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Today, The Nagasaki Peace Messengers visited UNI Global Union for the 10th year in a row. Their visit came before going to the United Nations in Geneva to present a petition of more than 130,000 signatures collected in the last year demanding nuclear disarmament. 

Masaki Koyanagi, from Nagasaki, will make a historic first-ever peace messenger speech to the UN plenary on nuclear disarmament. Earlier this year Koyanagi also attended and spoke at the “Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons” in Mexico.

Overall the peace messengers have now collected over a million signatures calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.

Welcoming the peace messengers, UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings, sent a message of support, saying, “Starting from a single school in Nagasaki and spreading across Japan, you bring a powerful message that deserves to be listened to and respected. We ask that you continue to come and bring the message to as many of the world’s population as you can. We need to continue to break through for peace, it’s our future, it’s our choice, let’s rid the world of nuclear weapons.”

“The theme of nuclear disarmament is something we have focused on from our World Conference in Nagasaki in 2010, to Cape Town in 2014, and UNI is now a member of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons."

The peace messengers included hibakusha, second and third generation family members who remember this catastrophe in order that it should not be repeated. 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 over 75 and their number is naturally dwindling. Fortunately Japan’s younger generation have shown a willingness to remember the hibakusha’s suffering, aiming that history does not repeat itself.

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.

UNI Global Union has a warm friendship and profound link with the people of Nagasaki – the city where UNI held its World Congress in November 2010. UNI’s Breaking Through plan supports the global nuclear disarmament movement and UNI is a member of ICAN, the International Campaign Against Nuclear Arms.

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. UNI salutes the spirit of the Japanese people who once again have managed to rebuild their lives and shown true resilience.