August 6th, a memorial day for the world

Color the earth in a hue of peace

The junior writers would like to make the Peace Memorial Ceremony more engaging for youth around the world. Towards this end, we came up with five ideas.(Yutaro Honkawa, 17)

Click to watch each idea in action.

In the current ceremony, representatives of the city of Hiroshima draft and read this speech. We propose that youth from abroad take part in this speech, too

First, we would develop a website where everyone could contribute their ideas for the speech. And members of NGO groups might help in collecting ideas from children who live in refugee camps and have no access to the internet.

An online vote is then held to choose the strongest ideas. Based on the outcome, a committee then uses these ideas to draft the speech. For example, if an idea involves poverty, the committee members would research it in depth to learn what youth might do to impact the problem and these thoughts would be included in the speech. Thus, "Our Commitment to Peace" could truly reflect the opinion of the world at large.

Our second idea is to broadcast the ceremony to the world through the internet. The URL of the homepage could be delivered to the more than 1650 cities that make up the membership of Mayors for Peace. Then the video could be shown at schools in each city.

If we assume that each city has 50 schools and each school has 100 students, more than 8 million children would watch the ceremony. (To overcome the language barrier, the broadcast could have simultaneous interpretation in English.) By broadcasting the ceremony around the world, the circle of people who pray for peace would grow wider. And the website would have a questionnaire soliciting people's impressions that could be taken into consideration for the next ceremony.

Establish a special pedestrian zone along Peace Boulevard in front of Peace Park. In this pedestrian zone, a variety of organizations from Japan and from abroad can have booths. Peace-related NGOs can share their activities in these booths and students could also present the findings of their peace education courses. These booths would enable people to express their ideas for peace in a number of ways.

We believe this sort of pedestrian zone could stir people into working for peace. Moreover, the participating groups would have the opportunity to network and exchange ideas.

And in the center of Peace Boulevard, on a special stage, public discussions between the mayor and youth, as well as peace concerts, could be held.

We propose creating a special mosaic. People around the world would send in pictures on the theme of peace and a panel of artists would choose one. That picture would be enlarged in black-and-white, divided into the same number of pieces as there are countries in the world, and the pieces are then assigned colors and sent to each country. Children around the world would then fold paper cranes to be combined into one large mosaic.

On August 6th, representatives from each country would carry the cranes with them and these cranes would then be joined together to create the huge mosaic. If the full picture can't be completed, the empty spots would indicate that some countries weren't able to attend due to poverty or war. For all countries, it would be a good opportunity to consider how they can fulfill their part in order to complete the mosaic.

Another idea is to produce a TV program which consists of reports and interviews involving youth who take part in the ceremony. For example, we might focus on a young person who runs a booth that shares messages of peace or interview other young people at the event.

The purpose of this program would be to convey to older A-bomb survivors who cannot attend the ceremony that members of the younger generation are taking up their prayers for peace. And if the program is broadcast overseas, perhaps youth in other countries would be inspired to act in service of peace, too.