The atomic bomb is the deadliest weapon in the world. On Tuesday, five students at the University of Idaho presented the story of Keiko Ogura, held in the Lionel Hampton Music Building.
Keiko Ogura is an activist who experienced the atomic bomb with her family when she was just eight years old. Ogura has since turned her story into a way to educate and spread awareness for peace. She has written several books and established the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace. When Ogura presents, she teaches a story, a lesson, giving perspective outside of the statistics in history books.
The students, Devin Michaelis, Andrea Golden, Racheal Bonner, and Maddison Buchholz, each told a part of her story using watercolor art pictures to illustrate the experience. The art was created by high school students in Hiroshima where the students had previously visited earlier this August. While in Japan, the students learned the other side of the atomic bombs and how they celebrate and remember the lives lost on that tragic day.
The overall pattern in each of their statements was the difference in learning about the event in Hiroshima compared to learning it in America, only knowing the statistics and not the pain that people experienced because of the atomic bomb.
“Growing up I never really learned the important part of what happened in Hiroshima” Micheals explained, “I learned about the numbers sure, but I never really learned the heart behind each person who died in Hiroshima and all the suffering that it caused.”
The unique part of this year’s keynote was the students telling the story through Keiko Ogura’s lens. They each got to experience as American college students firsthand the struggles of the atomic bomb all the way in Hiroshima. It touched students in Moscow and helped them connect with Orura’s story.
Sophia Newell can be reached [email protected]