Even if you have not experienced war, you can imagine the tragedy of it.

Today, August 15, is the anniversary of the end of the war in Japan. Overseas, it is Victory Day.
It was 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, 74 years ago. The U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Of the 240,000 people living in Nagasaki at the time, approximately 150,000 perished. Three days earlier, an atomic bomb was also dropped on Hiroshima, killing approximately 200,000 civilians. In total, 350,000 people died.

The numbers are brutal. When I look at the total number, I don’t feel it one bit. But I can imagine how horrible it would be to imagine that my parents, siblings, and friends all died in an instant. That is what really happened in the last World War.

In history, both nuclear weapons used in actual warfare were dropped on Japan. Japan experienced defeat in the war and vowed to achieve lasting peace. Since the war, Japan has not killed a single person in war, either at home or abroad.
We should pass on the tragic war experience to future generations and pledge once again not to fight.

It is not surprising that there is no reality in a story that is 74 years old. It has allowed the horrors of the war to fade away, and the generation that has never heard of it is once again subjected to the division of society due to political arrogance. It is today’s generation that has unnecessarily developed a great deal of hatred toward other peoples.

I want you to travel.
Traveling around the world makes you realize how lukewarm you are. When you are abroad, you are a gaijin. Sometimes I am discriminated against just because I am Asian. But I can make friends in Korea, China, and the Middle East. When you make friends, it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are, you feel important.
If a natural disaster or calamity happens in a country I have been to, I worry about it as if it were my family.

I want you to think about it.
After all, we are all the same people, living under different religions, different preferences for the opposite sex, different political situations, and different economic conditions. Children, including myself, cannot choose their parents or the land where they are born.
So, I want you to think about it. Let’s listen carefully to those whose opinions differ from our own. Let’s talk to each other, acknowledging our differences. Be tolerant, not irritated, when people have different opinions from yours.

And I want you to act.
Actually, I am not talking to you. I am saying all of this to myself. I want to act on these three things, bumping my head against them every day so that I can do them. Be patient and never give up. Even if I fail repeatedly, I will live my life believing that tomorrow will be better than today. This is the only thing I can do.