Closing Ceremony August 4th at the A Bomb Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Park

As Recited by Dot Walsh

I greet you with peace and friendship. I stand before you as one person representing many people; the Stonewalk team both American, Japanese, and Korean who have made this journey possible by their physical effort and cooperation, the Director of The Peace Abbey Lewis Randa who created Stonewalk in 1999, the many individuals and organizations in the United States who could not be present today and most importantly the Japanese people who supported Stonewalk through the five prefectures with food, rest, and hospitality.

I bow to you most respected Hibakusha, survivors of the 1945 devastation. You have seen with your eyes, heard with your ears, and suffered with your bodies. Your voices have risen above the clouds of the atomic bombs to cry, "We want peace in the world. No more weapons, No more war".

I have a dream that someday little Japanese children and little American children will join with Korean and Chinese children and they will come to touch this Memorial Stone and place flowers on it. For this stone honors the souls of the departed. Civilians, ordinary people like yourselves who are killed in places where they live when wars begin.

Stonewalk is a grass roots movement of the people, by the people and for the people. The people must speak truth to power when governments fail us. Hundreds of people have touched this stone and hundreds of people have pulled this stone. This stone was engraved and then placed in the ground at The Peace Abbey. It was unveiled and dedicated in a special ceremony with Muhammad Ali who was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. A second stone travelled to Ireland and England and remains there at St. Michael's Cathedral in Coventry. This stone was removed from the ground in 2004 to be pulled from Boston to New York by members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Along the way many family members and friends of those killed told their stories at the stone.

This year in Japan many Hibakusha came to the stone to tell their stories and pull the stone. One gentleman said."It has taken 60 years for you to come. " 60 years for us to bring a gift of significance from the people of the United States to the people of Japan.

I beg you not to follow the path of war but to honor Article Nine of the Constitution and follow your conscience and the leaders who teach us the path of nonviolence. Gandhi said, "We must be the change we want to see in the world". We must change, we must evolve and we must not kill each other anymore.

Let us go forward knowing that Stonewalk has given us all a gift we will always cherish and remember. We know that caring, kindness, and love go beyond the differences of language and that together we can create a more peaceful world.