Mira Nakashima Dedicates Pennswood Village International Peace Pole

MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, PA — Mira Nakashima and her husband, Jonathon Yarnall were featured speakers at Pennswood Village in Newtown at the recent dedication of Pennswood’s new Peace Pole.

Earlier this year, President Biden purchased a one-of-a-kind walnut table from Nakashima Woodworkers in New Hope as a Presidential gift to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his visit to the United States. The State Dinner at the White House on April 11 honoring Japan’s Prime Minister was attended by the designer of the table, Mira Nakashima and her husband, Jonathon Yarnall.

It has been quite a journey. Eighty-two years ago, Mira Nakashima was locked up in an internment camp.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an Executive Order which forced the relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to military-run internment camps. Six-weeks-old Mira Nakashima and her parents were among those Japanese American families sent to Hunt, Idaho. Mira’s father, George Nakashima, had previously worked on a project in India in 1937 for Quaker architect Antonin Raymond, and in 1943 Raymond successfully sponsored Nakashima and his family to be released from the camp to work on Raymond’s chicken farm in New Hope, PA .

George Nakashima soon set up his small woodworking shop, prospered, and urged Mira to follow in his footsteps (although, she says, he “fired” her many times). She got her Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard and a Master's degree in Architecture from Waseda University in Tokyo. After her father’s death in 1990, Mira took over the furniture making business, continuing to produce his designs as well as her own.

Mira’s philosophy is summed up in this statement: “Harvest materials sustainably and replant as many trees as possible. Know and respect the woods local to your area and use them whenever possible…Do not imitate forms but create your own. Remember that less is more; don’t complicate things just to be different.

Nakashima Woodworkers furniture has become world-famous. One of George Nakashima’s dreams was the creation of an Altar of Peace for every continent after he had found a twelve ton three hundred year old dying Black Walnut tree in California. He considered it to be a “once in a lifetime” opportunity. He contacted his friend, Steven Rockefeller, to help raise funds for the project, and they created the Nakashima Foundation for Peace. Each Altar of Peace was to be massive -- approximately 14 feet by 12 feet, 3 inches thick, and weigh approximately one ton. Altars for Peace have now been built and placed in New York City, Moscow, Russia and Pondicherry, India.

The new Pennswood Village Peace Pole dedicated by Mira Nakashima is a six-sided cedar pole with plaques of “May Peace Prevail On Earth” in 12 languages: French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, German, Ukrainian, Italian, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, and English. It replaces the older Peace Pole of three languages first dedicated at Pennswood Village in 2001.

The idea of the Peace Pole began in Japan in 1955 where the first Peace Pole was constructed in 1983. The Peace Pole symbolizes the wish “for peace in the world for all children everywhere,” that there will never again be a Nagasaki or a Hiroshima or a Pearl Harbor.

There is now a vast network of more than 230,000 peace poles that have been dedicated in over 200 countries. The Peace Poles are made of wood, limestone, copper, plastic, and stainless steel. There are Peace Poles at the north magnetic pole, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Egyptian Pyramids in Giza, and the Aika Shrine in Iwama, Japan. One of the world's largest peace poles, at 52 feet, is in Janesville, Wisconsin, and a former grain elevator in Minneapolis is painted as a gigantic peace pole.

In her remarks at the Pennswood Village Peace Pole dedication Mira Nakashima shared her wish that these world-wide Peace Poles will soon be joined by four more Nakashima Altars of Peace on the remaining four continents.

The Pennswood program also included music by the Pennswood Chorale, the Pennswood Singers, and remarks by Dan Murray, Executive Director of Pennswood Village, Kay Marik, and Bob Anderson. In closing, everyone present said in unison: "We rededicate ourselves to peace in the world for all children everywhere."