Japan Press Weekly

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2014 January 22 - 28 TOP3 [POLITICS]

LDP assemblyman: Crush JCP with power equivalent to A & H bombs

A ruling Liberal Democratic Party member of the Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly on January 23 referred to atomic and hydrogen bombs to call on people to vote against a Japanese Communist Party candidate in the coming gubernatorial election. Nagasaki is one of the only two cities bombed with nuclear weapons in the world.

Miyauchi Yukio, a former speaker of the prefectural assembly, on the evening of that day attended a meeting to encourage an incumbent candidate running in the February 2 gubernatorial race. The election is a head-on clash between the incumbent governor backed by the LDP and Komei parties and JCP prefectural committee secretary Haraguchi Toshihiko.

In his campaign speech, Miyauchi said, “Let’s win an outright victory over the JCP by crushing it with the power equivalent to atomic and hydrogen bombs.”

The following day, the JCP prefectural committee submitted a letter of protest to the LDP prefectural chapter, demanding that Miyauchi retract his remark. The Sasebo City Council against A and H Bombs and a group of A-bomb survivors of Nagasaki also urged Miyauchi to apologize to them for his thoughtless words and resign as an assemblyperson immediately.

Yamada Hirotami, the secretary of the Nagasaki council of A-bomb sufferers, said, “Miyauchi’s remark is thoughtless but shows what he really thinks. I shudder to think that such a person once served as speaker of the prefectural assembly.”