Mr. Rosario Manisera of Associazione culturale italo giapponese Fuji, a friend of Mr. Duilio Zogno who led the project in Brescia, Italy in 2000, introduced the project and tree planting was carried out at 3 sites in the city of Desenzano, namely Aleardi Nursery School, Rivoltella Nursery School and the Garden Center. Aleardi Nursery School and Rivoltella Nursery School were new schools just opened in that year. They applied for the project to celebrate their opening of the school. The nursery school initially wanted to plant the seedling in September 2003 at the same time as the opening of the school, however, they take the planting conditions for the seedling into account and carried out the tree planting ceremony in March, which was the best planting time for the seedling.
Prior to the ceremony, a special class called “Chemical reaction for peace” was conducted. The contents of the class were such: “War” is generated by the chemical reaction of man and in the same fashion “peace” is generated by the chemical reaction of man such as bonds between people and encounter. Also, to let the children learn the preciousness of life, each classroom had items such as “food” and “Marine life” on display.
The tree planting ceremony was attended by a lot of children from the school and their parents and they planted a seedling in the presence of Mr. Ebinuma in the schoolyard. After speeches given by the Mayor and Mr. Ebinuma, they showed a few pieces of work by the children such as a torn paper collage of persimmon. Then, everybody sang merrily together accompanied by guitar. The ceremony was filled with smiles and conveyed the warm welcome shown to the seedling by the teachers, parents and each children who came all together.
From this year on, Mr. Rosario Manisera has carried out planting of the seedlings from the bombed persimmon tree at more than 20 sites in the Province of Brescia where Desenzano is situated.
