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Commitment to Peace

August 6, 2018

People can make beautiful things.
People can help and make each other smile.
But people also make terrifying things.

1945, August 6, 8:15 am.
With the dropping of the atomic bomb, the city burned, and many lives were taken.
“Help!” the fallen children wail.
“Where’s my son?” ask searching mothers and fathers.
“Please take my bones, too,” begs a woman with dangling skin but no flesh on her arm.
Hiroshima had become a world of red and black.

After 73 years, left to us are a girl’s blood-soaked dress and a burnt wall of scrawled messages.
And people even now praying quietly at empty graves.
Thinking of things the dead left in Hiroshima, we listen to some still in pain.
We want peace now, so badly.

Peace is being able to smile naturally.
Peace is everyone and yourself being happy.
Peace is a future with hopes and dreams.

Rising above suffering and hate, Hiroshima’s people worked hard to build a peaceful future.
We are the ones taking up that desire for peace.
Building peace is no difficult task.
We are not without power;
We fold our desire into paper cranes and give them to the world.
Learning what happened 73 years ago and how the hibakusha feel, what we learn and feel in our hearts we’ll pass on.

Children’s representatives
Miori Shinkai (6th grade, Hiroshima City Ushita Elementary School)
Yuhi Yonehiro (6th grade, Hiroshima City Itsukaichi-higashi Elementary School)

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