Dr Erik Somers of NIOD (Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands) visited Grassroots House in March 2001. He made an exhibition on the history of Japan, the Netherlands and Indonesia. He also gave a lecture on the importance of respecting different cultures at a local elementary school and was given one thousand paper cranes folded by the children.

There also appeared an article about Erik Somers’ visit in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun, “In the summer of the new century: beyond nationalism”. The article talks about peace museums as places where war memory is handed down from generation to generation: sharing local war memory with one another.  A comment from Professor Ikuro Anzai on peace museums: It is important for visitors to think what they can do for peace and inform people in the world of their ideas using the internet.

Kazuyo Yamane, Erik Somers and Shigeo Nishimori (then director of Grassroots House) appear in the photograph.