Anti-nuclear movement to increase efforts to make 2005 a milestone toward a world without nuclear weapons or war

The Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) at its national board meeting from February 7-8 in Tokyo discussed ways to increase the anti-nuclear efforts to make year 2005 - the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a turning point toward a world free of nuclear weapons or war.

The action plan was proposed by Takakusagi Hiroshi, Gensuikyo secretary general. Emphasizing the danger of U.S. unilateralism and its preemptive nuclear attack policy as well as the Japanese government's subservience to the U.S. Bush administration, he called for a wider movement to have nuclear weapons countries fulfill the promise they made at the 2000 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference to "eliminate their nuclear arsenals". Takakusagi said that the Japanese movement has an important role to play because Japan is the one and only A-bombed country with the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

The representatives confirmed that they will promote a new signature-collecting campaign calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and work on the coming summer's World Conference against A and H Bombs.

The movement's immediate task is to bring a success to the March 1st Bikini Day events marking the 50th anniversary of the contamination of a Japanese tuna fishing boat and its crew members showered with radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion in the South Pacific. (end)