This one wasn’t easy to make.
Mt. Fuji and Hiroshima are the main two reasons I wanted to come to Japan. The first is a natural wonder, and the second is a man-made tragedy.
Lots of consideration went behind this. Should I make a script, should I leave it to visuals? Should I put a quote? By whom? About what? Will it be cheesy, inappropriate, too sad, inaccurate?
I debated for over 2 hours whether or not I should include the quote from Barack Obama in this, especially since the U.S dropped the bomb and owns a A LOT of nuclear weapons still. But I decided to include it eventually. For a start, the quote itself is displayed prominently on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. In reality, getting to a world free of nuclear weapons will not be achieved in our lifetimes. It’s really difficult. But I sincerely believe Obama’s (and most people’s) hope is for a world free of nuclear weapons, so I included his quote.
I also think the most touching part of the quote is the beginning: “we have known the agony of war.” Everyone should know the agony of war if we want to avoid it. Love and hate are two extreme sides of humanity that I find fascinating. If you want to see love, it’s easy. Just talk to your parents, significant other, or whatever. It’s everywhere. Hiroshima, Badagry Slave Port, Auschwitz are the extreme sides of humanity where fellow humans were degraded to just numbers. The war in Syria is another current example.
In my humble opinion, humans are capable of not just giving you a flower on Valentine’s, but also of systematically killing millions of fellow other humans. In his speech at Hiroshima, Obama said the human moral revolution has not caught up to the technological revolution of inventing atomic bombs…or else we wouldn’t have used them. I can’t agree more.
I swear I’m not writing another long post like this again.
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