Let no more children fall victim to an atomic bombing.

Children’s Peace Monument, Hiroshima, Japan

Based on their own experiences and carrying in their hearts the voices and feelings of those sacrificed to the bomb, the hibakusha called for a world without nuclear weapons as they struggled day by day to survive. In time, along with other Hiroshima residents and with generous assistance from Japan and around the world, they managed to bring their city back to life.

Peace Declaration, Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 2011

Here and now, as we offer our heartfelt consolation to the souls of those sacrificed to the atomic bomb, we pledge to join forces with people the world over seeking the abolition of the absolute evil, nuclear weapons, and the realization of lasting world peace.

Mayor Matsui Kazumi, City of Hiroshima, August 6, 2014

I have had an interest to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial, since I heard the stories of Carlo Delacruz, my unico hijo, when he was about 11 years old. He visited Hiroshima, Japan, along with his teacher and classmates from Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. His stories stayed deep in my memory chambers, as they touched my heart with conveyed sadness, but also transformative hope and aspirational actions for sustained worldwide peace. I too visited Hiroshima on April 3, 2015 with my college classmate, Remedios Baclig on Good Friday.Janet Rodriguez Nepales and I were at the film premiere of “The Little Boy” on April 14, 2015 at LA Live’s Regal Cinema in Los Angeles, when the horror of Hiroshima was re-lived for me. The film showed cultural artifacts from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which I just visited barely two weeks ago: a red globe (bomb initiator) on scorched-city concrete debris, with statues of families burnt to death, the bomb code-named Little Boy.

“The Little Boy” is a film about a young boy’s resolves to bring back his father, a US soldier who fought World War II in the Philippines. The little boy’s faith was activated and strengthened by doing acts of mercy: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, burying the dead, including befriending Hashimoto, a Japanese-American, who bore America’s prejudices of that WWII period. The film beautifully chronicles how the biased prejudices of diseased minds can be changed through immersion in another person’s life, curiosity, and sharing a genuine friendship. The film garnered an enduring applause and bravos from the Los Angeles’ audience.

Seventy years ago, on August 6, 1945 at 8:15am, the United States of America, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, wiping out the entire city. The United States, according to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial brochure, decided to drop the bomb on Japan to bring the long World War II to an end (started in 1939 and ended 1945, shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped). An order was issued to bomb Nagasaki, Niigata, Kokura and Hiroshima. Hiroshima became a target, as it did not have an Allied prisoner-of-war camp.

When the bomb hit Hiroshima, families died instantly. Some were riding the bus on their way to school, while other school children were demolishing buildings, to make room for fire lanes and air bomb shelters. Others had seared flesh on their backs, torn limbs, missing body parts. Some developed leukemia and radiation diseases, including protruding black fingernails. Black rain poured down from the skies.

A total of 350,000 Hiroshima residents died. Few survived, while inside the basement of a rest house, now a souvenir shop.

The absolute evil that robbed children of loving families and dreams for the future, plunging their lives into turmoil, is not susceptible to threats and counter-threats, killing and being killed. Military force just gives rise to new cycles of hatred (I came to know that war breeds at least five cycles of hatred, or five generations).

Peace Declaration, August 6, 2014

My college classmate and I went to the children’s memorial, where we rang the bell and said a prayer for all 6,000 young boys and girls who were gone too soon, robbed of their tomorrows.  Soldiers die, but also, innocent children become casualties, and survivors laden with guilt are preempted from living healthy lives.

The somber gray clouds accompanied heavy rains with strong winds, as we walked the perimeters of the Peace Memorial Museum. It was as if the heavens poured out its sorrows and its blessings for the survivors of Hiroshima.

In the 2014 Peace Declaration, a 12-year-old boy in junior high said, “Even now, I carry the scars of war and the atomic bombing on my body and in my heart. Nearly all my classmates were killed instantly. My heart is tortured by guilt when I think how badly they wanted to live and that I was the only one who did. Having somehow survived, hibakusha still suffer from severe physical and emotional wounds.”

At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, I too publicly shed tears, along with others from many different parts of the world, who viewed the museum artifacts, aka cultural properties: a toddler’s torn pink sundress, a rusted tricycle, a bombed-out helmet, a frayed canvas bag, eyeglasses with a broken eyepiece, bombed-out armoire, melted roof sheets, and paper cranes folded by Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to the A-bomb when she was 2 years old.

Ten years later, Sadako was hospitalized at Red Cross Hospital for leukemia. At the hospital, she learned of a 5-year-old girl who died from leukemia. She wondered if she too would have the same fate. A thousand paper cranes folded by school students in Nagoya were delivered to her hospital to uplift her spirit. When she received them and heard about the legend, “fold 1000 paper cranes and your wish will come true,” Sadako kept up with folding paper cranes. “Let me get well,” and with each paper crane, her desire to live and prayers were folded in. Even as she felt pain and suffering, she folded paper cranes. After an eight-month hospitalization, she died. Her classmates decided to memorialize her and other children who perished. Their efforts spawned a movement and over 3,000 schools around Japan sent money and letters, saying, “Please use this to help build the monument.”

“Let no more children fall victim to atomic bombing.” And perhaps, we can update their wish to our world’s aspiration, “Let no more families fall victims to nuclear bombings. Let there be worldwide peace.”

Japan, once a colonial empire builder and an aggressor of WWII, is now a global peacemaker.

Must we become war orphans of nuclear bombs and lost tomorrows or must we build friends around the world, promote cultures of peace, where thousands of origamis in color can be folded by children, in harmony?

Mayor Matsui Kazumi wrote: “We will do our best. Mayors for Peace, now with over 6,200 member cities, will work through lead cities representing us in their parts of the world. We will steadfastly promote the new movement stressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and seeking to outlaw them. We will help strengthen international public demand for the start of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention with the goal of total abolition by 2020. Japan is the only A-bombed nation. Precisely because our security situation is increasingly severe, our government should accept the full weight of the fact that we have avoided war for 69 years thanks to the noble pacifism of the Japanese Constitution.”

That Good Friday was a memorable day of empathy for the suffering of Hiroshima’s 350,000 residents and its 6,000 young children robbed of their futures and Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross for us all. May we learn to deliver global peace from Hiroshima, Japan, with Christ-like hearts and minds!

Published on Asian Journal