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2014 June 11 - 17 TOP3 [PEACE]

Godzilla, the warning to still war-addicted humans: former starring actor

Akahata Sunday edition

Takarada Akira, an actor starring in the first of the “Godzilla” series, was interviewed for the Akahata Sunday edition on June 15. He said that the storyline was that a U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion 60 years ago had woken Godzilla out of a deep and peaceful sleep, and that the awakening of this monster is, so to speak, a warning to humans who had developed nuclear weapons.

Only in nine years after the end of WWII, the U.S. conducted an H-bomb test at the Bikini Atoll. The actor stated that the movie Godzilla had a kind of message of criticism against a nuclear arms race.

At the age of eleven, Takarada himself barely escaped with his life from Manchuria (Northeast China). He experienced firsthand the miseries of war.

Now that the majority of people have no understanding of war and that many Dietmembers were the generation born after the war, he expressed concern about the rightward shift in Japan’s politics.

“I feel something ugly is just around the corner. In Japan, I see the move going ahead with the country’s use of the right to collective self-defense. I want people to think over again why Godzilla arose from sleep 60 years ago and what he warned of,” said the seasoned star.

Japan experienced three nuclear threats - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Bikini tragedy in 1954, and the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011.

“I want nuclear weapons to be eliminated, and the same for war,” Takarada said, adding, “We have Article 9 which we can proudly proclaim to the world. We should stand firm in defending this Article, the spirit of true pacifism.”