Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Sadako

  • Sadako Peace Day: Reflecting on the Past to Assure a More Peaceful Future

    For Immediate Release

    Contact: Sandy Jones — (805) 965-3443 — sjones@napf.org

    Hiroshima survivor Kikuko OtakeSanta Barbara, CA – The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) will host the 20th Annual Sadako Peace Day to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all innocent victims of war. The event will be held Wednesday, August 6, from 6:00-7:00 p.m., under the oaks and sycamores in the Sadako Peace Garden at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center, 800 El Bosque Road, in Montecito.

    There will be poetry, music and reflections commemorating the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl from Hiroshima who died of radiation-induced leukemia as a result of the atomic bombing. Japanese legend holds that one’s wish will be granted upon folding 1,000 paper cranes. Sadako set out to fold those 1,000 paper cranes. On one she wrote, “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.” Sadly, Sadako died without regaining her health. Students in Japan were so moved by her story that they began folding paper cranes, too. Today the paper crane is an international symbol of peace and a statue of Sadako now stands in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

    The event is a time to reflect on the past in hopes of building a more peaceful future. This year’s keynote speaker will be Mr. Rob Laney, Vice Chair of NAPF and a strong and vocal advocate of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons as required by international law. There will also be a paper crane folding workshop by Peace Crane Project and refreshments after the ceremony. The event is free and open to the public.

    # # #

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, and to empower peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit www.wagingpeace.org.

  • 2013 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to Sadako Peace Garden.  On this day, August 6, we remember Hiroshima, Sadako of the 1,000 paper cranes, and all innocent victims of war.

    Today we commemorate the 68th anniversary of the first use of an atomic weapon.  The weapon was created by the United States and was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  It killed some 90,000 people that day and some 145,000 by the end of 1945.  Three days later another atomic weapon was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, taking another 70,000 lives.

    The creation and use of these weapons, said Albert Einstein, “has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation exists to change those modes of thinking and assure a human future.

    The 68 years of the Nuclear Age is but a blip in geological time or even in the human record on Earth, but it is a critical period of time because within it we have achieved the technological capacity to destroy ourselves and most complex life.  It is a peril that confronts humanity daily, constantly present, whether we choose to recognize it or not.

    Many leaders of nuclear-armed states believe that security can be built on the threat to annihilate other countries.  This is a highly dangerous and unreliable approach to security.  Nuclear policies, like other policies based upon high technologies, are subject to human fallibility and system failures.  That there are not foolproof humans, nor human systems, should be clear to any observer.

    The good news is that the number of nuclear weapons in the world has been reduced by over 53,000 weapons, from over 70,000 in 1986 to about 17,000 now.  This is cause for gratitude, as is the fact that nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare since Nagasaki, but the job of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity remains unfinished.

    There is the only one safe number of nuclear weapons in the world, and that is zero.  Zero must be our goal.  Not a distant goal, as some leaders of nuclear-armed states would have it, but an urgent goal.  No country – not the US, not any country – has the right to hold the world hostage with nuclear weapons.

    As the first country to create nuclear weapons, the first country to use them, and the country with the most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, the US should be the country to lead the way out of the Nuclear Age.  To accomplish this, the people will need to lead their leaders.  That is why the role of each of us is so important.

    Today, at the close of our ceremony, we will plant a tree for peace, a sapling from a survivor Ginkgo biloba tree from Hiroshima.  Thank you to Nassrine Azimi, a founder of Green Legacy Hiroshima, for bringing this remarkable sapling to us for planting in Sadako Peace Garden.

    Thank you to each of you for taking this time to reflect upon the meaning of nuclear weapons for our world and our common future.  Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the immense and terrible power of a nuclear blast.

    Now imagine the power of people everywhere coming together and saying a resounding No to these weapons until we have succeeded in eliminating them from the planet.

