Japan Press Weekly

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2017 April 26 - May 9 [PEACE]

Nationwide peace march bound for Hiroshima/Nagasaki starts

The 2017 National Peace March calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons started on May 6, bound for the atomic bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Peace marchers from eleven different starting points nationwide will walk towards the destinations at which they are scheduled to arrive in early August.

Participants in the Tokyo-Hiroshima course left Tokyo’s Yumenoshima Park and walked while enthusiastically chanting, “No, nuclear weapons! Yes, N-ban treaty!”

In a ceremony held prior to the departure, representative of the Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) Taka Hiroshi said, “Let us make this year the turning point for the establishment of a world free from nuclear weapons!”

U.S. Tufts University student Kayla Worley, 19, will take part in this year’s international youth relay march. She will walk westward to Shizuoka Prefecture through Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, approximately 150 kilometers. She expressed her hope that many more Americans will follow the example set by the anti-nuke marchers before long.

Tanaka Terumi, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) in looking back on the first UN conference held in March at the UN Headquarters negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty said, “Hibakusha and social movement power has led the UN talks to success.” He added, “I’d like to work even harder to increase the Hibakusha-proposed international signature drive for the elimination of nuclear arms in order to put pressure on nuclear weapons states.”

Marchers who will walk all the way to Hiroshima or to Nagasaki from each point of departure, including those who will walk the entire Tokyo/Hiroshima route, and members of a Japanese citizens’ delegation to the second round of the antinuke UN conference slated for June and early July expressed their determination to fight to the finish. Ieshima Masashi of a Tokyo Hibakusha group, the Tokyo Federation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Toyukai), said he will devote himself wholeheartedly to further promote the Hibakusha’s signature camapaign.

Past related article:
> Hiroshima welcomes 2016 nationwide anti-nuke peace marchers [August 5, 2016]
> Calling on all state governments to conclude NWC, annual antinuke march begins [May 7, 2016]