Takeshi Araki on:
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was the mayor of
was the mayor of Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
from 1975 to 1991.
In April 1947, he was elected as member of the Hiroshima city council
A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...
, and as member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Assembly in 1951.
Araki was elected mayor of Hiroshima in 1975. In 1976, he protested the air show held in Texas, in which the US Air Force held an imitation of the atomic attack on Hiroshima in the form of a mushroom cloud in the desert, and in 1977 protested to the Japanese government about the possibility of further such reenactments. As a mayor, Araki approached the US government to work for nuclear disarmament. On November 26, 1976, he held a meeting in Washington D.C., with head of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) was an independent agency of the United States government that existed from 1961 to 1999. Its mission was to strengthen United States national security by "formulating, advocating, negotiating, ...
Fred Ikle
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, a meeting attended also by mayor Yoshitake Morotani of Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...
with the purpose of promoting US policy of nuclear disarmament. On November 30, the two mayors met US Permanent Representative to the UN William Scranton
William Warren Scranton (July 19, 1917 – July 28, 2013) was an American Republican Party politician and diplomat. Scranton served as the 38th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967, and as United States Ambassador to the United Nations f ...
and conveyed the same message. The two mayors met UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim (; 21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for th ...
on December 3. Araki later described his meeting with Waldheim as follows:
There we, as survivors, living witnesses, testified the true facts of our atomic bomb experiences, and we strongly appealed for the total abolition of nuclear weapons and the renunciation of war. To this appeal of ours, both Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and President H.S. Amerasinghe of the General Assembly, representing the United Nations, respectively emphasized that the sufferings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are sufferings to be shared by the whole of mankind, and that a new concept of world order should be built from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They deeply sympathized with us, expressing their earnest desire to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.In May 1978, spoke at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly, dealing with disarmament, and was the first Mayor of Hiroshima to appear at an official UN session. Being a
hibakusha
''Hibakusha'' ( or ; ja, 被爆者 or ; "person affected by a bomb" or "person affected by exposure o radioactivity) is a word of Japanese origin generally designating the people affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at th ...
himself, he helped found the organization Mayors for Peace
Mayors for Peace is an international organization of cities dedicated to the promotion of peace that was established in 1982 at the initiative of then Mayor of Hiroshima Takeshi Araki, in response to the deaths of around 140,000 people due to the ...
in 1982. He also concluded a number of Sister City
A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties.
While there are early examples of inter ...
agreements with Hannover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...
, Germany (1983) and Chongqing
Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...
, People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
(1986).
Notes
References
* ''Appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations 1976 Hiroshima-Nagasaki by Takeshi Araki and Yoshitake Morotani'' (New York, 1976)External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Araki, Takeshi Mayors of Hiroshima 1916 births 1994 deaths Japanese anti–nuclear weapons activists Hibakusha University of Tokyo alumni Deaths from pneumonia in Japan