Mr. Toru Nukui, the PTA president of the Toride City Second Junior High School, introduced the Kaki Project to the school and the school applied for the project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the school. Every year, 2 students are chosen from each junior high school in the city and are dispatched to Hiroshima as goodwill ambassadors. The student council and school staff worked together to plan the tree planting ceremony in order to convey what the students had learned in Hiroshima – the foolishness of war and the preciousness of peace.
As the school brass band performed at the tree planting ceremony, a chorus consisted of 300 first and second year students sang “The only flower in the world” and the two school goodwill ambassadors vowed that “We will never forget the misery of war and vow to live powerfully in the present.” After they watched the DVD of the project, two persimmon trees were planted in the presence of Mr. Ebinuma at the main entrance of the school. Since the third year students had to prepare for the high school entrance exams in a week, the ceremony was attended by the first and second year students only. However, after the third year students had watched the NHK news which covered the ceremony, there was a request from them, so the DVD screening of the Kaki Tree Project was urgently organized for the third year students.
On the 9th of January 2005, “Toride Youth Message Contest” was held at the Toride Civic Center and the representatives from the student council of the Toride City Second Junior High School made a presentation on planting of the seedlings from the bombed tree. On the 29th October 2005, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the school was held and Tatsuo Mijyajima presented “Illustrations of the Kaki Tree Project” to the school in celebration of the school’s 50th anniversary. The school’s project was continuously introduced in the city report afterward and in 2009, a story on the project appeared in a supplementary reader from Mitsumura Tosho Publishing for moral class (for the first year of the junior high school). The tree planting ceremony at the school is introduced in the story in the book.
