High school students act against Iraq war

A group of about 60 high school students gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on March 31 and handed to the embassy 1,012 messages against the Iraq war which they collected in less than one month.

They also handed over the appeal for peace adopted by the national peace conference of high school students held on March 21.

Waida Yuji from Saitama Prefecture said, "High school students have no voting rights. But we are opposed to the war, and we feel it even stronger now that the war has started."

College students in Tokyo on the same day collected signatures calling for the war to be stopped, and later they brought them to the U.S. Embassy. A 22-year-old who had studied in France said, "Not that we hate Americans but that we hate the war taking the lives of people."

Tachiyama Keisuke who is back from Canada where he studies is angry at Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro for promptly supporting the war. He said, "Japan, the victim of nuclear weapons in the past war, should be the first to oppose the war."

A woman part-time teacher at a primary school said, "Man is endowed with the power of speech. Anything can be resolved without resorting to war." (end)