September 21st of every year is the International Day of Peace. This holiday was decided by the United Nations in 1981. The first year of the International Day of Peace was very interesting. The theme was that people have a right to live in peace. The second year had a theme that the earth needs to develop a culture of peace. In 1996, the International Day of Peace was very important to bring peace between Northern Ireland and England. They had been at war for many years, but this holiday made it possible for the two countries to talk and to develop a peaceful relationship.

Every year since 1981, the United Nations, and many countries around the world have been better able to think about, and to create ways to develop peaceful relationships. This is not easy. Peace is not a popular topic for many countries. Peace takes a long time to build. It needs trust. It needs respect between people. It needs a little luck. It needs us to be continually interested in making peace with other people.

Japan has been a model of peace for the world. The Japanese government, the people of Japan, the culture of Japan, and the environment of Japan are considered by people all over the world to be champions of peace. Of course, every country has trouble, and no place is perfect, but Japan is a very peaceful place to live. Japan is safe. Japan is clean. Japan has a culture of peace. The modern history of Japan is to support peace, to build good relationships with people all over the world, and to make our earth a better place to be.

But peace is not free. Peace is very expensive. We have learned from our history books that war is dangerous, terrible, and takes everything from us. We have learned that violence is not a good solution to the problems that come between different cultures and countries. We now know that we need to talk with each other and communicate with people around the world. We need to agree that life is important. We need to agree that we should cooperate with each other. We need to teach the next generations about history so that our countries do not make mistakes again. It is a lot of work to keep peace.

We are stronger today than we were before. In 2017, there were 562 International Day of Peace events around the world. This is an incredible thing. It means that there is an international culture of peace and cooperation between many people from many different countries. We have ways to communicate and to talk. We have newspapers, television, Internet, and events that we can use to talk about and to promote peace.

Although we can feel worried that our peace will be broken by dangerous words from the American president or from the leader of North Korea, we must never give up on peace. Dangerous men like these will come, and they will go. But we must remain strong in our purpose to promote peace, and to live peacefully with people around us.

Some people think that to promote peace is to be weak. But many people believe that to promote peace needs us to be strong. It is easy to be violent. It is hard work to continually communicate and work to find cooperation. We only have one planet. We have many cultures and languages, but we share the oceans between our nations. We share hope for a good future. We share hope for a good life. We share hope that we can give a good planet to the kids who come in the future. I hope that we have many more years of International Peace.