Report: A-Bomb Exhibition at Powel Street Festival and Lantern Ceremony of the Hiroshima day

This year is the sixty-three years anniversary of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-bombing. Peacephlosophy centre co-host two events to mourn the victims of the A-bombing and pray for the future peace. Here are some photoes from these two events.

David Lasky is talking to Sam Sullivan, the Mayor of Vancouver City in front of the a quilt of the Article 9. Sam came to the A-bomb exhibition of the last year as well.

The quilt is made by a Japanese Article 9 group from the Osaka City. They sewed the article on quilts in several langauages. In this year's echibition, we displayed the Japanese, English and the Chinese version. The Mayor stopped in front of the Japanese and Chinese version, read carefully of each sentence and asked us the meaning of certain Chinese characters. He appreciated the idea of peace and non-violence behind the Article 9. He also expressed his appreciation to the artistic quilts.

Our visitors are folding paper cranes. Paper cranes are the symbol of peace. The visitors are from various communities and have very different cultural background. Therefore, we have volunteers here to teach the visitors how to fold the paper crane, and to tell the meaning of folding paper cranes.

Children are watching anime "On a Paper Crane", which tells the story of a girl named Sadako. She was a victim of the Hiroshima A-bomb, and she suffered leukaemia when she was 11 years old. But she didn't give up and folded one thousand paper cranes because it is said that paper crane can bring her wish to the god. She passed away in the same year, but her wishes were carried on by generation and generations. That is, there should be no war and each child can grow up happily.

A group picture of VSA9 members and the volunteers of this event, in front of the Japanese Version Article 9 quilt.

Personally, I'm happy to contribute in this event. Over 400 visitors came to this event, including travelors from Japan, Taiwan, China, and international students from Korea, Columbia, China. I'm happy to see the visitors were almost all strongly agree with the idea of not using military forces to solve international disputes.

This is a picture from the Lantern Ceremony on the Hiroshima day. David Lasky explains what the floating lantern mean in oriental culture. The Burnaby City council declared the August 6 as the Hiroshima day. David Lasky also introduced the Hiroshima day to the audience.

People are putting the lantern into the Lower Pond of the Central Park. Many of the audiences being their whole family to the event. When people were putting lantern into the water, kids were sit at the table and write their wishes to the Hiroshima day on the paper which is used to make lantern.

Jousha, one of our youth delegate to the Global Article 9 Conference, is holding a lantern. Jousha also gave a short speech at this event. He talked about his experience in the Global Article 9 Conference and called everyone of us to think about the non-violence in wolrd community.

Lanterns were floating in the warter.