Although it has been 66 years since the atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima, Keigo Hakojo said it still serves as a reminder for the next generation to strive for peace.
"It is very important to instill in the minds of young people the idea of peace for the future of the world. They are the source of a new wave of peaceful action," said Hakojo, a Japanese youth baseball official whose team participated Friday in the annual ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Bell at the Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii, a Shinto shrine in downtown Honolulu.
Hakojo’s team of Little Leaguers, as well as other Hiroshima youth here for the YMCA’s "Let’s Get Together" program, were present at the 22nd annual Hiroshima Commemoration and Peace Service in Honolulu.
Youth from the Kaimuki-Waialae YMCA summer enrichment program donated a thousand origami paper cranes and sang "We Are the World."
In Japan, meanwhile, Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle presented a wreath and gave remarks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. He is the second U.S. mayor to take part in the ceremony.
Representatives of the Shinto, Jewish, Buddhist and Christian faiths delivered speeches at the ceremony in Honolulu.
"It is not an accident that there are many different faiths here today," said Michael Broderick, president and CEO of the Honolulu YMCA. The presence of the various faiths was meant to reflect diversity and peace, he said.
Hakojo was 8 years old when the bomb detonated over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.
Although Hakojo was in Manchuria in northern China at the time of the bombing, his mother-in-law suffered greatly before dying of complications from radiation sickness, he said.
Today he works with Hiroshima youth as chairman of the Hiroshima-Nishi Little League and participates in fellowship programs with Hawaii to perpetuate concepts of peace.
The boys of the Hiroshima Little League, ages 7 to 12, have come to Hawaii to play the Manoa Mariners.
The sister-city relationship between the Honolulu Japanese and Hiroshima chambers of commerce began in 1959.
Minori Watanabe, 13, a member of the Hiroshima YMCA visiting here, delivered a short speech at the peace ceremony.
"The other day we had Japanese and Hawaii kids playing soccer together. It didn’t matter what race they were or what they looked like, and I thought, ‘This is peace,’" she said.
