Harmony For Peace For Atomic Bomb Awareness Day

Today marks the 70^th anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, and Sunday, the 9^th , Nagasaki. Through the destruction and devastation, perhaps there was a light of hope initiated as the United Nations was founded in effect. Today, this worldwide organization works continuously so that no other nation or people have to experience such travesty. Today is, under the United Nations Resolution, Atomic Bomb Awareness Day.

For us at Harmony For Peace Foundation, we advocate for a world where nuclear weapons are not used, for the safety of all our children and eventually their children.  In reaching out to people around the world to promote cross-cultural understanding, which leads to tolerance and further, friendship, we aim for a world where nuclear weapons are not needed.

Naohiko Okamura "Bombs"

For the past few weeks, we have been working with the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs in Vienna as they organized a special event to observe Atomic Bomb Awareness Day. Today, among many other exciting initiatives, we are exhibiting in their Rotunda a selection of artwork from our 2011 worldwide art competition, where artists from diverse cultures united to appeal to the world with their messages of peace and hope through visual expression. The artwork once exhibited at the Chelsea Museum in New York, and has now made a global statement in Vienna.

Harmony For Peace finds its inspiration in the power of music and the arts, how they can be vehicles of a universal language, understood by many around the world.

Worldwide peace and nonviolence, especially today, is a grand mission. Yet it is the continuous efforts and peace-minded initiatives that give hope to such a cause.  Let us sing, play, dance and paint our way to peace, for the sake of the happiness, security and lives of all the peoples of the world, regardless of background, faith or nationality.

Shoko Ueno "Black Rain"

Toshiyuki Wantanabe “No More Hiroshima. No More Nagasaki”