Children’s Commitment to Peace, Hiroshima 2026

The Commitment to Peace is a speech delivered by children’s representatives every year on August 6 at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. Two students, one make and one female, are selected from a local schools to deliver what is often one of the most moving speeches of the commemorative event which is broadcast around the world.

Commitment to Peace, 2026

How would you feel if something you cherish vanished in the blink of an eye?

The reality today is that while we’re together laughing and smiling, irreplaceable lives are being lost. Even as we speak, people are robbed of their ordinary day-to-day lives.

School uniforms in tatters.

A bento box charred black.

These are testimonies of ordinary lives lived.

8:15 am on August 6, 1945.

One single atomic bomb turned the everyday lives of so many into a living hell.

Hordes of people with hair singed and frizzy, covered in burst blisters with burned skin hanging from flesh cried out:

It hurts. It hurts so much.

Help me, mom.

I don’t want to die.

There’s nothing I can do for you. I’m sorry.

The painful realization that you’re going to die and the suffering of having to keep on living is too horrible to even imagine.

As the last generation to hear about the atomic bombing directly from the hibakusha themselves, it is our duty to embrace their memories as the reality of the past. The willingness to learn with open eyes, coming face to face with even the saddest aspects: that is where the truth of those who wanted to survive and those who kept surviving lies.

We, as the children of Hiroshima, have a responsibility to take action.

A responsibility to put ourselves in the shoes of others, to recognize and accept differences in opinions, to express the will for peace in our own unique ways.

Each and every one of our steps, small as they may be, will contribute to the realization of peace.

Peace is not something that is handed to us. It is something that all of us around the world must build together. Even we, as children, are a part of this and will take our first steps toward peace to deliver to the future the irreplaceable things we cherish and steadfast hope.

2026 children’s representatives:

Yu Kakizaki (Takasu Elementary School) and Kazuki Kono (Konan Elementary School)