A CALL FROM HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI TO SOUTH ASIA

Bequeathing the Stories

- By Sajini Wickramasinghe

In August last year, I travelled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the UNODA Youth Leaders Fund for a World Without Nuclear Weapons inaugural cohort. I received the opportunity as a volunteer youth coordinator for Sri Lanka Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons under the patronage of Forum on Disarmament and Development. Following an intense virtual course, 50 young people were selected for the study tour in Japan. It was a journey that reshaped my understanding of peace, memorialisation, and the enduring human cost of war. Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional gravity of walking through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, standing in the Peace Parks, and listening to the voices of 'hibakusha', the survivors of the atomic bombings.

What struck me most was the way both cities have chosen to remember. In Hiroshima, I experienced the events of August 6, 1945, through virtual reality, which placed me in the heart of a tragedy too immense to fully comprehend. In Nagasaki, I stood before relics and photographs that bore silent witness to lives lost and dreams shattered. And everywhere, there were names, faces, and stories. They were not mere numbers and statistics. They were children walking to school, mothers preparing breakfast, people living their ordinary lives, until, in an instant, everything left was dust and dirt.

The most moving part of the experience