bikiniday

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Participation in anti-nuclear Bikini Day action called for

The Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) has issued a call for participation in the 2006 Bikini Day events as a springboard for the new international signature campaign "For the Swift Abolition of Nuclear Weapons" and to make a major leap in the anti-nuclear movement toward the U.N. General Assembly in autumn.

It stated that last year's Bikini Day events became a starting point of various activities marking the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including sending more than 800 Gensuikyo delegates to New York on the occasion of the NPT Conference in May and the World Conference against A & H Bombs in August with a record number of participants attending.

The appeal calls for the 3-day Bikini Day events, starting on February 27 in Shizuoka Prefecture, to be a stage where international cooperation and solidarity will develop for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Bikini Day commemorates the U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. Japanese tuna fishing boat Lucky Dragon #5 was showered with radioactive fallout from the explosion. Kuboyama Aikichi, one of the crew members who died after being exposed to radiation, said as his last words, "Let me be the last nuclear bomb victim."
- Akahata, February 4, 2006