It is August 6 at 5:45 in the morning as Rev. Fuji pulled up in front of my apartment.We are off to be a part of the prayer memorial at Hiroshima Peace Park before the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony.

Representatives of the Shinto religion, the Buddhist religion, and the Christian religion gathered at the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound to pray for peace.It is about 6:00 as we near the Peace Park and there is already a crowd everywhere.

This is the fifty-ninth year since the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima.Within the first year at least 140,000 people died from the bombs heat, blast and radiation.Since then many more people have died and many more people continue to live with the results of the injuries that they received at that time.I felt guilt as I realized that my country was the one that inflicted so much pain on so many people.

But the tone of the prayer meeting and of the Memorial Ceremony was not that of bitterness or an elaboration of the cruelty that the bomb inflicted upon the people of Hiroshima.Rather it was a prayer for peace.It was a pledge to do everything possible for total abolition of nuclear weapons so that no one else would have to experience the pain that the people of Hiroshima experienced 59 years ago.Let us join in their prayer for peace.May God's peace fill the world.