In 1947, the second year after Hiroshima experienced the disaster of the world's first atomic bombing, Hiroshima held a Peace Festival in the hope of developing it into a global-scale event to help convey Hiroshima's desire for lasting peace to people around the world.
The three-day festival started on August 5th. On the 6th a ceremony was held in the open area that was to become Peace Memorial Park. The first Peace Declaration read by Mayor Shinzo Hamai included the following;
"This horrible weapon brought about a 'Revolution of Thought,' which has convinced us of the necessity and the value of lasting peace. That is to say, because of the atomic bomb, the people of the world have become more aware that a global war in which atomic energy would be used would lead to the end of our civilization and extinction of mankind.
This revolution in thinking ought to be the basis for an absolute peace, and give rise to a new life and a new world."
"What we have to do at this moment is to strive with all our might towards peace, becoming forerunners of a new civilization.
Let us join together to sweep from this earth the horror of war, and to build a true peace.
Let us join in renouncing war eternally, and build a plan for world peace on this earth.
Under this tower of peace, we hereby make a declaration of peace."
All the cries against war and all the genuine searching for peace welling up from deep in the hearts of the people of Hiroshima took form in this document, the Peace Declaration.
The Peace Declaration has since been delivered by the mayor of Hiroshima every year at the Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6, but its content has changed with the times. The words "against atomic and hydrogen bombs" appeared for the first time in Mayor Tadao Watanabe's Peace Declaration in 1956, the year after the first World Conference Against A- and H-Bombs." In 1971, 26 years after the war ended. Mayor Setsuo Yamada clarified in his Peace Declaration that "In order that the meaning of war and peace may be handed down infallibly to the coming generation, education for peace..." was necessary. In 1982, Mayor Takeshi Araki incorporated into his Peace Declaration a call to the cities of the world to respond to a call for solidarity for peace that had been made at the Second U.N. Special Session of Disarmament in June of that year. At present, this city solidarity has spread to embrace 426 cities from 100 countries and regions.
In the Peace Declaration of 1991, the year he took office, Mayor Takashi Hiraoka stated for the first time that, "Japan inflicted great suffering and despair on the peoples of Asia and the Pacific during its reign of colonial domination and war. There can be no excuse for these actions." In the Peace Declaration of 1996 he stated his hope that agreement on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would "lead to a total abolition of nuclear weapons," and called for the "creation of a culture of peace" and "an archive of A-bombed materials" to convey as widely as possible the reality of the bombing. To realize a world without nuclear weapons, the Peace Declaration of 1997 called upon the government of Japan to devise security arrangements that do not rely on a nuclear umbrella." At the same time it emphasized the necessity of candid dialogue among all the people of the world to transcend differences in language, religion, and custom.
So that no other people in the world would have to suffer tragedies like those experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima will continue to plead in the Peace Declaration for the removal of nuclear weapons from the world and the establishment of lasting world peace.