When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I met survivors and descendants of survivors of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki at my church. Their visit to Evanston was coordinated by Hirokazu Miyazaki, a professor at Northwestern University and a Peace Correspondent of Nagasaki. I almost missed listening to their talk, but my mom said we should stay. I am so grateful we did, because listening to their stories changed my life.
As we sat in the church, the hibakusha — survivors of the atomic bombings — each took a turn explaining what it was like to live through such an event. They knew people who didn’t make it and friends who were never the same because of the bomb’s effects. They spoke quietly, as if speaking these stories aloud was painful. Though the words were said in a language many in the room couldn’t understand, the passion and the sadness in them rang out through the room. It was almost an out-of-body experience like it wasn’t real. You hear horror stories about war, but it’s completely different when you hear first-hand accounts and see the pain in people’s faces. Then, the hibakusha spoke about how the youth of Japan still hold hope that one day there will be no more nuclear weapons. Then it just clicked. I’m in the Japanese program at Evanston Township High School (ETHS), and I could do something about this.
After the talk, I introduced myself to Professor Miyazaki, my fellow parishioner and the visitors’ translator. I told him of my interest in starting a club that would partner with a school in Japan to help the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Messengers — an organization of Japanese high school students who advocate for nuclear disarmament — with their mission to gain support and signatures for a petition calling for nuclear abolition, which they will bring to the United Nations. At that point, I didn’t know what a labor of love this small dream would entail. I spent the first year drafting a plan and organizing it with my teacher and Professor Miyazaki. The original idea was to make a similar organization to the Peace Messengers and help them gather signatures of support from American people. As we were working to create a plan that would benefit both ETHS and the school we would partner with in Japan, the idea grew, and as ideas started changing, so did the plan for the club. We decided that it would be more than just a platform for gaining signatures, but also a way to learn and teach about the effects of nuclear weapons, in many different ways. I created an Instagram for the club, a website with our goals and missions, and brainstormed the idea of a podcast, in which club members could introduce and discuss their own interests and topics surrounding nuclear weapons. The next year, I was ready to move forward with my club, but getting the school to approve it was much harder than I thought it would be. Since the club technically qualifies as a political movement to talk about peace, it needed to be approved by several people within our school. Only adding to the list of challenges, I had to get special approval for the club to be international, since it partnered with a school in Japan.
It has been two years since I got the idea and it’s my senior year, and a lot has happened. I’ve had extensive meetings with staff from the high school, as well as meetings with Professor Miyazaki. My club was started at the beginning of this school year and was aptly named the ETHS Peace Club. Our first goal is to implement a course curriculum for high school history classes that talk in more depth about nuclear weapons and their effects. Second, we hope to create a meaningful plan for conducting outreach around the Evanston area, whether through our Instagram or the podcast, once it is up and running. Our final goal is to find new club members at ETHS who share a similar passion for peace, who will be able to carry on the club and explore new pathways to peace. Having said all this, it has been a struggle to get steady members for the club. There are those who are truly invested in making a difference, but sadly time is not on our side. Many have too many obligations, and coming to biweekly meetings doesn’t always work out. The hope is not only for this project to flourish, but to hold space for other important topics that students may bring to the club.
As I’ve taken this journey, it has helped me learn more about myself and connect more deeply to ideals I keep close to my heart. I have an interest in the medical field, and topics like the results of nuclear fallout and how it’s still affecting people to this day — not just in Japan, but here in America, too — is fascinatingly heartbreaking. For example, I learned that there are still people suffering from cancer caused by radioactive fallout from the Trinity Test conducted in New Mexico in 1945, and that the fallout spread from New Mexico down into Texas and up as far as Canada. To me this is mindblowing, because personally, growing up I was never taught this in history class. We seem to skim over the dropping of the bombs and their effects. This is why as part of the club, we are testing a new lesson plan in a few select history classes. The plan was created by a Northwestern student, and is written to be taught in one to two class periods at the high school level. If successful, we hope to get it implemented school-wide in all U.S. History classes.
To me this started as a small idea I thought would go nowhere. Now, I feel proud that I helped start something that will encourage youth in Evanston to pay more attention to the harms our country has caused, and that many still suffer from.
Photo courtesy of the ETHS Peace Messengers Club