Event Details
Aug 9
Civic Square
The Japan Society of Hawke's Bay invites you to gather in Civic Square to mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On 6 and 9 August 1945, two cities were lost. Eighty-one years on, we come together to remember them, and to hold to the peace their loss demands.
This is a quiet, open commemoration, no tickets, just a shared remembrance. Please bring a chair or a picnic blanket. Everyone is welcome.
Speakers
Jacqueline Yoshioka-Braid is the daughter of a Hiroshima survivor who made her home in Hastings. Her mother, Taeko Yoshioka, was thirteen when she survived the bombing of Hiroshima. Taeko later met Noel Braid, a New Zealand K-Force soldier on leave from his Korean War tour, while he was stationed in Kure. They married in 1952 and, four years later, she followed him home to Hastings, where they raised six children. Jacqueline is the fifth of the six.
Liz Remmerswaal Hughes is Vice President of the World BEYOND War Board of Directors and national coordinator of WBW Aotearoa New Zealand. A former Vice President of the NZ Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, she received the Sonia Davies Peace Award in 2017, which took her to California to study peace literacy with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Elizabeth-Marie Nes is President of the Japan Society of Hawke's Bay and has recently returned from Japan, where she again visited Hiroshima.
Sunday 9 August 2026 · 10.30am · Civic Square, Hastings · Free entry
japansocietyhb.org.nz