Coventry continues role of peace-making.THE city of Coventry in the English Midlands has had a long and honourable honourable or US honorable Adjective 1. principled 2. worthy of respect or esteem honourably adv Honourable Adjective tradition in peace building, since its 14th century cathedral was destroyed in 1940. The city's International Centre for Reconciliation helped broker the Kaduna Peace Declaration of Religious Leaders, and the First Alexandria Declaration of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land. In October last year the city of Coventry inaugurated a Peace Month and a Hiroshima Nagasaki Atomic Bomb atomic bomb or A-bomb, weapon deriving its explosive force from the release of atomic energy through the fission (splitting) of heavy nuclei (see nuclear energy). The first atomic bomb was produced at the Los Alamos, N.Mex. Exhibition, which was officially opened by the Japanese Ambassador to the UK, Masaki Orita. On the invitation of the Lord Mayor, Sucha Singh Bains, a local survivor of Japanese prison camps, Les Dennison, was invited to participate in the inauguration INAUGURATION. This word was applied by the Romans to the ceremony of dedicating some temple, or raising some man to the priesthood, after the augurs had been consulted. It was afterwards applied to the installation (q.v. . Dennison was captured at the fall of Singapore in 1942 and was among only 400 survivors out the 1,600 prisoners who were forced to work on the Burma Railway The Burma Railway, also known also as the Death Railway, the Thailand-Burma Railway and similar names, is a 415 km (258 mile) railway between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support and one of the bridges over the River Kwai River Kwai may refer to either of two rivers in western Thailand, namely:
After Ambassador Orita had unveiled a plaque, the official party moved to the ruins of the cathedral for an opening ceremony attended by the public. Dennison, together with Yoshiro Yamawaki, who had survived the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II End of World War II can refer to:
The Coventry Citizen described how Dennison had attended a conference in Switzerland in 1962 where he unexpectedly encountered a Japanese delegation. A Japanese general told him: 'I know what happened and I don't ever expect you to forget what happened.' Bowing low, he added: 'I beg you to forgive me and my nation.' Dennison told the paper, 'He was genuine and that was the beginning of a remarkable change in my attitude.' The paper writes, 'Despite the horrific treatment of Les and his comrades, he is keen to leave the animosity of war where it belongs--in the past. "For a long time I felt bitterness and hatred but I don't want that to be passed on to the second generation," he explained.' Ambassador Orita wrote to Dennison, 'It is through the efforts of brave people like you that British and Japanese people The Japanese people (日本人 Nihonjin, Nipponjin are able to grow closer together in the spirit of peace and friendship, without forgetting the past.' |
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