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Japanese Journey Provides Lessons of Peace for Chapel Assistants BY ADD SEYMOUR JR. (TOKYO, HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI, Japan) — Morehouse sophomore Devon Crawford knew he and the other five Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel assistants would leam about the importance of global peace during their August trip to Japan. But after hearing of the deep pain and suffering of victims and survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he was nearly moved to tears. “It was extremely moving,” said Crawford, a psychology major from Birmingham, Ala “Students at Morehouse are charged to be socially conscious leaders with global perspec tive. So we are given this idea that we are communal men, that our work is inextricably connected to everyone else. This trip reaffirms the fact that my work is not just for myself, but also for all others who experience traumatic events and who need justice in their everyday lives. We are those clarion voices to inject jus tice, love, peace and dignity of human life for all people that we come into contact with.” That’s exactly what Chapel Dean Lawrence E. Carter Sr. wanted his students to experience. ‘The ultimate goal was to help our stu dents to become moral cosmopolitans,” he said. Joining Crawford on the trip were fellow chapel assistants on the trip were juniors Stephen Green of Winter Garden, Ha and Winford Rice of Suffolk, Va; sophomore Donald Hayes of Port Arthur, Tx.; and the group’s president, senior Reginald Sharpe of Atlanta The students, along with associate cam pus minister Ernest Brooks ’05 and Chapel relations director Terry Walker ’89, took part in Peace Week activities in Nagasaki and Hiroshima where thousands laid wreaths, cried and remembered those who died. More importandy, the ceremonies served as a reminder of the danger of nuclear war and the need for global peace. “This trip was to make good on an aspect of the Chapel’s mission to encourage our stu dents to be ambassadors of peace and world citizens,” Carter said. “We want to make them conscious about the seriousness of the need for nuclear abolition. We also want to help them to understand that there are many different ways of being in the world, many different ways of being religious and to discover the universal language of music, laughter and a smile and to begin to get out of the boxes that keep us from loving the whole. That made the trip less a sightseeing adventure and one where the Morehouse con tingent was seen as peace ambassadors. Carter gave a keynote address on evo lutionary peace at Hiroshima University. As the Morehouse contingent was ushered into the University’s auditorium, the crowd of several hundred stood and cheered, waved American flags and sang “We Shall Overcome” - in English - in honor of the only African Americans in the room. Then the group was ushered to the front of a large area where thousands of global peace activists, government officials, bombing sur vivors and their families took part in an emo tional remembrance of the Aug. 6,1945, U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Laying wreaths and speaking were a number of international dignitaries, including Japan’s prime minister and, for the first time, an official representative of the U.S. government The Morehouse group later prayed for peace in a temple, honored loved ones lost with peace lanterns sent down a Hiroshima river and listened to the stories from bombing victims. Two days later, they did the same in Nagasaki. The students were moved so deeply that they met one evening during the trip and decid ed to bring those lessons home to Atlanta Later this semester, they will host a series of conversa tions for Atlanta University Center students to talk about what they can do to ensure a peaceful world and why it is important to them. “We want people to be drawn to the art of the pictures we bring back, but also to their meanings and their stories and how they relate to each of us, and for everyone to leam and to ask questions,” Brooks said. Unbeknownst to them, the chapel assis tants’ presence in Japan meant just as much to the Japanese. “It really does have an effect on people when they come to the cities where the bombs were dropped to see with their own eyes the record of this bombing,” said Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue during a pri vate meeting with the Morehouse group. For you men from Morehouse to come here and to actually think about this and be aware of about how you feel and be willing to take that back to America with you, that is a really extremely valu able thing to us here in Japan. So we warmly welcome you into the circle of people who are doing this work.” ■