BEIJING: Hiroshima, the Japanese city devastated by a wartime atom bomb, will not allow national propaganda when it hosts the next Asian Games in 1994, city Mayor Takashi Araki promised here.
“It will not be a meeting aimed at raising national prestige,” said the 74yrold Mayor, who survived the 1945 World War II bombing, after arriving here to attend the closing ceremony of the Beijing Asian Games yesterday.
He said the 1994 Games, with a budget of 40 billion Yen ($285 million) will be the “prime mover” in transforming Hiroshima into an “international city of peace and culture.”
His city of one million people home of Mazda cars and Mitsubishi ships will be the first that is not a national capital to host the quadrennial regional Asiad that began in 1951 in Delhi.
The world’s first atomic bomb attack killed an estimated 2, 00,000 in Hiroshima on impact and in radiation related deaths in following years.
Hiroshima Organizers have picked as their emblem a pair of cartoon doves, a worldwide symbol of peace.
But there has been criticism at home and abroad that Hiroshima’s emphasis on its suffering overshadows Japan’s aggression during the war.
Asked if Hiroshima’s heavy publicity on its peace mission could trigger antagonism amongst Japan’s Asian neighbors, Mr Araki replied: “I don’t know whether there will be antipathy or not.”
“But we have committed ourselves not to repeat past mistakes,” he said.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 26, 1990
