Japan Press Weekly

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2014 September 10 - 16 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

National Elderly Congress: Stop move to become a war-fighting nation

The 28th National Congress of Elderly took place on September 12 and 13 in Toyama City with about 5,200 people participating from across the country. Participants resolved to block Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s government move to turn Japan into a war-fighting nation.

In the keynote speech, Kanegae Masashi, secretary general of the organizing committee, criticized the Abe Cabinet for deciding in July to allow the state to exercise the right to collective self-defense.

On the first day, 40 workshops and related events were held. Murashige Mitsuaki, 75, from Nagano Prefecture, participated in a meeting to exchange efforts to protest the construction of a new U.S. military base in Okinawa Prefecture. Recalling that he had run around in a sea of flames during the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10, 1945, Murashige said, “It’s outrageous that PM Abe is trying to downplay Japan’s use of the collective self-defense right. I saw with my own eyes the horrors of war.”

At a plenary session on the second day, a representative from Okinawa, Uchimura Toshio, called on participants to support the candidacy of Onaga Takeshi in November’s Okinawa gubernatorial race, the only candidate strongly opposing the U.S. base construction.

In conclusion, the congress unanimously adopted a resolution calling to strengthen and increase the movements to thwart the Abe administration’s plans to drastically weaken social welfare programs as well as to change Japan into a nation that can wage wars abroad.