How many victims do you want to see before admitting your mistake, Mr. Prime Minister?

On December 20 and 21, many anti-war events organized by young people took place throughout the nation.

Hokkaido
In Sapporo City and Asahikawa City, the home of Self-Defense Forces units that will be dispatched to Iraq, workers, citizens, and high school students took part in rallies in opposition to the SDF dispatch to Iraq.

About 2,000 people joined the Sapporo Rally and about 1,100 people were in the Asahikawa Rally. Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Kami Tomoko spoke in solidarity at the Sapporo Rally.

A 21-year-old women and her 19-year-old brother arrived in Sapporo after a three-hour train-ride to join the rally with a banner that read "Let's shift from a selfish world to a sharing world."

Osaka
In Osaka, 250 high school students organized a march and shouted, "We don't want war." They walked five kilometers in a demonstration calling for opposition to the SDF dispatch to Iraq with placards, balloons, and musical instruments in their hands. A sign that read, "How many victims do you want to see before admitting your mistake, Mr. Prime Minister?" caught eyes of passers-by. A high school student on the soapbox shouted, "Everybody has a right to dream and be happy but war deprives us of that."

Tokyo
In Adachi Ward, the local branch of the Democratic Youth League of Japan and young JCP supporters participated in a campaign to collect signatures in opposition to the SDF dispatch. A 23-year-old man who proposed this campaign said, "School hadn't taught us the pain of war, but we don't want SDF personnel who are about our age to go abroad to kill or to be killed."

Members of trade unions, democratic organizations, and the JCP collected signatures in opposition to the SDF dispatch to Iraq in a streets of Kodaira City where an SDF base is located. When one of the members was speaking through a microphone, a 19-year-old construction worker came up to them and said, "I also want to make an anti-dispatch action," and signed his name. (end)