KYOTO, Aug. 4 Kyodo - An American Zen master on Wednesday called for people to join a project to make some 270,000 statues and written images of Jizo Bodhisattva to represent the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and promote world peace.

Jan Chozen Bays told a news conference in Kyoto that she came up with the idea when she visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki two years ago. The 58-year-old Christian-turned-Buddhist was born on Aug. 9, 1945, the day an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days after the bombing of Hiroshima.

Bays, a priest of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism, said she plans to exhibit 270,000 Jizo statues and written images in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 60th anniversary of the bombings in August next year.

She said she wants people to pray for the victims and for peace in making the statues or written images of Jizo. Bays said she has so far collected some 40,000 Jizos, mostly palm-size statuettes and drawings on paper or pieces of cloth, from around the world.

Jizo Bodhisattva is the guardian of deceased children, expectant mothers, firemen, travelers, and pilgrims.

==Kyodo