The Peace Builders

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The Peace Builders

The Peace Builders: The Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition documents Toronto’s Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition (HNDC) a non-partisan coalition of peace, faith and community groups in the Greater Toronto Area. For over 35 years the HNDC has been educating citizens and government on the dangers of nuclear weapons and advocating for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

Every August the HNDC hosts a commemoration ceremony to ensure that the human suffering and destruction inflicted by the first atomic bombings in 1945 is not forgotten. In August of 2019 I asked coalition members to respond to the question “How have the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected you personally?” The Peace Builders combines their written responses with portraits of the eleven participants taken in Toronto’s Peace Garden. The project commemorates both the bombings and the HNDC’s dedicated peace activism.

Read online: The Peace Builders: The Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“I have dedicated my life to raising public awareness about the dangers of nuclear weapons and that the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only way to have security.”

Setsuko Thurlow
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“I first arrived in Hiroshima on August 5, 2008. At 8:15 the following morning, I was part of the assembly gathered to commemorate the sixty-third anniversary of the atomic bombings, held in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. I was jet-lagged, disoriented by the chorus of cicadas, and dripping with sweat. A dawning realization of what had taken place there sixty-three years earlier made me weak in the knees. I was an American standing at ground zero and somehow until that moment I really had no idea what Hiroshima meant.”

Katy McCormick
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“The atomic bombings introduced the world to the nuclear age, and their images of suffering and destruction continue to haunt me.”

Vinay Jindal
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“My reverence for all creation fuels my belief that if all humanity truly fell in love with the creation that sustains us and blesses us constantly with its healing and beauty, no one could ever consider harming, let alone destroying, this gift.”

Mary-Ellen Francoeur
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“I strive to be a good person and do good deeds that will bring harmony, love, and peace throughout the world.”

Sid Ikeda
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“I recall feeling relief when the end-of-war radio broadcasts changed from daily descriptions of battles to accounts of “normal” activities. This is my earliest memory of how the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected me.”

Barbara Birkett
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“I was impressed by Nikita Khrushchev’s statement about nuclear war—that the living would envy the dead.”

Michael Nevin
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“Years of experience and reflection have made me a determined pacifist working for humanity.”

Phyllis Manning Creighton
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition

“…I feel that I have received the gift of having a clearer purpose in my life, to work toward making the world a better place… a world without weapons of any kind.”

Alex Pereklita
Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition