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Gratitude to All Who Helped with the U.S. Exhibitions
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The U.S. has a new president! Despite the collapsing economy, my friends in the U.S.
are more hopeful than they have been for decades. The election of President Obama is no guarantee of happiness.
He is surrounding himself with many advisors from the Clinton and even the Bush administration, so progressives
like me are worried.
However, the fact that an African-American whose middle name is Hussein was elected shows that
Americans are smarter and less racist than I thought. It also shows how desperate we are for change.
Obama now has a chance to be a hero or a disastrous fool.
I believe he will do his best to be a hero, and he may be intelligent enough to succeed.
For Hiroshima, the election of Obama is especially hopeful. On the election trail,
he said:gA world without nuclear weapons is profoundly in Americafs interest and the worldfs interest.
It is our responsibility to make the commitment, and to do the hard work to make this vision a reality.
Thatfs what Ifve done as a Senator and a candidate, and thatfs what Ifll do as President.h
Again, this comment is no guarantee. He is keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates,
who says he wants a nuclear-weapon-free world but supports the Reliable Replacement Warhead project
to make sure that U.S. nuclear weapons will be effective for 70 or 100 years.
Obama will need some hard pushing to put nuclear abolition on the agenda for 2010.
Still, he is the first president since 1945 to actually say that the U.S. would be better off
without nuclear weapons. He has clearly brought the fresh air of hope into the disarmament community.
In June of 2007 when he was asked if he would use strategic nuclear weapons to Iran, he saidgyes.h
After that, he heard from many nuclear abolitionists.
Then in October, Obama was sitting in a room full of the A-bomb panels for our exhibition at DePaul University,
Chicago. He was waiting to make a speech during the primary election.
Between October 2007 and November 2008, I spent five months touring A-bomb exhibitions in the U.S.
I traveled to 52 cities with 11 hibakusha and participated in well over 100 presentations.
Our programs were reported in local news media.
Our posters are still traveling to new venues to be seen by new groups of concerned citizens.
And, we now have a large network of activists fighting for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
I intend to stay in contact with this network and cooperate in every way possible to support their grassroots organizing.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Mayor Akiba for this great contribution to the
campaign against nuclear weapons. The exhibition project was his idea, and without his leadership and guidance it
could not have happened.
I am also profoundly grateful to our organizers in the U.S., who are too many to list here.
Literally hundreds of people took weeks or months out of their lives to design, publicize and implement
exhibitions and speaking events. In addition, they hosted the delegation from Hiroshima with generosity,
respect, and warm affection that touched us deeply. We consider them all heroes, and I hope to someday
publish a report that will give them the individual recognition they deserve.
Most of all, I want to thank the 11 hibakusha who traveled with me. Despite being in their mid-70s or early 80s,
they traveled to the U.S. Then, following extremely tight schedules, they traveled by air, train or
car from city to city and venue to venue, telling their stories two or even three times a day.
They spoke to a wide variety of audiences, from elementary school children to senior citizens,
from religious groups, peace groups to political activists, from groups of 10 or 20 to audiences of over 500.
Every one of the hibakusha I traveled with played their role professionally with good humor, a cooperative spirit,
and a passion for peace that touched the hearts of the vast majority of the people they met.
I feel lucky to have witnessed with my own eyes the power of hibakusha to melt the coldest audiences.
I only hope I can find ways to help their message reach more people.
(This essay was posted on our journal 'Peace Culture' No.62, issued April 2009)
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