Under a nearly cloudless September sky, some hundred community members gathered at Payrow Plaza in Bethlehem to honor the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with a celebration of peace and friendship, as part of the Bethlehem-Japan Peace Project.
On Sunday, the daylong program also commemorated the 61st anniversary of the Bethlehem-Tondabayashi Sister City Commission, a commitment to peace and education.
The event opened with a taiko drum performance by Iroha Taiko and was followed by a live calligraphy demonstration by Shuho Kondo. This calligraphy completed the Kid’s Guernica Peace Mural, part of the International Children’s Peace Mural project, which came to the Lehigh Valley.
The mural, painted by artist Rick Garcia, depicts Picasso’s “Guernica,” but is embellished with paintings of love and hope from the preschool children at Reibman Hall at Northampton Community College and students from Tracy Elementary School in Palmer Township. Students visiting from Tondabayashi, Bethlehem’s Japanese sister city, also contributed to the mural.
“I decided to have the children participate because I feel so strongly about utilizing the arts to build the children’s understanding about important ideas and values, such as peace in the world,” Sally Jeffreys, a preschool teacher at Reibman Hall, told lehigvalleylive.com by email.
The mural was hung outside the Bethlehem Area Public Library during the peace festival, where many of its preschool artists—now in kindergarten—admired their artwork.
“When the children first saw the [Guernica] piece and the sheer size of it, we were in awe,” Jeffreys said. “But they got right to work sketching … They took a long time to sketch their ideas: family, rainbows, flowers.”
Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds addressed the guests, calling the occasion “rare” to be able to celebrate something that’s been going on—the sister city relationship—for decades.
“It’s an honor for me to be a small part of this,” Reynolds said. He highlighted the city’s recent honor of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site, but added, “The people of Bethlehem, long before we were part of any world heritage group, understood that we are stronger together, and we are connected to people throughout the world.”
The mayors of Tondabayashi, Hiroshima and Nagasaki shared messages of peace and hope via video recordings.
The celebration of peace also featured a peace chant with the Rev. Dr. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki, a Buddhist priest along with musical performances by Udi Bar-David, an American-Israeli cellist; Amane Sakaguchi-Kosaburo Kineta IV, a shamisen player, pianist and composer; and Rachel Andie, a Japanese-American instrumentalist, songwriter and visual artist.
In the evening, the Lehigh Valley Jewish Clergy Group presented Strings of Hope, which featured stories of violins that survived the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the Holocaust.
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AloJapan.com