Japan Press Weekly

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2015 April 29 - May 12 [PEACE]

3-month Peace March leaves for Hiroshima/Nagasaki

The annual nationwide Peace March started on May 6 with some marchers still brimming with excitement after attending NPT Review Conference-related events in NYC. The 3-month anti-nuclear weapons march will cover all 47 prefectures in Japan on eleven main routes and smaller routes, all heading for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The demonstrators will call on as many peace groups and individuals as possible to join in the walk.

They will visit all the local governments to ask for: cooperation in a petition calling for a total ban on nuclear arms; support for the 2015 World Conference against A and H Bombs; and the improvement in nuclear-free, peace administrative services. They will also ask these municipalities and their assemblies to adopt a resolution to put pressure on the central government to support the prohibition of all nuclear weapons.

Leading in advance of the other courses, the Hokkaido-Tokyo course marchers left the northernmost island of Rebun in Hokkaido. They will walk for three months to Tokyo. A few hours later, the Tokyo-Hiroshima/Nagasaki course departed from Yumenoshima Park in Tokyo with about 800 peace activists. Another 400 joined the parade at the border between Tokyo and the neighboring prefecture of Kanagawa on the following day and the Tokyo peace marchers passed the torch to the Kanagawa marchers outside the city hall closest to Tokyo.

A centerpiece of this year’s Peace March marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is “No Nukes! Challenge 70” in which young Japanese and foreign marchers will walk in relays on the Tokyo-Hiroshima/Nagasaki route.

Valtimore Fenis, 32, from the Philippines is the lead-off marcher in the “No Nukes! Challenge 70”. At the departing ceremony, he said, “I will walk for justice and a world without nuclear weapons.”

In the same ceremony, those who just returned from NYC actions reported on the atmosphere there and what they did in NYC. A person from a municipal workers’ union reported that about eight million signatures, including 6.33 million in the petition “Appeal for a Total Ban on Nuclear Weapons”, were submitted to the United Nations. A women’s rights activist said, “Grassroots movements in Japan are encouraging the international community and the UN in the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Young persons from Fukushima and Okinawa spoke in solidarity with the anti-nuclear weapons march participants, saying, “No! Nuclear power plants! No! U.S. military bases!”

Past related article:
> Nationwide anti-nuclear weapons peace march arrives in Hiroshima [August 5, 2014]
> 2014 nationwide anti-nuclear weapons peace march starts [May 8, 2014]