My Wife Attends State Funeral for Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on My Behalf (1)
Published on January 31, 2025
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passed away aged 100 on December 29, 2024.
I received an invitation to attend the state funeral with my wife Kazuyo at the National Cathedral in Washington on January 9. But due to a scheduling conflict, I decided to send her to the service on my behalf, accompanied by our son Kohei.
I have more than 40 years of experience of working with Mr. Carter, the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. I worked as a middleman to help mediate a meeting between him and then North Korean President Kim Il-Sung in June 1994.
The world was on the brink of a nuclear showdown when he flew into Pyongyang for the first visit to North Korea by a former or sitting U.S. president. Experts believe the Carter-Kim meeting narrowly averted a war between the U.S. and North Korea, which could have cost millions of lives, and led to a period of greater engagement between Pyongyang and the West.
I also worked closely with the late president in connection with the activities of the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA). He established SAA in 1986 with my late father Ryoichi Sasakawa and Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug to improve the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in Africa in the wake of the devastating famine that ravaged the Horn of Africa in 1984/85.
(To be continued)
