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Secretary-General delivers message of peace at Hiroshima memorial
UN Staff making cranes The UN Secretary-General is in Japan where on Friday he attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, exactly 65 years after the city suffered nuclear bomb attacks during the Second World War. Following the event, Ban Ki-moon told journalists he was honoured to take part in the solemn ceremony. Dianne Penn reports.
BAN: I have come to remember the victims, and to honour the survivors, the hibakusha. But I am also here to join the people of Hiroshima in looking forward. I carry a message of hope, a message of peace, and a call to action: to build a world free of nuclear weapons.
NARR: The visit marked the first time a UN Secretary-General has participated in the commemorative ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese cities were destroyed in separate bombings by the United States in August 1945, the first and only time nuclear weapons were used in conflict. Kazuko Minamoto is the Deputy Director for Education and Family Programs at the Japan Society in New York. She describes Hiroshima as the proverbial phoenix.
MINAMOTO: In terms of the city, the site that was devastated by the bomb when you go there you will see the Peace Memorial Park filled with green and beautiful trees. You couldn't imagine, you cannot imagine that an atomic bomb was dropped just 65 years ago. The city has revived from the ashes beautifully.
NARR: The Japanese believe that if you make 1,000 versions using the traditional art of paper folding, or origami, a wish will come true. The story of the paper cranes has become part of global heritage. Kiyotaka Akasaka, the head of the UN Department of Public Information, explains.
AKASAKA: One thousand paper cranes have been very much associated with Hiroshima and the wishes for peace, particularly because a young girl called Sadako Sasaki who was the victim of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima at the age of two, and 10 years afterwards she died of leukaemia. But while she was in the hospital she started folding the paper cranes in hoping that the cranes will bring her better health.
NARR: Sadako died in October 1955 and some of the cranes were distributed to her classmates; others were donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Her family kept five of the original cranes for many years. However Ms. Minamoto of the Japan Society reports that Sadako's brother has decided to give them away.
MINAMOTO: He decided to donate one of them to the 9/11 Tribute Center because the family learned that the families of Japanese victims got together and they folded and donated 10,000 paper cranes that are on display at the Tribute Center wishing for a more peaceful world. And when the Sasaki family heard about this, they decided to donate to share the same feeling and comfort the souls of the lost ones and their families.
NARR: In 2008, the UN Secretary-General proposed a five-point plan for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Since then, the world has taken several promising steps, including the agreement this year by Russia and the United States on a new START Treaty. The 1,000 UN paper cranes are a symbol of the United Nations' commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. Once again, UN Communications chief Kiyotaka Akasaka who is also in Japan with The Secretary-General:
AKASAKA: I believe that these Secretary-General's visits to Nagasaki and Hiroshima will send a very strong message world-wide that he is very much serious about the UN's work on disarmament and non-proliferation. The momentum should be kept and he is going to do that. And the messages will be clear and loud.
Kiyotaka Akasaka heads the UN Department of Public Information.
Duration: 4'07"
