On my recent trip to Hiroshima, I discovered a group doing very important work and enjoyed an Indian meal with its members. The Association for Peace Exchange with Indian & Pakistani Youth is an organization that brings young people from Japan, India and Pakistan together to learn about and reflect upon the history of Hiroshima. The group was started in 2000 by Haruko Moritaki. For the past three years, they have invited students from India and Pakistan to Hiroshima for about 10 days around August 6 to study about peace and understand each other better. The students attended some events including the Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6, the anniversary of the bombing, and visited the Peace Museum and Park, etc together and stayed overnight together to discuss peace issues.
The following report was written by a student who participated in the program last year. There are more reports on the Mango Smiles website if you would like to look up more and read them: www.geocities.com/mango_smiles. If you would like to find out more about this organization, contact Haruko Moritaki
The Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy.was set up in 1995. It is foremost in promoting peace activities in Pakistan. Along with another student from Beacon House A-Level and two other students from Lahore,I was selected for a sponsored trip to Hiroshima, Japan, for the occasion of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Service on Aug 6th. The programme was arranged and sponsored by Global Peace Makers Assosciation (GPA) in Japan, and run by highly dedicated pro-peace Hiroshima citizens.
Our delegation of four Pakistani high school students was led by Dr. Zarina Salamaat, a member of Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy. Beginning with our landing in Hiroshima on the 29th of Aug. 2002, we were active participants in a rigorous 10-day programme, structured to be both full of purpose and entertaining.
In order to first give us a well-rounded evaluation of Hiroshima's A-bomb disaster, we were shown around to various monuments symbolizing different aspects of the destruction and the loss of life that ensued in its wake. There were landmarks like the A- bomb dome, the Sadako Sasaki Monument, etc .A visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum was gave us a strong impact, the exhibitions were effective in showing the horrendous magnitude of destruction that Hiroshima underwent. Such was the indescribable wipe-out, that a mannequin of a student was clad in a shirt, trousers, cap and a belt taken off four different boys as not one whole body was recovered.
We also met with Hibakusha(survivors) of the A-bomb disaster in nursing homes and a special hospital, hearing their stories and listening to at least five testimonies of the day their lives underwent cataclysm. Their stinging eyes and soft voices spoke volumes of how nuclear weapons changed their entire being and what they are capable of doing to Man.
A major event in our programme was the Peace Memorial Service held on the morning of Aug 6th in the Peace Park in front of the Eternal Flame of Peace, which was addressed by the Prime Minister of Japan to a world-over turn out of over 40,000 people. Other high dignitaries like the Mayor of Hiroshima also spoke - with a plea for humanity and nuclear disarmament and signing the 'Peace Declaration'.
In the evening we attended the Lantern Floating Ceremony which symbolized a peaceful yet beautiful plea by Hiroshima citizens for the establishment of peace. Another highlight was the visit we paid to the Mayor of Hiroshima and presented him with the traditional Pakistani ajrak and cap.
Our entire programme was marked with a series of discussions between our American, Indian and Japanese counterparts.There were four college students from America, two high school students from India (who arrived very late as the Indian government had withheld their passports), and some Japanese high school students. Almost daily our schedule included a conference participated in by all the delegations and members of the GPA. All these events were given media coverage and throughout, a Radio and TV reporter and various newspapers had our news in their daily news.
In our conferences we discussed our impressions after having seen the effects of the nuclear weapons and what should be done to halt a stand-off between India and Pakistan, the Kashmir issue, and the role of U.S. in world affairs. We found both the Americans and Indians very open -minded and welcoming to different ideas. We were perhaps most perturbed by a documentary we watched which showed the effects of the uranium mining (and its radioactive leakage) being done in Jadugoda, India on the lives of the people in that region. This present day scenario right next door gave us a fear for the security of our own people lest a similar case developed in Pakistan.
Our trip can be seen as an educational one and that education, a multi-faceted one. We learned about nuclear weapons, their use and abuse, and the epic-proportion risk it poses to world security at any given instant. We learnt about how discordant the human species is and what un-civilization we are plunging into. But most of all we learnt about human relationships, about the human propensity for selflessness and selfishness, aggression and tolerance. We were opened up to a world of human vagaries of character. All from black to white, from east to west; sorts and sundry of humans, all so different yet all the same.
Just a word about the Japanese: If in the rest of our lives we have learned self-centeredness and that the world is all about 'Me-Myself-and-I', from the Japanese we learned about selflessness. The affection with which our homestay families welcomed us was supreme, as it was so unconditional. Human spirit aside, what do the Japanese owe the world that the other nations don't? Yet people like the GPA are working diligently for world peace. What our homestay friends did for us is going to leave us with fond memories of them forever.
After this experience, I begin to realize that human civilization hinges on tolerance. It is tolerance and acceptance that will lead one to see the other with his differences as different in idea and appreciate him for that. God did not make even two peoples' faces identical. Then certainly, room must be allowed in life for ideological differences. Wherefore white were there no black? Let there be differences, but let us develop tolerance for them being there and show ourselves to be human, for living in unity with our differences.
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Association for peace exchange with Indian and Pakistani youth
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