“Due to the atomic bomb attack on August 9 at 11:02am, our school lost the precious lives of 207 students and seven staff members, and our campus was burned to the ground. Our school instantly became a pinnacle of pain and suffering, of hopelessness.

Still, our school Junshin has stood the test of time and exists to this day, in 2017. What do we stand for? What has been our duty for all of these years?

Indeed, we survivors are beholden to the responsibility to live on and tell these stories of war, and ultimately, communicate to others the virtue of peace. We do this by rising every morning for the Rosary Prayer and by singing the Senbazuru hymn – both rituals and gestures that portray the dignity of peace.

World peace is derived from individual peace, or peace found within. The virtue of caring, the virtue of forgiving, the virtue of loving – we strive to cultivate and sustain all of these virtues within our own hearts.

God, the embodiment of Love, has created all of us in his likeness. As we pray from day to day that we as humans are able to reconstruct ourselves to embody love and peace, we hope to do what little we can to continue fulfilling our cherished mission.  2017, June

Junshin Middle School/Junshin All Girl’s High School Sr. Chiyoko Higashi”