Humankind has waged 5000 wars against one another in the past 3000 years. We are now equipped with nuclear weapons, in numbers great enough to destroy the earth a dozen times, and with chemical and biological weapons that can exterminate humankind tens of thousands of times.

The sadness of humanity is that the control and use of these technologies lie with those who are not spiritually aware and that the incisive minds of thousands of scientists are used for the apish purposes of developing these kinds of weapons.

Capitalism and communism are both insufficient, in the sense that they both have used limited natural resources to destroy lives on earth and to support the interests of the military-industrial complex.

We now have come to realize that evil is neither in science nor civilization, but that humankind is the problem.

Living on and with limited natural resources, we have to learn to appreciate the meaning of co-existence. When we see how much we have done to destroy mother earth, we realize there is no winner in any war. War defeats all mankind. We are also learning that a war is not the only way to lead mankind to extinction.

Now is the time when people must jump from a culture of war into a culture of peace. Your project to create Departments and Ministries of Peace around the world will open the door to such a culture of peace.

I would like to work with you, people in every country of the world, and especially with the members of JUMP, Japan United for Ministry of Peace, to promote this movement. I will put my effort into the establishment of a Ministry of Peace in Japan.

Let us turn all instruments of war into musical instruments. Let us turn all military bases into flower gardens. Let us strew flowers in every heart. Let us make festivities, not war.

* Shokichi Kina, Okinawan folk singer, composer, and peace activist, was elected in 2004 to the Japanese parliament’s House of Councillors under the Minshuto (Democratic Party) banner.