Japan Press Weekly

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2012 February 29 - March 6 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Religious leaders unite to work to end nuclear power generation

Religious leaders published an appeal calling for cooperation of people of faith to create a society without nuclear power generation on February 29 during an annual peace event to commemorate the tragedy caused by the 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

This was published at a meeting hosted by the Religious Council for Peace as part of the anti-nuclear Bikini Day events in Shizuoka Prefecture. About 60 Buddhists and Christians took part in the meeting.

From disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture, Jodo-shu Buddhist sect monk Hayakawa Tokuo said that as a Buddhist, he wants to act to prevent another nuclear accident from occurring for the sake of those who lost their lives in the quake and tsunami as well as for future generations.

Minister Naito Shingo from the Lutheran Church in Chiba Prefecture reported on his effort to work for the decommissioning of the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka, located at the epicenter of a projected major earthquake.

For 48 years on March 1, the Religious Council for Peace has hosted a memorial service for Kuboyama Aikichi, radio operator of tuna fishing boart Daigo Fukuryu Maru (5th Lucky Dragon) who was exposed to radiation from the U.S. bomb test at Bikini Atoll and who died six months later.