The 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding

Your Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, President of the Philippines, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is indeed a great honour and privilege for me to have been selected as this year’s recipient of the world-renowned Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding.

First of all, I should like to express my heartfelt gratitude and deepest appreciation to the members of the Foundation and to all of you gathered here today. I should especially like to offer my warm congratulations to the other award honorees.

I was exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. At the time I was in my third year of junior high school. I miraculously escaped death, although I suffered for some time from the after effects of nuclear exposure. This experience—feeling firsthand the suffering and devastation caused by war—motivated me to create my artistic works in the pursuit of lasting peace.

In 1962, I was awarded a UNESCO Fellowship, which I used to study European Art. Later on, I had the pleasure of expressing my gratitude to UNESCO by providing 100 Hirayama Silk Road Fellowships for Young Scholars over a period of 10 years. As Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO, I also made humble efforts to safeguard the Angkor Monuments in Cambodia and the Dunhuang Grottoes in China. Currently, I am engaged in the preservation of artistic works of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and of the Koguryo Tombs’ Mural Paintings in D.P.R. Korea.

Through our shared efforts to preserve outstanding cultural properties for future generations and to strengthen cultural exchanges among the world’s people, I firmly believe that together we can promote a culture of peace and mutual understanding. To help achieve this goal, I have been advocating the “Red Cross Spirit for Cultural Heritage” and joint activities “to promote peace through culture.”

This highly prestigious Award encourages me to continue my work dedicated to the cause of peace.

In closing, let me express once again my profound sense of appreciation for having received this award. I should also like to express my great respect for the late President Magsaysay, in whose memory these awards were established. Finally, please allow me to wish further prosperity and wellbeing to all those gathered here today and to the people of the Philippines, under the capable leadership of your President.

Thank you very much.