Japan Press Weekly

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2020 February 26 - March 3 [PEACE]

Memorial service held in front of Bikini tragedy victim's tomb

A memorial service took place on March 1 at a temple in Shizuoka's Yaizu City before the tomb of a crewmember of a Japanese fishing boat which was showered with radioactive fallout from a U.S. H-bomb test explosion 66 years ago conducted at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.

At Kotokuin Temple where the grave of Kuboyama Aikichi, chief radio operator of Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No.5) is located, people with different religious beliefs gave prayers for peace in a variety of ways, and ceremony attendees as well as antinuke activists made a commitment with each other to rid nuclear weapons from the world.

Yamamoto Yoshihiko, director of the peace organization operating the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall, said that he is certain that sympathy for all the victims who were victimized by H-bomb or N-bomb tests and devotion to anti-nuclear weapons movements will one day reward the regret and resentment of Kuboyama. Yamamoto also said he will continue to work to eradicate nuclear weapons development, possession, storage, and potential use from the world.

A message from Noguchi Kunikazu, a co-representative of the Organizing Committee of the World Conference against A and H Bombs was read out in the ceremony. It stated that no-nuke activists in Japan "will help to lead the peoples of the world and will fulfill their mission to open the door to the abolition of nuclear weapons".

Mayors of Yaizu, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki sent messages to Kuboyama's memorial service.

Past related article:
> 65 yrs. after US H-Bomb tragedy at Bikini Atoll, events held in Japan's Shizuoka [February 28 - March 2, 2019]