To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives)

by Charles Pellegrino

“Each of you,” he began to teach, “though you may only be a single human being—each of you can, on your own, help us to start understanding each other. That’s all it takes: small steps. That’s all you have to remember. Send simple acts of kindness outward, from person to person. Send forth kindness like a contagious disease.”

Nothing could be more dangerous (in terms of being led to war) than worship of the elite. In Japan, at that time, it was worship of the Emperor and his warlords. Now it is almost the same again, all over the world: worship of the powerful, and the fight to be powerful (sometimes with the backing of entire news organizations, telling the multitudes what to think). The powerful, then and now, use the power for themselves without regard for others. Today, if the people do not question, if they go along with the flow and are led to their doom, it will be as much their fault as the [fault of the] stupid leaders who take them there.”

We cannot have peace just by saying war is evil. We have to actively oppose every person, every organization, and every idea that is leading us to war and to the use of nuclear weapons.

That there shall be no more graves of the blue fireflies. That there shall come no more black rains. That no loved one shall ever again know what it means to fold a thousand paper cranes.63