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Delivered on November 20, 2024 at Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, CA. Click HERE for the full event summary.
I am deeply grateful to Soka University, to Soka Institute for Global Solutions, President Feasel, Prof. Tetsushi Ogata, Prof. Alexander Harang, and everyone else involved, for putting this wonderful event together to jointly honor two great men – David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda, who have inspired countless people around the planet in their relentless pursuit of goodness, peace, and nuclear disarmament. It is wonderful to be back on this beautiful campus and to continue to learn more about Mr. Ikeda and his legacy, including the history of this tremendous university.
The contributions of David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda to a better world were many and because Daisaku Ikeda is so well known to this community, I just want to tell you a little bit about David so that you can have some context for the relationship between these two extraordinary men, which I will also discuss.
David Krieger was born in 1942 in Los Angeles. He attended Occidental College, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, University of Hawaii, where he earned his PhD in Political Science, and Santa Barbara College of Law where he earned his law degree. It was in Hawaii that David met his beloved wife of 57 years, Carolee Krieger. It was also during his studies in Hawaii that he first traveled to Japan. David was so moved by his experience visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki that he dedicated his life to the pursuit of peace and a world free of nuclear weapons.
David and Carolee moved to Santa Barbara in the early 1970s, raising their three children in the beautiful town nestled between the mountains in the north and the Pacific Ocean in the south. But more than just a charming place to live, Santa Barbara is a civically-minded community that inspired David to action. It was there that David discovered the vision to found the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation or NAPF. Santa Barbara also provided like-minded visionaries with whom he could partner on this quest.
This took place in 1982, at a moment when the nuclear arms race was nearing its height and there were ~60,000 nuclear warheads in the world. That same year, a million people marched in Central Park against nuclear weapons, united across ages, races, nationalities, professions, religions, and more, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was to become a prominent organization educating and advocating for a just and peaceful world, one that is free of nuclear weapons. During his time as Founder and President of NAPF, the organization engaged in a number of initiatives, playing a key role in Abolition 2000, Middle States Initiative, Nuclear Zero lawsuits, and many more. Just to give one example, it was with the help of President Ikeda and Soka Gakkai International that Abolition 2000 garnered 13 million signatures in Japan in favor of nuclear abolition.
I came to the helm of the organization almost exactly 40 years after NAPF was founded vowing to continue David’s legacy. By the time I got to know David better through in-person and virtual meetings at NAPF, his health was already declining. I’ve previously described what it was like to be in meetings with David at this point in his life: “He would quietly sit through a meeting and then, after hearing a lively and sometimes heated discussion about one topic or another, David would make a statement, so deep and thoughtful that we would all, at least for a moment, be speechless. He had a brilliant mind, an enormous heart, and a moral compass second to none.”
When Mr. Ikeda passed away on November 15, 2023, David wrote the following to me in an email: “Daisaku Ikeda was a force of nature and a fount of creativity. He built educational institutions, including two universities. He was also a poet, philosopher and photographer – a true renaissance man. Our dialogue, which was published as a book, Choose Hope, was a highlight of my work on abolishing nuclear weapons.”
David then passed away less than one month later on December 7, 2023.
I would now like to spend a little bit of time highlighting three things about the relationship between David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda:
The first is that they had faith in the possibility of a better world.
The second is that they both strongly believed in the importance of youth and education.
And the third is that they both loved and wrote poetry. I will now speak about each of these in turn.
The possibility of a better world is precisely why they wrote a book whose title they immediately decided was to be Choose Hope. Their dialogue is an inspiration to all who dare to question the status quo and imagine a better future. As Mairead Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to ending the violent conflict in Northern Ireland wrote for the book’s cover, “This book gives us all hope because it reminds us that in addition to the gift of life, we are each also given the gift of choice.” I think Ms. Maguire’s remark captures beautifully the fact that the title of the books is not just about having hope or being hopeful, but about choosing hope, something we all can do, something we all must do.
I was deeply moved while reading the book by the breadth and depth of President Krieger and Ikeda’s discussion and by the amalgamation of their contributions. In the book, they dig deeply into both practical and visionary elements of peace and disarmament, and yet, they touch upon philosophy, other societal ills, literature, and a future of the United Nations, just to mention a few of the themes. Moreover, the book is quite literally a dialogue, in which they switch off writing and their paragraphs, marked as Ikeda or Krieger, blend into one another in a seamless and wide-ranging conversation. But it’s more than that – it is also the case that despite labels, I felt frequently impelled to check who had written a particular sentence, only to come to the realization that the way in which they thought about the world and expressed themselves went beyond friendship and mutual understanding, but suggested a deep and sacred connection between them.
