The winners of a peace poster contest, sponsored by Sagamihara City in Kanagawa Prefecture, paid a visit to the ANT-Hiroshima office in October. Serving as “Sagamihara City Peace Ambassadors,” Taisei Umezawa and Hiyori Yokoyama came to Hiroshima to learn about the atomic bombing and issues involving nuclear abolition and peace. Tomoko Watanabe, the executive director of ANT-Hiroshima, welcomed the two students and shared the details of her peace-building work with them.
With a desire to advance peace education efforts in the city, Sagamihara’s Citizens’ Peace Forum called for submissions of peace posters from local elementary school and junior high school students. A total of 298 posters were received, with 169 posters created by elementary school students and 129 posters created by junior high school students. One Grand Prize was then given to each of these two groups. The winning posters, along with 30 others that were selected, are being displayed in Sagamihara during the month of November.
The winning poster from the elementary school submissions is titled “For a Peaceful Future” and was made by Taisei Umezawa, a sixth grader at Ono Elementary School. Incorporating the idea of diversity, with people, animals, plants, and the A-bomb Dome in the background, the colorful poster conveys an energetic future of lives lived in peace.
The Grand Prize for the junior high school submissions was awarded to
Hiyori Yokoyama, a third-year student at Unomori Junior High School. Her poster features a paper crane that bears symbols of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a message of peace and the lessons learned from the A-bombed cities, the paper crane is flying over the globe and passing on the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the world. “Spreading the Message of Peace” is the title of her poster.
ANT-Hiroshima congratulates these two students, as well as all the young people who took part in this peace poster contest. With their vision, and their efforts, they will surely help to build stronger and wider peace in the world.
