3rd Picturephone Class

the Lakeside High School located near Cleveland, Ohio

3rd Picturephone Class On November 22, 2004, the third Picturephone Class was conducted with the Lakeside High School located near Cleveland, Ohio. This project was initiated by Miyoko's encounter with a young American kindergarten teacher. On July 20th, 2004, Becky Munger, one of the kindergarten teachers at the Ashtabula school district, to which the Lakeside High School belongs, visited Hiroshima and heard Miyoko's experience. After Miyoko's talk, she and Becky had a dialogue. During their conversation, Miyoko noticed that Becky was interested in the story of Sadako. Then, she suggested Becky to conduct a picturephone class through the TV conference system. Becky was very positive and promised Miyoko to talk about a possibility with her colleagues when she went back to her school. Since Becky thought that her students (kindergartners) were too young to understand, she talked with some high school teachers in the Ashtabula school district and asked if they were interested in this project. Then, Marge Toivola, a history teacher at the Lakeside High School, volunteered to do it. As a result of countless e-mail exchanges between Miyoko and people in the Lakeside High School, we finally realized this project.

Lakeside High School called in at around 10:00 pm, and we started the long-distance PicturePhone class. There were around 100 participants, including students, faculty members and some board members, from the Lakeside High School. In Hiroshima, Miyoko and a couple of youth who had been involved in this project got together at Professor Mitsuru Oba's laboratory in Hiroshima State University and participated in the class. The class lased for about an hour.

Showing some maps and the pictures that Miyoko illustrated (images of Hiroshima and people before and after the bombing), Miyoko shared her first-hand experience for about 30 minutes. After that, we had a Q & A session, and several students came up to the podium and asked questions. Their questions are, for example: "Do you or did you have hatred and or grudge against Americans?", "How did the bombing affect your life?", "Did this disaster make you a stronger person?", "Did you receive any assistance from your government or other countries for your medical bills?", "Do you believe there is a way of preventing this from ever happening again?", and "What do you hope others learn from your story?"

After the Q & A session, Miyoko asked some students about their impressions. Most of them responded by saying, "I know it is very painful for her to talk about A-bomb experience. So, I felt that Miyoko was a very strong woman!" "I have learned about the bombing of Hiroshima through the textbook and I have had a certain level of understanding of it. But hearing Miyoko's first-hand experience, I could deepen my understanding and realize how horrible the atomic bomb was." They also said that they wanted to go to Hiroshima someday and study more. Since we wanted to make this class as a place where as many students posed questions and shared their opinions as possible and make it as a very productive occasion to study peace, we would say that the class was very successful.

NHK-Hiroshima branch, Asashi Newspaper, Chugoku Newspaper and Mainich Newspaper covered our class. In the Lakeside High School, the local newspaper covered this occasion, too.

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