    This is not just an exercise.  It is a possibility that we can choose to make happen.  We who are here on our planet now have the opportunity to contribute to ending the nuclear era, preserving our humanity and exercising responsible stewardship of the only planet we know of in the universe capable of supporting and nurturing life.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Visiting Hiroshima

    David KriegerI recently visited Hiroshima to give a speech. It is a city that I have visited many times in the past, and I am always amazed by its resilience. The city represents for me the human power of recovery and forgiveness.

    The first thing one is likely to notice about Hiroshima is that it is a beautiful city. It has rivers running through it and many trees and areas of green space. Without the reminders that have been left in place, one would not know that it is a city that was completely destroyed and flattened in 1945 by the first atomic bomb used in warfare.

    I was the guest of the Hiroshima Peace Media Center of the Chugoku Shimbun, the largest newspaper in the region with a circulation of some 600,000. Walking from my hotel to the newspaper headquarters, I entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and passed the famous Atomic Bomb Dome, one of the few buildings that survived the bombing. The Dome was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

    In the Peace Memorial Park there is a Children’s Peace Monument, a statue dedicated to Sadako Sasaki and the thousands of child victims of the bombing. Sadako, who was two years old when the bomb was dropped, lived a normal life until she came down with radiation-induced leukemia at the age of twelve and was hospitalized. Sadako folded paper cranes, which Japanese legend says will give one health and longevity if one folds 1,000 of them. On one of her paper cranes Sadako wrote: “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.”

    Unfortunately, Sadako died without recovering her health, but her cranes have indeed flown all over the world. In Santa Barbara, for example, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria Retreat Center have created a beautiful Sadako Peace Garden, where each year on August 6th, the anniversary of the day Hiroshima was bombed, a commemoration is held comprised of music, poetry and reflections.

    In the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, groups of students visit the Children’s Peace Monument. I watched several groups of students pause in front of the statue to sing and pay their respects to the memory of Sadako and other child victims. All around the statue were brightly-colored strands of paper cranes, brought in honor of Sadako and other innocent children.

    The Peace Memorial Cenotaph in the park contains a listing of all the people known to have died as a result of the bombing. Inscribed on the cenotaph are these words: “Let all souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil.” Many people come to the cenotaph, bow and pray for those who died as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Through the cenotaph one can see a Peace Flame first lit in 1964. When all nuclear weapons are abolished, the flame will be extinguished.

    On the grounds of the Peace Memorial Park is a museum, which tells the story of the bombing of Hiroshima from the perspective of the victims – those who were under the bomb, the people of the city. With the city rebuilt and beautiful, the museum is an important reminder of the tragedy of the bombing, which caused some 70,000 deaths immediately and some 140,000 by the end of 1945.

    The most impressive part of the experience of being in Hiroshima, though, is not the statues, the cenotaph, the peace flame or the museum exhibits. It is the survivors of the bombing with their remarkable spirit of forgiveness. Many of the survivors have mastered English and other languages so as to be able to travel the world and share their memories of the bombing. They do so in order to prevent their past from becoming someone else’s future. Though the survivors are growing elderly, their good will and their concern for the future is evident. They deserve our respect and our commitment to creating a world without nuclear weapons.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Socorro

    after the painting Starless Night, by Charles Garabedian


    No myth, that soldier on bent knee
    weeping over his dead friend, exposed,
    camouflage uniforms ironic
    without a  growing thing in sight.
    It could be any soldier, any war.


    A Vietnam vet once told me
    on such a starless night he bent down
    to tie his boot lace come loose.
    His battalion all around him, their weapons down.,
    suddenly a grenade shred their cocoon.
    When he sat up, his comrades lay in a halo
    of flame at his feet.


    Socorro, he cried, help!
    None came, not then, not now.



    Myth has its moments of grace.
    From the pool of Ajax’s blood, a hyacinth sprang
    in royal glory. And on the sword shaped leaves
    the first letters of Ajax’s name “Ai”
    meaning woe.


    Once home, the vet  at any sudden sound,
    struck at phantoms shouting Socorro
    in his dark and empty room,
    no purple heart or flower to bear his name,
    no camouflage for that night
    still burning in his brain.