I would now like to share a bit about the importance of youth and education to both Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger. After all, we are here at Soka University of America, a university founded by Daisaku Ikeda. In Choose Hope, Mr. Ikeda states: “The hallmark of youth is optimism and high idealism. The young are constantly challenged to open the door to new eras. Hope is another name for youth.” David Krieger adds: “I would like young people to realize the insanity of living with nuclear weapons, of destroying the environment, of hoarding money while others starve, of settling our differences by killing each other, of dividing ourselves by artificial borders around parcels of earth we call nations. I would like young people to join hands across borders and insist that their elders do so, too, in order to end our present insanity. In short, I would like young people to choose hope.” Mr. Ikeda also states, “Josei Toda insisted that the passion and power of youth will build a new world. Always with this bold statement in mind, I have exerted by utmost to make the twenty-first century a century of peace. And I strive to be in frequent contact with young people, to observe their growth, and to express my expectations regarding their responsibilities to future generations.” But it was not just in words that our leaders valued youth and education, but in actions, and the care that they devoted to both setting up the structures that would enhance the engagement of youth in critical issues of our time, but also in the way that they interacted with and inspired young people. And they continue to do so. This event is evidence of this impact.
Finally, the last but not least aspect of President Krieger and President Ikeda’s relationship that I would like to discuss is that they both loved and wrote poetry.
And so today, I want to share with you three poems, one written by Mr. Ikeda, and two written by David, one of which is dedicated to Mr. Ikeda.
Mr. Ikeda’s poem is entitled Springing from the Earth:
Springing from the Earth
Traveler,
From whence do you come?
And where do you go?The moon has set,
But the sun has not yet risen.
In the chaos of darkness before the dawn
Seeking the light,
I advance
To dispel the dark clouds from my mind
To find a great tree unbowed by the tempest
I emerge from the Earth.
The next poem that I will read to you is entitled Voice of a Bell and it was written by David Krieger for Daisaku Ikeda. This poem is included in the preface to Choose Hope, written on August 6, 2001.
Voice of a Bell
As we travel on this journey
I hear your voice clearly
like the voice of a bell
ringing for peace
Your vision is reflected
in bright eyes and smiling faces
I hear your voice clearly
In the voice of the people –
the earnest, the seeker,
the questioner, the worker,
the pilgrim, the sage.
I hear your voice clearly.
like the sharp, solid voice
the pure, open voice
of a bell ringing out
again and again for peace.
Both poems – Springing from the Earth and the Voice of a Bell invoke the word travel, signifying the way in which both poets viewed their time on Earth. Moreover, in the Voice of a Bell, it is Daisaku Ikeda that is not just a traveler, but a bell ringing out again and again for peace.
Another one of David’s poems, invokes the bell. It is entitled The Bells of Nagasaki. And I cannot help but think that David thought of the two poems as connected. Here is The Bells of Nagasaki:
The Bells of Nagasaki
The bells of Nagasaki
ring for those who suffered
and those who suffer still.
They draw old women to them
and young couples
with love-glazed eyes.
They draw in small children
walking awkwardly
toward the epicenter.
The Bells of Nagasaki,
elusive as a flowing stream,
ring for each of us, ring
like falling leaves.
When I was in Nagasaki in July of this year, which was my first trip to Japan, I had the most moving visit, where I got to spend time with two hibakusha, Mr. Tanaka and Ms. Mitamura, both of Nihon Hidankyo, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, speak at the Atomic Bomb Museum at the 30th International Symposium for Peace, lay a wreath at the Nagasaki hypocenter, and spend time with some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met, including Japanese activists, academics, journalists, diplomats, students, and more.
On my first morning in Nagasaki, I had a bit of time before my first engagement and so I headed to the Nagasaki hills on my own. It was an enchanting visit, during which I thought about David, and Mr. Ikeda, and everyone who had devoted their lives to amplifying the message that Nagasaki and Hiroshima have for us all about peace and about nuclear weapons. When I returned to my hotel room before lunch, I wrote a poem that I titled The Hills of Nagasaki. Only later, did I realize that the title was in harmony with the title of David’s poem The Bells of Nagasaki.
I would now like to share with you, The Hills of Nagasaki. This is the first time that I am sharing this poem publicly.
The Hills of Nagasaki
[Dr. Hughes shared her poem with the event attendees.]
So let me close by saying that both President Krieger and President Ikeda, just like the bells and the hills of Nagasaki, would have wanted all of us to pass on the message of Never Again.
This is why the subtitle of their book Choose Hope is “Your Role in the Nuclear Age.”
And our role quite simply has to be to say Never Again, over and over and over again, until our cries for sanity, our cries for nuclear abolition, and our cries for humanity, are heard by people everywhere and acted upon by those who have the power to make the world whole again.
It pains me to think what President Ikeda and President Krieger would have thought about the current moment in our world. Although the Ukraine war and the war in Gaza had both started before they passed away, the subsequent escalations, the expansion of the Middle East conflict beyond Gaza and for well over a year now, would have devastated both of them. When it comes to Ukraine, it is as if we’re back in the Cuban Missile Crisis, with threats to use nuclear weapons, cross red lines, and call bluffs, coming at us at an hourly rate. In his famous and beautiful Commencement Address at American University in 1963, which he delivered just months after the Cuban Missile Crisis and also just months before he was brutally assassinated, President John F. Kennedy said: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
We pulled back from the brink in the early 1960s, then again in the 1980s, and we must do it again now. We must choose hope and keep repeating Never Again. This is precisely what David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda would have wanted us to do.
Thank you.
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Lotus flower at Soka University.
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Panel at Soka University (Photo by Lucas Ferreira).
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Left to Right: Prof. Alexander Harang, Dr. Ivana Hughes, Christian Ciobanu.
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