Peace Memorial Museum

We spent the morning walking through Peace Memorial Park, reading through (the English language version of) the history, and admiring the A-Bomb Dome, the Peace Flame, and the Memorial Cenotaph. Later that afternoon, we had the great honor of listening to a survivor tell us her story. She was 8 months old when the bomb had landed. She was lively, up beat, and while the story and the event were tragic, she made sure to include positive moments and funny stories that happened along the way. She was a great storyteller, and a very brave women.

This day was incredibly impactful, as one could imagine. That morning, we had spent about 2 hours in the museum, looking at images of destruction, listening to the audio guide narrate the events, looking at artifacts that were left behind – a child’s tricycle, clothing that was worn that day, diaries with the last entry displayed – and listening to interviews from those who had survived. When you walk into the first room, the wall is lined with a large panorama that covers the room, then in the center of the room, there is a birds eye view animation of what happened on August 6th, 1945. As I watched the animation, I thought about our current situation between the US and North Korea, with the many test missiles already launched. I didn’t just feel sadness for the history, but fear for the present, and confusion about how this is so close to happening again. 

After I had left the museum, my head began to spin as I walked outside and knew that I stood in the same place as all of those photographs of destruction. It was difficult to wrap my head around the reality that I was standing in the same place that was destroyed 72 years ago. Everything looked so different, and people were walking around like nothing was wrong. As I tried to process everything that I had just saw/heard/read/learned, I looked up to see the A-dome, the last remaining structure from the bomb. And then I could see the destruction, 72 years later.

That afternoon we listened to the survivor, and she told us about her story. After her talk, I heard news that North Korea had just launched another test missile, and this one went over Japan. A few of the other students in the group had received text messages telling them to seek shelter or relocate. 

My head spun more as the past and the present were colliding.
Jerry White

On our last day of our program, we were lucky enough to listen to a talk given by Jerry White, the CEO of Global Impact Strategies Inc. and the Co-Chair of Global Covenant Partners, as well as a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He told us of his encounter with an abandoned landmine and how it cost him his leg, and almost his life. He told us about his mission and his work to eliminate abandon landmines and to prevent such tragic events for others.

He traveled the world to 60 countries and interviewed thousands of survivors. “They taught me the power of resilience.”

“Victim” vs. “Survivor” vs. “Leader”

“Do not judge, you learn to listen to the pain. Do not resent. Learn to move forward. Do not blame others; things go wrong. What if I spent his life blaming those who were responsible for those who distributed the landmines, those who didn’t clean it up, those who never posted a sign, myself for not paying more attention.

There is enough blame to go around. It’s not a healthy space” 

He learned to move forward and to take action.

These are his 5 steps towards resilience:

• The first step: Break denial and face the facts. Even emotions are facts – those are the way you feel.
• The second step: Choose life, not death. Make life about more than what happened to you and your life. How do you want yourself to be known – as the victim, or as the person who did something about it afterward?
• Third step: Reach out. Help others. Don’t pull into your shell and not show others what’s going on. Reach out, don’t stay in “turtle land”.
• Forth step: get moving.
• Fifth step: Give back, pay it forward.