  • A Song for Peace Day

    When I think of Sadako folding cranes
                    to heal her bomb-caused sickness,
    and her friends crane-forming in hopes for her health,
                    in a yearning for safety and peace,
    at once arises a wish     for joy for all children on this earth,
    for the goodness of life they deserve,   that murder-wars will cease

                    as we cry out with fervor    against the plagues of pain:
                                    Never again.

    Never again to waste young growth-time, squander play and pleasure; 
    O, defend the glory of children, their striving, their learning season;
    O, renew the pledge this Peace Day: end the lusts of greed and war,
    the slaughter of the innocents, insane beyond all reason.

                    And we cry out with fervor     against the plagues of pain:
                                    Never again.

                    Never again, in the name of all children;
                    Never again, in reverence of what young lives are for;
                    Never again: may the words come from the heart:
                    O, take up the work of peace, Peace-Warrior!

    No more bombing, no more burning, cranes of hope fly free;
    No more children slain in horror. Work and Love can make it be.

                    In the name of all the children:
                                    Never again.

                    In the name of all the children —
                    Work and Love can make it be.

  • Veterans

    We take off our shoes. Japanese style.
    I’m glad I changed my socks.

    Tsunami-san, your name
    like the tidal
    wave, crashes over me.
    In Hokkaido I slept in your six-tatami room
    head on a rice pillow.

    You taught me to cook shabu-shabu:
    enhoki mushrooms,  chrysanthemum leaves
    in broth. Confused, I called it Basho-Basho.

    Knowing I loved poets and books,
    you took me to see paper-making.
    I expected kozo drying.
    Logs floated in one end,
    bales of newsprint tumbled out the other.

    When I married, you visited my home.
    You and my husband, young sailors,
    fought at Midway. Opposite sides.

    At night we went to the funeral
    of the Marine Colonel we knew.
    Someone said, “Those veterans are going out
    fast.”

    Tsunami-san, I was impatient at the time.
    But thank you for making me go through
    the whole factory. Thank you for signing
    my guestbook in kanji. That tanka
    about the plum tree that bloomed
    even when the master was far away.

  • 2004 Sadako Peace Day

    2004 Sadako Peace Day

    This has been a very soulful commemoration of this 59th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima . We have heard beautiful and haunting music, poetry and reflections as well as the sweet sounds of small birds in the oak trees that surround us and provide a canopy above us.

    This garden, Sadako Peace Garden , was created nine years ago and dedicated on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima , on August 6, 1995 , and each year since we have met in this garden on August 6 th to commemorate this important anniversary. This garden is dedicated to all who work for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons.

    As we reflect today, I believe that two critical questions of our time deserve our attention: What have we learned from Hiroshima that will help us prevent future Hiroshimas? And, what are we willing to do about what we have learned?

    If we have learned nothing from Hiroshima , as it sometimes seems, we are destined to have a tragic future. But even if we have learned that the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never be repeated, we still face a tragic future if we are not willing to act upon this understanding. It seems to me certain that in the Nuclear Age, ignorance and apathy will be our undoing. We cannot allow them to become the accomplices of nuclear weapons.

    That is why education about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and advocacy for eliminating nuclear weapons are so critical to our common future, and why organizations like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation are so important to building a more secure future.

    I want to share with you a poem that I received today by a poet in Tucson, Arizona, Karma Tenzing Wangchuk:

    Hiroshima Day –
    in my heart, I release
    a thousand cranes

    I hope that today we can all release a thousand cranes in our hearts and in our world. We are powerful beyond our imaginations, and the power of a thousand cranes released in many human hearts can change our world.

  • Sadako Peace Day 2002

    Sadako Peace Day 2002

    We are gathered in community at this beautiful garden, as others are gathered in Hiroshima and throughout the world, to remember the horror and consequences of the use of nuclear weapons so that we may help assure that there are not future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.

    Sadako Peace Garden, named for Sadako Sasaki, a young victim of the Hiroshima bombing, is dedicated to all who work for peace and a nuclear weapons free world.

