ANT-Hiroshima

 Tomo Corporation, a trading company recently set up to support the activities of ANT-Hiroshima, received some great news the other day. Their film, "Hadashi No Gen Ga Mita Hiroshima" ("The Hiroshima That Gen Saw") has won a prize - full report.

ANT-Hiroshima

In November Dr. Prabin, a senior neurosurgeon at Norvic International Hospital in Katmandu, launched an initiative that aims to ensure that every Nepalese patient who needs neurosurgical treatment in Nepal will be able to receive it irrespective of his or her financial means. Full report.

ANT-Hiroshima

On September 11th, ANT Hiroshima hosted a symposium presented by Dr. Nanao Kamada, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivors Relief Foundation, and spoke about his findings in regard to a visit to Fukushima to investigate the levels of radiation that remain in the environment following the nuclear disaster that unfolded in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in the north east of Japan on March 11th of this year.

ANT-Hiroshima

The "UNESCO Foundation - Education for Children in Need" received a donation of 9,000 euros, or about a million yen, to be used to help children in Fukushima, Japan, who have been affected by the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and the atomic catastrophe.

The UNESCO Foundation asked HOPE'87 to oversee the distribution of the funds, and they in turn contacted ANT-Hiroshima. This is what we did...

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An A-bombed tree near Hiroshima castle.

After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 it was thought that nothing would grow in the city for 75 years. However, the following spring new seedlings were seen springing up amongst the debris of the city. They provided a powerful message to the survivors and gave them hope that they could rebuild their city.

Today, 66 years after the A-bomb, Hiroshima is a green and vibrant city. Many of the trees that were planted in the city after the war were gifts from overseas donors and donors from other parts of Japan.

Hibakujumoku

However, 170 of the trees that we can enjoy in the city today had actually been in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped and survived the bombing and the devastation that followed. After the war, many of those trees were replanted or preserved in 55 locations within a 2km radius of the hypocenter. Today, they are officially registered as A-bombed trees. Each A-bombed tree is called a hibakujumoku  and is identified by a name plate.

Green Legacy Hiroshima

Green Legacy Hiroshima is an initiative launched by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and ANT-Hiroshima, to spread worldwide the seeds - and the peace message - of trees that survived the atomic bombing.

Recently, Nassrine Azimi, senior adviser at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in Hiroshima (UNITAR), together with Tomoko Watanabe of ANT-Hiroshima, and a group of friends, launched an initiative called Green Legacy Hiroshima through the auspices of UNITAR to help spread the seeds of Hiroshima's A-bomb-surviving trees around the world.

The founding idea of Green Legacy Hiroshima is to distribute seeds and saplings from Hiroshima’s A-bombed trees to interested groups and schools around the world. We hope that seeds will be planted in urban, botanical gardens, schools, public and private institutions and places of political or symbolic importance for the message of peace.

Please check the UNITAR Green Legacy Hiroshima webpage if you would like to participate in a project to plant seeds of peace. You can also find more information about the survivor trees: http://www.unitar.org/hiroshima/greenlegacy


ANT-Hiroshima

In a new documentary film, Hadashi no Gen ga Mita Hiroshima (Hiroshima as Seen by Barefoot Gen) produced by Tomo-Corp in cooperation with Siglo, Nakazawa Keiji (born, 1939) recalls his childhood experience of the nuclear bombing of  Hiroshima city, and explains how that he found an outlet for expressing his experiences through the medium of Japanese comics, most notably through the Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) manga series. Full report here.

Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) is a Japanese manga story about a boy, Gen, who is in Hiroshima when the city is destroyed by the atomic bomb on 6th August 1945.

The manga was created by Keiji Nakazawa is based on his own experiences as a Hiroshima a-bomb survivor. Just like Gen, Keiji Nakazawa was a schoolboy in Hiroshima in August 1945.

