Assignment task:
Give your view on the following matter, agree or disagree.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. This memorial was constructed from the only structure left standing after the bombing on Aug 6, 1945. The monument is a powerful reminder of what nuclear weapons can and do to a city and its people. In Japan, every Aug 6th, there is a ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. People come to speak about loved ones lost; survivors tell their stories of that fateful day on Aug 6 when the bomb was dropped. They explain life for them and their families after the bomb and the years following the war. People also talk about the total disarmament of all nuclear weapons so that it never happens again. The ceremony involves a moment of silence at 8:15 am to honor those that were lost when the bomb exploded, as well as white doves being released as a call for peace. The ceremony culminates with the lighting of the lanterns on the Motoyasu River.
The lantern lighting symbolizes that when the atomic bomb was dropped, the area around the present-day Peace Memorial Park was a normal part of the town where people worked and lived. Not everyone in a close radius of the bomb was killed immediately. People were severely burned by the heatwave created by it but were still alive. Most people could not stand nor tolerate the pain and heat from the burns and threw themselves into the river to try to get some form of relief from the intense pain. Unfortunately, most of them did not survive this action because as more and more people jumped into the river, they landed on top of others already there, causing many to drown.
Several years after the war had ended and as Hiroshima was trying to rebuild, some of the citizens started to float the first lanterns to bring peace and a sense of closure to the souls of their friends and family members who had possibly passed away in this river and express their wish that they may rest in peace.