that students understand the value of life through these peace-related activities. “The children of Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was dropped, have a duty to think about peace and take part in peace activities,” he said. “I would like them to take up an awareness of peace.” (Yuji Iguchi, 15)

(Originally Published on September 3, 2012)

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