滝本 匠 
June 24, 2022, Ryukyu Shimpo
By Yo Kakazu
A few hundred meters away from the podium where Honona Tokumoto is reciting the peace poem stands the Cornerstone of Peace, bearing her great-grandfather’s name. Every year on Okinawa Memorial Day, Honona, a second grader at Yamauchi Elementary School in Okinawa City, reads a letter for her late great-grandfather in front of the peace memorial with her family. On June 23, she fought her nerves and recited a poem before the bereaved families of the Battle of Okinawa.
She slowly read aloud each word carefully: “War is scary, so I wish for peace, tuck it away in my pocket, as not to drop it.” The seven-year-old wrote the poem after visiting the Sakima Art Museum in Ginowan City with her family last June and was stunned by the paintings of the Battle of Okinawa by Iri and Toshi Maruki.
Honona was restless before the ceremony and held on to her mother Chizuru and sister Chiyori, 10 (a fifth grader at the same elementary school as Honona). Chiyori laughed and said of her sister, “I’m sure she wants to be done reciting the poem and get to the Cornerstone of Peace monument as soon as possible.”
This year, Honona wrote to her great-grandfather about reciting her own poetry: “I’m nervous, but I’ll do my best.” Chiyori wrote in her letter, “Be happy in heaven.” The eldest sister Hina, 18, who is in Nagoya for college, tells her new friends about Okinawa Memorial Day in hopes that they will reflect on the day’s significance.
Honona’s grandfather also visits the Cornerstone of Peace with the family every year. Chiyori said, “I always trace the engraving of my great-grandfather’s name on the monument with my finger.” The sisters, seeing their grandfather’s mourning, have come to understand the preciousness of peace. After the ceremony, Honona took her mother’s hand in one hand and her letter to her great-grandfather in the other and headed to the Cornerstone of Peace.
(English translation by T&CT and Monica Shingaki)
