May 7, 2022

The Tokyo-Hiroshima route of this year's nationwide antinuke peace march started on May 6 with about 300 peace marchers, including Hibakusha, participating.

At the kick-off rally held at Yumenoshima Park in Tokyo, Taka Hiroshi, a representative director of the Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo), delivered a greeting address. Representatives of Hibakusha organizations and of peace groups gave speeches in solidarity.

Taka said, "Let us make this year's peace march the opportunity to increase our voices calling for nations to abide by the UN Charter and international law as well as to further increase the movement to denounce Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

He continued to say, "Of particular importance to us is to block Japan's further militarization and moves toward constitutional revision. To form an overwhelming majority of the general public calling on Japan to participate in the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is also important. The Liberal Democratic Party, the Komei party, and the 'Nippon Ishin no Kai' party are using the Ukraine crisis as an excuse to enable Japan to possess an 'enemy-strike capability'. These political parties are even intending to introduce a 'nuclear sharing' arrangement to be fully integrated in a Japan-U.S. joint war system. We must not let them take this path, the path to ruin."

Citing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin's nuclear threats, and North Korea's nuclear tests, Okuyama Shuhei of the "Daigo Fukuryu Maru" Peace Association pointed out that the United States repeatedly conducts subcritical nuclear experiments. He said, "We should criticize Russia's invasion of course. At the same time, it is necessary for the international community to push all the other nuclear-weapons states to abandon their nuclear arms."

Tanaka Terumi of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo), who just turned 90 years old a week ago, said, "I'm happy to be able to join in the peace march again." He said that if Russia uses a nuclear weapon, the consequence will be disastrous, and stressed, "We must stop that from happening!"

Ieshima Masashi of the Tokyo Federation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Toyukai) said, "It is said that Russia's strategic nuclear weapons can annihilate the area within a 5-kilometers radius. That is already too much for us, atomic-bomb survivors, to even contemplate the consequences."