|
|
|
| |
| |
News Archive |
LAST UPDATE
August 23, 2005
|
|
|
| August 13, 2005 |
Peace and Green Boat – 300 Japanese and 300 Koreans depart on Peace Boat’s 50th voyage |
|
| |
 |
| Participants spelt out “peace” in Korean and Japanese in candles the night before departure |
Peace Boat’s 50th voyage – a historic joint venture with Korea’s Green Foundation sailing under the name Peace and Green Boat – departed onboard MV Fujimaru from Tokyo’s Harumi port on August 13, 2005 on a two-week voyage of reconciliation, 60 years after the end of World War II.
Six hundred civilians from Japan and South Korea set sail together to visit South Korea, China, Okinawa and Nagasaki, and to reflect upon the history of World War Two and the colonialism and militarism which proceeded it. Looking back at this history, participants will explore ways to shape a much more peaceful community of East Asian peoples and states for the next 100 years and beyond, founded on principles of peace, respect for the environment and a strong, participatory civil society. Amid the heavy strain between Japan and its East Asian neighbours regarding history textbook revisionism, there is no more important time than now to undertake this regional voyage.
Wartime atrocities, revisionist history, hibakusha (victims of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), war orphans, and reparations are themes that still resonate to this day and will be addressed through workshops and lectures by specialist guest speakers from Korea, Japan and China. One highlight in port will be a protest at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to demand that the Japanese Government observe and protect Article Nine (the war-renouncing clause) of Japan’s constitution. Other special port activities include a visit to Nanjing in China to learn from survivors about the reality of the Nanjing Massacre, and a demonstration in Henoko, Okinawa against the construction of a new US airbase. |
site design imagesparkle.com
|
 |
| The Green Foundation of Korea’s poster for Peace and Green Boat |
Also onboard, in a programme planned together with anti-nuclear educator Dr. Kathleen Sullivan, are seven youth activists from the declared Nuclear Weapons States of the UK, France, the US, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India. The young people will hold symposiums and workshops in efforts to examine the effect of nuclear tensions on the region and address the potential of a nuclear free East Asia. They will be meeting with both Japanese and Korean hibakusha, and developing ideas for a new anti-nuclear campaign to be announced in a press conference in Nagasaki on August 29, 2005.
The night before sailing, the participants joined together in Tokyo’s Meiji Park to send a candle-lit message of peace and reconciliation. The message, spelt out in letters 40m x 70m, included the characters for “peace” in Korean and Japanese and a huge “9”. The “9”, highlighted the importance of Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution, which renounces war and the right to maintain armed forces, in peacebuilding in Asia after the end of the war and in conflict prevention today. It is also symbol for Asia that Japan will never again invade their countries. |
| |
|
|
|
