News

The Nagasaki Peace Messengers were making their eighth annual visit to UNI Global Union before presenting to the United Nations a record breaking petition of more than 155,000 signatures collected in Japan in the last year demanding nuclear disarmament.



Welcoming the peace messengers, Philip Jennings, UNI Global Union General Secretary said, “It is an honour for UNI to once again receive these students who are campaigning for a world without nuclear weapons. We share your dreams and objectives. We support the nuclear disarmament campaign and like you are totally committed to it. There are still an estimated 19,000 nuclear weapons and the risk of their use is ever present either by accident or design. The peace messengers here today include hibakusha, second, third and even fourth generation family members who remember this catastrophe in order that it should not be repeated. We are proud of their action and stand with them.”

The students, who included two from Brazil who gave testimony to bomb survivors living there, spoke with emotion and dignity about the experiences of the hibakusha and their reasons for becoming peace messengers.



Yuki Kawasaki told how her great grandfather had travelled from his home 100 kilometres from Hiroshima after the bomb had been dropped to bury the dead and give comfort to the dying. He suffered ill health because of the radiation. Yuki’s message is simple, “No more war.”



Hirona Katayama repeated the message of a bomb survivor she met when she was in kindergarten: “if all people hope and act to make the world a peaceful place, we can make it a reality.”



Yuna Aihara also had a message from one of the hibakusha who had told her: “You are the last generation who can directly hear about the experiences of the atomic bomb. We must hand over the baton to you.”



All the peace messengers spoke about their strong sense of responsibility for keeping this message of peace alive. The average age of the atomic bomb survivors is now 77.



UNI Global Union has a warm friendship and profound links with the people of Nagasaki – the city where it held its World Congress in November 2010. UNI’s Breaking Through plan supports the global nuclear disarmament movement.



Just four months after UNI’s Nagasaki World Congress, Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukishima. Once again the world was presented with the human consequences of a nuclear catastrophe The earthquake and tsunami claimed more that 20,000 lives and thousands more were made homeless.



Some 70,000 Japanese died instantly when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 1945, and three days later another 75,000 died when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.



The peace messengers are working to ensure that Nagasaki is the last ever city subjected to the atomic bomb. They are the last generation who will hear first hand the voices of the survivors.