March 10&11, 2018
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2018 March 7 - 13 [SOCIAL ISSUES]
Participants in memorial ceremony for Tokyo Air Raid victims resolve to defend pacifist Constitution |
The indiscriminate U.S. carpet bombing of Tokyo’s downtown areas, including Taito, just before dawn on March 10, 1945 claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.
At the memorial service, Kawasugi Motonobu spoke on behalf of the organizing committee and said, “In order to prevent the horrors of war from happening again, we need to keep up efforts to defend the war-renouncing Constitution and have its influence felt worldwide.”
An 86-year-old air raid survivor Muraoka Nobuaki, who is a painter and professor emeritus at Srikov College of Art, Moscow National Academy, said, “The bombardment totally burnt down entier communities. It was the thoroughgoing act of barbarity.”
Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Kira Yoshiko gave a speech.
Kira referred to Prime Minister Abe’s ambition to revise the Constitution and said that what PM Abe intends to do is to add phrases legitimating the Self-Defense Forces which will have enhanced military capabilities that will include long-range cruise missiles. She expressed her determination to work even harder to pass on to future generations the current supreme law which was hammered out based on hard learned lessons from the war.
Citing the recent move toward a North Korea-U.S. summit meeting, Kira said that the government of Japan with its pacifist Constitution should play a role to ensure the success of the meeting.
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On the previous day, another annual memorial ceremony was held in front of a statue commemorating the Tokyo Air Raid victims in Tokyo’s Ueno. Japanese Communist Party Vice Chair Ichida Tadayoshi took part in the gathering.
Past related articles:
> Tokyo Air Raid survivors call for peace at memorial ceremony [March 10 & 11, 2017]
> Tokyoites demand building of facility to remember Tokyo air raids [March 10 & 11, 2016]
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