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Junior Writers Reporting

Hiroshima group interacts globally with people in Kazakhstan

A group called “CANVaS,” based in Minami Ward, Hiroshima, is engaged in activities to help make the world a more peaceful place, free of nuclear weapons. The group carries out its efforts in both Hiroshima and Kazakhstan, sites that have suffered nuclear damage: Hiroshima, in the atomic bombing; Kazakhstan, as a result of nuclear testing.

The name “CANVaS” reflects the group’s aim to make good use of the different qualities of its members, like painting on a fresh white canvas. Currently, there are 25 people in the group, including university students and citizens of Hiroshima, as well as those in Kazakhstan.

At the nuclear test site in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Union conducted more than 450 nuclear tests in the years from 1949 to 1989. Since 2007 CANVaS has organized a tour to Kazakhstan each summer, where the participants share information about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and exchange views with Kazakh students who are interested in Japan.

Because the Soviet government concealed the facts of its nuclear testing program, most residents of the international city of Almaty in southern Kazakhstan are unaware of the problems relating to the nuclear tests. Hospitals in villages some distance from Semey (the former name of Semipalatinsk) are reportedly short of medicine and babies there have been born with birth defects.

The assistant leader of the group, Miwako Koasano, 30, told me, “It’s important to continue our efforts. A lot of people don’t know about Kazakhstan, so we have to tell others about it.” (Mako Sakamoto, 15)

(Originally published on July 23, 2012)

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