Education for Sustainable Development
October 2004
Banner photo: © SEKAI BUNKA PHOTO
Memorials for Peace
A clock from Nagasaki exhibited at the Toda Peace Memorial Hall
The Toda Peace Memorial Hall in Yokohama recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The hall--a designated historic monument originally constructed in 1922 to house a British delegation to Japan--commemorates second SGI president Josei Toda's declaration against nuclear weapons. In the declaration, which he made at Yokohama's Mitsuzawa Stadium in 1957, Mr. Toda denounced the atomic bomb as a manifestation of the evil tendency that lurks in human life and earnestly called on young people to take on the mission of achieving the abolition of nuclear weapons and establishing a peaceful world.
On August 9, the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a memorial service for atomic bomb victims and all war dead was held at the Soka Gakkai Nagasaki Peace Hall. At a peace forum organized by local SGI youth members, Shun'ichi Yamashita of Nagasaki University School of Medicine, a second-generation atomic bomb victim, spoke about his volunteer activities providing medical support in Chernobyl, Ukraine, the site of a nuclear reactor accident in 1986, as well as in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, where people suffer from radioactive fallout due to nuclear testing. Through such activities, Mr. Yamashita says he has come to understand Nagasaki and Hiroshima's important role in speaking out against nuclear arms.
