Annual peace march starts in Tokyo

A nationwide anti-nuclear peace march has begun.

On May 6, about 800 students, workers, women, people of faith, and A-bomb sufferers (Hibakusha) attended a ceremony in Tokyo to start up the march to the first A-bomb victim city of Hiroshima, a venue for the 2003 World Conference against A and H Bombs in August.

The peace marchers will be divided into 11 groups taking different routes covering all 47 prefectures in the next 3 months.

Speakers at the ceremony included Kang Han of Green Korea United, Buddhist Kitsu Hiromichi, and Tanaka Terumi, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A and H Bombs Sufferers Organizations.

After the ceremony, participants took their first step toward Hiroshima in front of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon #5), a tuna fishing boat which was exposed to fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific in 1954. (end)