    On this occasion, I would like to offer three suggestions.

    First, believe in your dreams. No dream is impossible, even a world at peace, even a world free of nuclear weapons. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” The world and future generations badly need for us to believe in these dreams and to keep hope alive.

    Second, dedicate yourself to making your dreams become reality. Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” I urge you to act upon your dreams, act for a better, more peaceful world, free of the threat of nuclear holocaust.

    Third, never give up. Here is what the Dalai Lama says about never giving up.

    NEVER GIVE UP

    No matter what is going on
    Never give up
    Develop the heart
    Too much energy in your country
    Is spent developing the mind
    Instead of the heart
    Be compassionate
    Not just to your friends
    But to everyone
    Be compassionate
    Work for peace
    In your heart and in the world
    Work for peace
    And I say again
    Never give up
    No matter what is going on around you
    Never give up

    In concluding, I’d like to share a recent poem about Einstein, one of my heroes, a great scientist and even greater humanitarian, a man who never gave up.
    EINSTEIN’S REGRET

    Einstein’s regret ran deep
    Like the deep pools of sorrow
    That were his eyes.

    His mind could see things
    That others could not,
    The bending of light,

    The slowing of time,
    Relationships of trains passing
    In the night, and power,

    Dormant and asleep,
    That could be awakened,
    But who would dare?

    He saw patterns
    In snowflakes and stars,
    Unimaginable simplicity

    To make one weep with joy.

    When the shadow of Hitler
    Spread across Europe.
    What was Einstein to do

    But what he did?
    His regret ran deep, deeper
    Than the deep pools of sorrow

    That were his eyes.
    Thank you for remembering, for being part of a community of hope, and for dreaming and working for a more peaceful and decent world without giving up — ever.

    David Krieger
    August 6, 2002

  • From Hiroshima to Hope

    From Hiroshima to Hope

    “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.”
    — Sadako Sasaki

    August 6th. Hiroshima Day. A time for reflection, for listening to the sounds of birds and water, the rustling leaves, for remembering who we are.

    We remember Hiroshima not for the past, but for the future. We remember Hiroshima so that its past will not become our future. Hiroshima is best remembered with the plaintive sounds of the bamboo flute, the Shakuhachi. It conjures up the devastation, the destruction, the encompassing emptiness of that day. The Shakuhachi reveals the tear in the fabric of humanity that was ripped opened by the bomb. Through that tear we could all be sucked as into a black hole in the universe of decency.

    Nuclear weapons are not weapons at all. They are a symbol of an imploding human spirit. They are a fire that consumes the crisp air of decency. They are a crossroads where science joined hands with evil and apathy. They are a triumph of academic certainty wrapped in the arrogance and convoluted lies of deterrence. They are Einstein’s regret. They are many things, but not weapons — not instruments of war, but of genocide and perhaps of omnicide.

    Those who gather to retell and listen to the story of Hiroshima and of Sadako are a community, a community committed to a human future. We may not know one another, but we are a community. And we are part of a greater community gathered throughout the world to commemorate this day, seeking to turn Hiroshima to Hope.

    If we succeed, the child Sadako of a thousand cranes, who would have been an older woman now, will be remembered by new generations. She will be remembered long after the names and spirits of those who made and used and celebrated the bomb will have faded into the haunting sounds of the Shakuhachi.
    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The History of My Peace Activities with an A-bomb Survivor and Student Peace Fellows

    I have dreamed of participating in Sadako Peace Day ever since I learned that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation commemorates August 6th every year. The reason why I have not been able to attend this ceremony is that I have always been in Hiroshima on the same day. After my first meeting with an atomic bomb survivor of Hiroshima, Miyoko Matsubara, I organized a college student volunteer group and visited Hiroshima for three days including on August 6th to study peace. This encounter with one Hibakusha, or an A-bomb survivor, changed my life dramatically. I would like to share with you a brief history of my peace activities with a Hibakusha and Japanese students, my fellow peace companions.

