By vincent todaro
Staff Writer
Jill Marshall-Work
EAST BRUNSWICK — For township resident Jill Marshall-Work, going to Japan won’t be about sightseeing or having fun, but instead about promoting peace.
Marshall-Work was chosen by her Peace Ambassador Exchange (PAX) team — whose mission is to promote peace by bringing people of different cultures together — to be one of three American members to visit Japan in order to help advance the goals of the group.
"PAX is based in Hiroshima, and was started by American Quakers after (World War II)," she said. "Its philosophy is to have people meet one-on-one with people to look for ways to promote peace."
The group feels that only by actually getting to know people from different countries, races and cultures can someone truly understand their lives and ways of thinking. That is probably most important when dealing with people who live in countries that are not on good terms with the United States. In this case, it is about meeting people who lived in Japan while it was at war with the U.S., she said.
The program Marshall-Work will participate in is sponsored by PAX’s World Friendship Center in Hiroshima. It is an exchange program in which Americans are able to visit Japan, and in turn Japanese citizens are brought to America.
"The mission is to promote peace through formal peace-related activities, and on a more informal basis by building international friendships and fostering understanding and appreciation for each country’s culture, national heritage and way of life," she said.
Marshall-Work is scheduled to be in Japan for two and a half weeks this summer. While there with the PAX team, she will attend Peace Day ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and will give talks on peace-related topics. She will also visit a nursing home to meet with survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped there.
Marshall-Work, who moved to East Brunswick with her husband about two months ago from South Brunswick, became interested in promoting peace while working at a Quaker college in Wilmington, Ohio. She said the school had a great collection of nuclear disarmament materials, due in part to the Quakers’ philosophy of pacifism.
"Japanese scholars and peace activists would come to do research," she said.
While in Japan, she will live with a host family and get a good grasp of what it is like to live in modern Japan. She’ll visit cultural and historical sites, including temples, gardens and museums.
But there’s another purpose to her trip as well — she’s going to do research for a Broadway-style musical she’s writing entitled Journey of a Thousand Cranes. She said the musical "follows the journey of a Japanese-American teenager who is trying to come to terms with her dual heritage as she attends the Aug. 6 Peace Day ceremonies in Hiroshima. Her grandfather and four other sojourners attend the ceremonies in an effort to make peace with a past profoundly affected by the events of World War II."
She said the title is a reference to a young Japanese girl named Sadako, who was a victim of cancer caused by radiation poisoning which stemmed from the bombing of Hiroshima. She was one of the many victims who have been somewhat forgotten because they died well after the actual bombing. In Sadako’s case, she died a decade later.
Sadako followed Japanese wisdom that claimed folding a thousand cranes would ensure longevity, but died before she was finished doing so, Marshall-Work said. Her classmates finished her work for her, and there is now a statue in honor of Sadako at Peace Park in Hiroshima.
The paper crane has become an international symbol of peace, Marshall-Work said, and she will be taking a thousand paper cranes to Hiroshima on Peace Day to place at Sadako’s statue.
Aside from bringing back the research for her musical, she will also bring information she intends to share with people at home in her community.
"I’ll do some presentations at churches or civic groups," she said. "I’ll talk about the trip, but it will depend on where I’m talking. If I’m talking at a church, I would get more into issues I learned on this trip, like what it really means to have a nuclear bomb go off, both the long-term and short-term effects."