Second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda made his historic declaration calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons on September 8, 1957, at a meeting of 50,000 members of the Soka Gakkai youth division at Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama, Japan. In his address he declared: "Although a movement calling for a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons has arisen around the world, it is my wish to go further, to attack the problem at its root. I want to expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons." Toda denounced nuclear weapons as the embodiment of absolute evil and believed that their use must be condemned, not from the standpoint of ideology, nationality or ethnic identity but from the universal dimension of humanity and our inalienable right to live. His appeal to young people to take up this challenge stands today as the starting point for the global peace activities of the SGI.
To read the declaration, visit: www.joseitoda.org/vision/declaration/