The 77th anniversary on Saturday of the Hiroshima bombing is prompting several peace ceremonies to be held throughout Oahu.
The 33rd annual Hiroshima Peace Ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at the Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii to commemorate those whose lives were forever changed by the event.
The service will be open to the public and will honor those affected by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Its intention is to promote peace and reconciliation between the nations.
“We just want to pay tribute to those who lost their lives, and there are many people whose lives were changed or altered,” said Wayne Miyao, chairman of the Hiroshima Hawaii Sister State Committee. “Some people continue to suffer from the effects of radiation.”
The anniversary marks Aug. 6, 1945, when the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used in war on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people. Three days later the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000. The consecutive events led to Japan’s surrender Aug. 15, effectively ending World War II.
The anniversary also comes five days after Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida expressed his country’s dedication to working toward a world without nuclear weaponry at the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference in New York. There, Kishida also announced Japan’s donation of $10 million to the United Nations to bring youth leaders to Japan to learn about the realities of nuclear weapon use.
“I cannot but admit that the path to a world without nuclear weapons has become even harder,” Kishida said at the conference, after acknowledging Russia’s recent nuclear threats. “Nevertheless, giving up is not an option.”
The Pearl Harbor National Memorial also will commemorate the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on
Aug. 6 and 7 by inviting visitors to the memorial to
record messages of peace on paper bags. Each paper bag will be used in a luminary ceremony that begins at
6:30 p.m. Sunday, which the public is invited to attend.
The following Monday, the public is also invited to the United Nations Association of Hawaii’s 29th annual Nagasaki Peace Ceremony at the state Capitol Rotunda to commemorate the 77 years of peace between the U.S. and Japan. The ceremony will run from 10 a.m. to noon and will conclude with a peace walk to the Nagasaki peace bell.
Saturday’s Hiroshima Peace ceremony will be the first since its two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. It is estimated to be about an hour long. Attendees can witness a blessing and purification ceremony, and also have the opportunity to ring Honolulu’s Hiroshima Peace Bell, which is a smaller replica of that which is in Hiroshima.
The ceremony will include several guest speakers including Tom Leatherman, superintendent of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, and state Rep. Bert Kobayashi, who was among the first group of students from Honolulu to participate in the YMCA’s 61-year-old
Hiroshima-Honolulu exchange program in 1962.
The exchange program, which is the nation’s longest-running such program, was created in 1961 in conjunction with the Hiroshima YMCA. The program began partnering with the Honolulu’s Hiroshima Commemoration and Peace Service a few years after the service’s inception. The exchange program’s mission is to build strong international friendships between youths, according to the YMCA website.
The program was created after Neal Blaisdell, mayor of Honolulu at the time, and Shinzo Hamai, who was the mayor of Hiroshima, met and marked the beginning of the “sister cities” relationship, according to the YMCA website. Upon their meeting, the two vowed to work for peace and a lasting friendship between the cities.
When Kobayashi visited Hiroshima during his student exchange trip, many victims of the bombing were still alive. Meeting the survivors was emotional and gut-wrenching, he said. But the desire for peace among those in Hiroshima was particularly striking.
“This feeling about peace and no war exists in many places,” said Kobayashi, “but it’s very strong in
Hiroshima.”
