Students in Nagasaki Make Candles for Memorial

Third and fourth grade students at Oonokiba Elementary School in Minamishimabara, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, are making candles for a memorial event. Each June 3rd, the Unzen Disaster Memorial Museum holds a candlelight vigil to remember the 43 people who died in the 1991 Unzen-Fugen volcanic eruption and pyroclastic flow. This year marks the twentieth time the museum has asked local schools to help create candles for the event.

About 2000 candles will be made with help from roughly 80 facilities including 20 elementary schools. Oonokiba Elementary was partially destroyed by a pyroclastic flow three months after the initial eruption, and students studied in temporary classrooms until 2000. Many current students have family members who experienced the disaster firsthand.

Students melted wax into cartons, then cooled and decorated the resulting candles with crayons. Some children drew scenes of the eruption, while others depicted details remembered from family stories, like cattle lost in the flow.

One third-grader included a gingko tree that sprouted from the burned grounds of the old school. The museum continues to seek ways to pass on the memory of the disaster to future generations.