    It was the winter of 1996 that Miyoko came to my university, Soka University in Tokyo, Japan, to share her life story. I was a senior at that time. Even though I had learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school, I had little knowledge about the issue; I knew that thousands of innocent people were killed instantly and that still many survivors suffer from radiation exposure. But I didn’t know why it really happed and how survivors have struggled to live. So, it was the first time for me to hear a first hand experience from a Hibakusha. I was so furious about the brutality of nuclear weapons and felt the urgent need to do something so that the same mistake will not be repeated. Then, I decided to take action by supporting her peace activities. I decided to go to Hiroshima, believing that I should visit the very place where the atomic bomb was dropped to know what really happened.

    The next year, in spring of 1997, 9 students, including myself, and one American professor went to Hiroshima. We called this trip “Peace Trip to Hiroshima.” We visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Peace Memorial Park and Okuno Island, where the Japanese army developed poison gas during World War II. We thought that visiting Okuno Island was important in order to know that Japan was an aggressor, not only a victim in terms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We also met several Hibakushas and heard their testimonies. Through this trip, we deepened our conviction that nuclear weapons are totally against humanity, and we have to abolish them before all living beings will be exterminated.

    Soon after coming back from Hiroshima, I graduated from university and remained in contact with Miyoko to help her peace activities, including translating Miyoko’s letters both into English and Japanese, helping write drafts of Miyoko’s letters and speeches, traveling overseas with her as an assistant/ translator several times, and so forth. What has amazed me most is Miyoko’s power of spirit. Physically, she is very sick; she had breast cancer caused by radiation. Now there are two polyps in her stomach that might turn into another cancer someday. So, she has “bombs” inside her body. However, since she has a strong sense of mission that telling her experience will help abolish nuclear weapons, she continuously talks to people both in Japanese and English, and in Japan and overseas.

    In fall of 1997, the same year that I went to Hiroshima for the first time, Miyoko offered me a chance to travel to the US with her. One of the destinations of our trip was the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Greatly impressed by Dr. David Krieger, president of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s personality, his passion for peace, and the Foundation’s dedication for peace activities, I decided to establish a student peace advocate group, which would support the Foundation’s activities, at Soka University from which I graduated. Then, in the following year, in 1998, I established the Friends of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation with students. Since the establishment, as an advisor, I have coordinated several activities with students: conducting “Peace Trip to Hiroshima” in every August, translating the Foundation’s information into Japanese and putting it on our web site, and holding study groups. One of the biggest accomplishments was when our student government passed “The Abolition 2000 Soka University Campus Resolution” last year. This is our pledge that we oppose nuclear weapons, the evil weapons of mass destruction. In order to pass the resolution, we organized several seminars, aiming for students’ conscious rising, invited Miyoko to share her experience, and collected signatures to support passing the resolution.

    Through these activities, I have learned that students possess a profound potential to become a strong source for social change. My mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, the founder of Soka University and the recipient of the World Citizenship Award in 1999 by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, says that “[Mahatma] Gandhi proclaimed that the ‘power of the spirit’ is stronger than any atomic bomb. To transform this century of war into a century of peace, we must cultivate the limitless inherent power of human life. This is the ‘human revolution’.” I found that this “human revolution”, namely the inner transformation or strengthening life condition, which never succumbs to injustice, in the level of each individual is the assured way that will lead to create a world without nuclear weapons. In order to cultivate our strong self, we need to carry on hope, a hope that we can change the world. This is what Sadako had done until the very moment of her death. With hope that folding 1000 cranes would bring her longer life, Sadako continued folding cranes on her sickbed. Even though she died young, her hope and her “power of spirit” have been passed on from generation to generation.

    Finally, I would like to end my speech with one of my favorite poems written by Dr. Krieger. This is a poem dedicated to young people worldwide.

    You are a miracle, entirely unique. There has never been another With your combination of talents, dreams, and hopes. You can create. You are capable of love and compassion. You are a miracle. You are a gift of creation to itself. You are here for a purpose which you must find. Your presence here is sacred-and you will Change the world.

    Thank you very much!