It was one of those usual pleasant mornings in Hiroshima, Japan. Birds chirping, children playing under the shimmering trees, and people readying to go to work. It was a clear sunny day, until, a huge flash of light and thick dust clouds engulfed entire Hiroshima and killed thousands of innocent people. On 6 August, 1945, the warm morning turned in to the most dreaded one, when an American aircraft dropped the first ever atomic bomb on this bustling Japanese city.

Every year, on 6 August the world observes Peace Day, revisiting the horrors of Hiroshima and pledging that this darkest history does not repeat.

As we, a part of GIIS, strongly follow Gandhiji’s teachings through Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Univeral Values (MGCUV), Global Indian International School Ahmedabad students observed the Peace Day and remembered the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (another Japanese city where the second atom bomb was dropped). Class 5A students left all students and teachers teary eyed through a skit on an 11-year-old Japanese girl Sadako, who died of cancer caused by the ‘atomic attack’. Sadako is known around the world who folded origami paper cranes following the old Japanese belief that a wish is granted for every 1,000 paper cranes folded. Sadako had wished for universal peace so that there is no more warfare where innocent people are killed and life is changed forever.

In a gesture to spread peace and equality, these students also visited a school for underprivileged students and spent the day with them. Little Angels School has around 200 students who are not from affluent houses. When our students presented every child of Little Angels with paper cranes and taught them origami, their happiness knew know boundaries. These children were also taught to paint and dance by our students. The warmth, love, and attention GIIS students gave these children indicate that how even smallest of goodwill gesture can bring a smile on someone’s face!

Extending the Peace Day to our campus, all GIIS students came together to pay homage to the victims of Hiroshima by singing a song ‘Aman ke liye…’; skit on Sadako; presenting paper cranes to the school’s house-keeping staff.

The entire ground floor corridors of the school were decorated with colourful paper cranes, reminding us Gandhiji’s famous quote “An eye for an eye makes the world blind”.