On August 5 (Wed.) and 6 (Thu.), five members of our junior high school student council visited Hiroshima as representatives of the school to participate in peace education activities.

Prior to the visit, the students chose the theme, "Is peace something we 'inherit,' or something we 'create'?" Eighty-one years after the end of World War II, looking at the world today, the students wondered whether "peace" can still be taken for granted. With this in mind, they wanted to visit Hiroshima—the city where an atomic bomb was used for the first time in human history, causing unprecedented devastation—and reflect once again on the meaning of peace. These thoughts inspired the theme they chose.

On the first day, the students visited the former Hiroshima Branch of the Bank of Japan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum before taking part in a guided tour of memorial monuments led by students from Hiroshima Jogakuin Junior & Senior High School. Seeing students of their own generation actively working to "pass on the message of peace" was a valuable learning experience for our students. They also offered one thousand paper cranes, folded by students throughout our school with wishes for peace, at the Children's Peace Monument.

On the second day, the students attended the Peace Memorial Ceremony early in the morning and then participated in a variety of events, including an "Atomic Bomb Play" performed by high school students and a talk by an atomic bomb survivor sharing their experience of the bombing. Learning about the countless everyday lives that were taken away in an instant and the immeasurable grief of those left behind gave the students a valuable opportunity to reflect personally on the pain of the past and the preciousness of peace.