The story begins in 1945 in Hiroshima where the six-year-old Gen lives with his family... Read on

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To commemorate the opening of the Basic Health Unit in Shamshatoo, Pakistan, we interviewed the person whose untiring efforts in difficult circumstances made the project possible, M. Shoaib Haider, Branch Office Manager of HOPE'87 Pakistan. Interview with Shoaib Haider

ANT-Hiroshima

Tomoko received some photos and a letter attached to an email from Rakakesh Kumar Shrestha in Nepal. The letter is from a teacher at the Deep Jyoti English School, Sudal, Bhaktapur, Nepal after reading Paper Crane Journey, which was distributed to pupils at the school on behalf of ANT-Hiroshima... Read on

Serge receives his prize!

Fresh from winning a prize from The World Bank for his film, Bénéré, Serge Armel Sawadogo has just made his first short film in America on the theme of hope and hopelessness as it relates to the African experience...

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Steven Leeper is the chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. Steven has written an article about the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol and the prospects for nuclear weapons abolition.

While Steven was preparing the article the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011 and the ensuing Fukushima nuclear disaster caused him to modify the article.

The article is to be published in Japanese on the Peace Culture Foundation website.

Here is the English version of Steven's article.

Following the opening of the Basic Health Unit in Shamshatoo, Pakistan, Ahmed-san of Hope'87 has just sent us some photos of patients being checked and treated by the medical team.

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Here are a few photos which were taken by one of our group members as part of our fact-finding and emergency relief mission to areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.

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Tomoko Watanabe visited the Mayor of Iidate village, Fukushima Prefecture, as part of ANT-Hiroshima's fact-finding and emergency relief mission to the earthquake and tsunami affected area of east Japan.

Tomoko presented peace cranes made by children from Motomachi Elementary School in Hiroshima. Motomachi Elementary School is the school that was closest to the hypocentre of the atomic bomb in 1945.

The children also wrote letters of encouragement and the mayor received them on behalf of the people of Iidate village.

Iidate village lies just outside the 30km zone around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but since Tomoko and her team visited the area the government has decided to evacuate the population of Iidate and nearby villages because of the high levels of radiation that have been recorded in the area.

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Open!

On 29th March the first Project Steering Committee Meeting was held at the Basic Health Unit in Shamshatoo, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan. It coincided with the formal opening of the basic health unit as reported on our main blog.

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On March 24th the mayor of Minami Soma appealed for volunteers to help with transport of emergency supplies to the earthquake and tsunami affected area. The appeal also included a request for petrol as the whole Tohoku area was without fuel for several weeks.

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Here is a report about radiation exposure by Doctor Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of Hiroshima University. It was prepared in April 2011 to give some guidance to Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief volunteers in response to public health concerns arising from the crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

On 22nd March a local Hiroshima network of NPOs and other voluntary organizations, including ANT-Hiroshima, set up a group called "BoranEco Hiroshima." Our aim is to coordinate relief activities in the wake of the Tohoko earthquake and tsunami. Full Report

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After attending Tomoko Watanabe's lecture, Grassroots Peace Activities, the participants were asked:

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

Here are the comments of Mohammed Mojeeb - a civil administrator from Afghanistan.

Visiting Master Program student, Letila Moala Tuiyalani, a civil servant and graduate student from Fiji, was invited to attend the Local Government Traning Course organized by JICA. While on the course Letila attended Tomoko-san's Grassroots Peace Activities presentation.

After the presentation was over, Lelita and the other students were asked,

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

On 8th March Fauzia Minulla in Pakistan held a Skype conference with children of Kyukuhoku Elementary School, Akita, Japan, via school computers and a big Panasonic television screen set up in the school hall. Photo report here.

Tomoko Watanabe gave a presentation about Grassroots Peace Activities to some academics and local government administrators from a number of Asian countries. After the session they were asked:

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

 The Japanese Cabinet approved by Prime Minister Naoto Kan adopted a set of tax reforms for fiscal 2011 on Dec 16th 2010.

What will the changes be?


