Japan Press Weekly

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2009 February 4 - 10 [US FORCES]

Otaru citizens reject U.S. ship visit

About 100 citizens of Otaru City in Hokkaido on February 5 held a rally in protest against the arrival at Otaru Port of the U.S. guided missile destroyer Fitzgerald.

At the rally, sponsored by the Otaru Liaison Council against U.S. Warships’ Port Calls, Aoyagi Kaoru, who chairs the council and the city’s labor union federation, criticized the port call, saying that the ship is bloody after having committed murders across the world.

Hanaoka Yuriko, Japanese Communist Party member of the Hokkaido Prefectural Assembly, shouted, “Any war vessel’s visit to a city with a non-nuclear declaration as well as to Japan with its war-renouncing Article 9 in its Constitution cannot be accepted.”

A message for peace was sent to the rally from the Nagasaki Council against A and H Bombs fighting against the port call of the Blue Ridge, the flag ship of the U.S. 7th Fleet, to Nagasaki Port.