Japan Press Weekly

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2024 June 19 - 25 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Rally seeking to establish air-raid victims relief law takes place

Calling for the enactment of legislation that will provide compensation and relief to civilian victims of U.S. air raids during WWII, a rally took place on June 21 in the House of Representatives members’ office building.

Japanese Communist Party lawmakers Kasai Akira, Miyamoto Toru, Kira Yoshiko, and Yamazoe Taku, together with other members of a cross-party lawmakers’ group working to meet the air-raid victims’ demand, joined the rally hosted by the national association of air-raid victims’ groups.

Parliamentarians’ group head Hirasawa Katsuei (Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker), apologized for the failure to submit the group-sponsored legislation to the last ordinary Diet session. He said that he will make every effort to realize the enactment of the law to relieve air-raid victims in the next extraordinary session of the Diet.

An 85-year-old participant, An’no Teruko, who lost her left leg in an air strike in Kagoshima Prefecture, expressed her hope for the creation of the law without delay. Co-representative of the national association Yoshida Yutaka said that he is frustrated that 79 years after the end of the war, no government program has been established to aid the civilian victims of air raids.

The cross-party parliamentarians’ group approved its legislative bill in October 2020. However, the group has yet to be able to propose the bill to the Diet on the grounds that the LDP has been slow in forming an intraparty consensus on the bill.

Past related article:
> Enactment of law to relieve civilian victims of US air raids during WWII is pressing need [March 10, 2022]