Your Excellency Yukio Hatoyama!
We are honored to be here on the mission of presenting the Medal «The Value of Peace» named after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to an outstanding statesman, His Excellency Yukio Hatoyama.
On the basis of their own ideals and firm convictions, the Rosenberg family contributed significantly to averting a nuclear catastrophe — a war between the USA and the USSR — by paying for their beliefs with their lives, without betraying them either in court or before the execution of the sentence. Leading intellectuals from the United States, the USSR, Asia and Europe stood up for them.
And it was precisely that campaign, which has brought together people of goodwill from all cultures, that led to the phenomenon of the international peace movement. With their feat, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg united two great ideas, two highest standards, which should be inherent to every person and every nation: the desire for peace and the willingness to part with life in the name of peace. It is our deep conviction that right now there is an urgent need to unite people on the basis of these ideals and try to protect peace in the name of future generations.
Your Excellency Yukio Hatoyama!
Both as the Prime Minister of Japan and as a public figure, you have always been guided by the Value of Peace, friendship between peoples, mutual enrichment of cultures and good neighborliness. Your personal contribution and, through you, the contribution of the entire Japanese people to the harmonization of good neighborly relations between peoples, to the well-being and peace throughout the Indo-Pacific region is truly invaluable.
Your Excellency, you have a special connection with Russia. In 1991, you became one of the founders of the Association of Members of Parliament from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) «For Friendship between Japan and the USSR», and you ran for a number of years the Japan-Russia Society. The Value of Peace is fundamental and of a cornerstone nature for the culture of Russian peoples.
Despite the absence of a peace treaty between our countries, despite, often opposing, political lines and confrontation during the Cold War, even in those decades, Russian culture – Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Russian and Soviet classical music – were the property of the cultural development of the Japanese people, and Akira Kurosawa’s films, many works of Japanese culture, music, and literature became a factor of cultural development of the Russian and all Soviet peoples. The same is ongoing today. The festival of Russian culture in Japan is an event of huge scale and significance. We are confident that, in spite of everything, warm and trusting relationships between the Russian and Japanese peoples, the mutual enrichment of our national cultures will remain, and the Value of Peace will become their strong foundation.
Your Excellency Yukio Hatoyama!
Allow us to present you with a public award the Medal «The Value of Peace» named after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg with the wording «For Outstanding Contribution to Understanding the Eternal Value of Good Neighborly Coexistence and the Noble Rapprochement of Cultures in Mutual Respect».