Ayumi Suzuki

http://www.npoweb.jp

Arham, a student from Indonesia, also attended Tomoko's Grassroots Peace Activities session and when asked what his impressions of Hiroshima were, he wrote the following response

After the earthquake and the tsunami struck the north of Japan last Friday we placed an appeal for donations on this blog and some other sites to help us make a useful contribution to the relief work that is so urgently needed.

So far, we have received donations from... read on!

Recognize the little girl standing on the left?

It's Tomoko Watanabe, aged six!

Tomoko was recently interviewed by some teenage amateur journalists who put together the Peace Newspaper, Peace Seeds, which is a supplement of the Chugoku Shimbun, a regional newspaper based in Hiroshima.

Tomoko talks about her memories as a child growing up in post-war Hiroshima...

After Tomoko Watanabe had given her Grassroots Peace Activities presentation to a group of government officials and academics who are visiting Japan from various countries in Asia, the participants were asked to describe their impressions of Hiroshima.

Arija Vaidya, a postgraduate student from Nepal, writes...

Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan said that Japan is now going through its greatest hardships since the Second World War as the damage caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami become clear. Report

Tomoko Watanabe gave a presentation about Grassroots Peace Activities. Afterwards, the participants who were local government administrators and academics from various Asian countries were invited to respond to the question:

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

Here are some comments by Tirko Prasad Dhital - a civil servant from Nepal:

You will all have seen the terrible news of the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on Friday afternoon.

We in Hiroshima have not been directly affected and did not feel the earthquake but we have been watching in horror the news reports on television.

Report

Visiting Master Program student, Meas Chhivhun, from Cambodia, was invited to attend the Local Government Traning Course organized by JICA. While on the course Meas came along to Tomoko-san's Grassroots Peace Activities presentation.

After the presentation was over, Meas contributed the following comments:

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

The Grassroots Peace Activities presentation that Tomoko Watanabe gave to a group of local government administrators who were visiting Hiroshima led to some interesting discussion.

After the session the participants, who had come to Japan from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Fiji, were asked to describe their impressions of Hiroshima.

Today we report on the comments of Dr. Sarwar Bari, a civil servant from Bangladesh.

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

Tomoko Watanabe's presentation, Grassroots Peace Activities, was given to a group of visiting local government administrators and academics. After the session the participants wrote about their impressions of Hiroshima. Muhammad Yusri Zamhuri, a postgraduate student from Indonesia, submitted the following comments:

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

After Tomoko Watanabe's presentation, Grassroots Peace Activities, the assembled guests, local government civil servants from various countries were asked to describe their impressions of Hiroshima. Keshav Raj Subedi, a Nepalese civil servant responded.

What are your impressions Hiroshima?

After attending Tomoko Watanabe's presentation, Grassroots Peace Activities, the participants were asked to write down their impressions of Hiroshima. Here is Ishan Wijetilake response. Ishan is a civil servant in the Sri Lankan government.

What are your impressions of Hiroshima?

Tomoko Watanabe was invited by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to give a peace culture presentation to participants in a training course on local government at the end of February.

The trainees were a group of local government administrators from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Tomoko gave a talk about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the grassroots peace activities undertaken by Hiroshima citizens to rebuild the city and spread the message of peace in a world free of nuclear weapons.

No sooner had I posted the previous blog post about the Basic Health Unit, near Shamshatoo, Pakistan, than we received news at the ANT-Hiroshima office that construction had been completed!

When we saw the photos of the completed Basic Health Unit we were amazed at how much progress had been made in a short time - and at how nice the BHU looks now compared to the situation at the end of 2010.

One of ANT-Hiroshima's biggest commitments over the last few years has been working in cooperation with HOPE '87 in the construction of a Basic Health Unit just outside Shamshatoo Refugee Camp, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, (formerly known as North West Frontier Province), in Pakistan. 

Here is an update on progress, with photos.

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A Happy and Peaceful New Year to all our readers and supporters from Tomoko Watanabe and the staff at ANT-Hiroshima!