This year, marking the 71st anniversary of the end of the war as well as the year Mr. Barack Obama visited Hiroshima as the first sitting U.S. president, the Peace Studies Seminar program kicked off at the Kinugasa Seminar House on August 1, 2016.

This program was started in 1995 by Professor Atsushi Fujioka of Ritsumeikan University and Professor Peter Kuznick of American University. This year a total of 25 students from Ritsumeikan University and Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University along with 17 students from American University are attending the program. The aim of the program is to enable students with different historical backgrounds to learn the historical viewpoints of people from different countries.

Prior to the highlights of this trip in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their trip started from Kyoto where the students spent a couple of days, visiting the Kyoto Museum for World Peace and attending lectures given by Professor Akihiko Kimijima (College of International Relations) and Ms. Koko Kondo, a prominent atomic bomb survivor. In her lecture, she said that “We should not hate the person, but the evil in the mind of the human being,” which inspired many students.

On arriving in Hiroshima, the students paid a visit to some historically important sites such as the Atomic Bomb Dome and Hiroshima Memorial Peace Museum. After seeing the paper cranes offered by President Obama at the museum, the group listened to lectures by Mr. Masahiro Sasaki, an elder brother of the late Sadako Sasaki who died of leukemia from radiation of the A-bomb in Hiroshima, and Mr. Takashi Hiraoka, a former mayor of Hiroshima City.

On the next day, Professor Emeritus Shoji Sawada of Nagoya University gave a lecture titled “President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima and Prospect of Elimination of Nuclear Plant.”

In the afternoon, the group retraced the footsteps of the Tanimoto family on the day the atomic bomb was dropped with Mr. Ken Tanimoto and Ms. Koko Kondo who are children of Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister famous for his work for the Hiroshima Maidens.

On August 6, the group will attend the Peace Ceremony in the morning and attend the ceremony of floating lanterns on the water. The participants will write messages of peace on the lanterns. From August 7 to 10, the group will travel to Nagasaki to attend lectures and the Peace Ceremony on August 9.

2015 Peace Studies Seminar