Credit: Fresno State
August 5, 2025 - Fresno State, the Human Rights Coalition of the Central Valley and the Central California District Council Japanese American Citizens League will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima with a ceremony in the Peace Garden at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 6.
Thousands of colorful paper cranes were created by the Fresno Buddhist Temple, the United Japanese Christian Church and fifth grade students from Ann B. Leavenworth Elementary School. Youth from Gakko Give will adorn the monument statues in Fresno State’s Peace Garden with the paper cranes, including the Gandhi statue near where the ceremony will take place. They will also provide a reading at the event.
Fresno State has held a ceremony on campus commemorating the bombing anniversary every year since 2020, when three special camphor tree seedlings were planted just west of the Gandhi statue. The seedlings came from a tree in Hiroshima that was less than three-quarters of a mile from the bomb blast. Though bent and damaged, the tree survived, becoming a symbol of peace and hope.
Dr. Joy Goto, interim associate dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno State, is co-chair of the Human Rights Coalition of the Central Valley and honorary Consul General of Japan in Fresno. She said she feels a personal connection to the bombing through the memories of her mother, now 91.
“For me, [the event] is pretty personal,” Goto said. “My mother was born in Hiroshima, not directly in the city but about 5 miles from the epicenter. When she was a child, she saw the mushroom cloud.”
Bernadette Vazquez, co-chair of the Human Rights Coalition of the Central Valley and co-organizer of the event, said there are still ripples today from that event eight decades ago.
“We thought having this commemoration would be in line with remembering the aftermath of war and all the grief in that,” Vazquez said. “We are still being affected by it all. We thought that should be recognized.”
Following a land acknowledgment and welcome, then the Rev. Mieko Majima, representing Reedley and Fowler Buddhist churches, will give an invocation called Sanbujo, an invitation to all Buddhas of the 10 directions.
Dr. Daniel O’Connell of the Visalia Friends Meeting will lead a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m., the time the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima in 1945, killing nearly 70,000 instantly and many more by year’s end. O’Connell will also invite participants to honor the anniversary of the bombing by participating in fasting of some form between Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 (the date of the Nagasaki bombing).
Several speakers will deliver remarks during the event, including Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval; Takeshi Ishihara, deputy consul general of Japan in San Francisco; Honorable Dale Ikeda; and Norman Otani, president of Hiroshima Chuka Kenjinkai. The ceremony will conclude with a benediction by the Rev. Akiko Miyake-Stoner of the United Japanese Christian Church.
Goto mentioned past Fresno State events that have honored Japanese Americans, including a ceremony in 2010 that conferred honorary degrees to Japanese American alumni whose college careers were disrupted by internment ordered for people of Japanese descent two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Through the Nisei Diploma Project, led by the CSU, six of those alumni and representatives of 21 others who were enrolled at Fresno State in late 1941 and early 1942 received honorary Bachelor of Humane Letters degrees under the project.
A later event, at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 9 in the Shinzen Friendship Garden, will commemorate the bombing of Nagasaki. Both events are open to the public.
Source: Fresno State
