Features

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“Hiroshima Rally to Preserve Peace Held”
Full text (of article dated October 3, 1949)

The Hiroshima Rally to Preserve Peace, was held in the auditorium of Hiroshima Jogakuin, a school located in the area of Nagarekawa-cho, Hiroshima City, starting at 2 p.m. on October 2, with 200 citizens in attendance. First, Kiyoshi Matsue was selected to serve as a chairperson, followed by author Koichi Hata, who spoke on the issue of peace advocacy. The rally moved on to a session in which opinions were expressed, with representatives from children’s groups, women’s groups, labor unions, and other organizations voicing their hopes for peace, stating that, recalling the day of the atomic bombing, a tragic war of that nature must never be waged again. Finally, a declaration to ban the production of atomic bombs was approved, and the rally concluded at 6 p.m.

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After the rally, on page 2 in its October 3, 1949, edition, the Chugoku Shimbun carried the above 12-line article with the headline “Hiroshima Rally to Preserve Peace Held.”

The rally had been held the previous day in the auditorium of Hiroshima Jogakuin Junior High School, located in Hiroshima City. The article reported that a declaration to ban the production of atomic bombs was adopted following the session devoted to the expression of hopes for peace.

Details of the declaration were not carried in the article. The declaration began with the statement “Japan’s democratic revolution, which guaranteed freedom and peace, has recently shown itself to be in an extremely dangerous state,” and ended with the following language. “Finally, we citizens of Hiroshima City, the first people in human history to have experienced the horrors of an atomic bombing, demand that ‘atomic bombs be abolished.’”

Appearing more than four years after the atomic bombing, this sentence was the first appeal made from the A-bombed city of Hiroshima for the “abolition of nuclear weapons.”

The General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ) monitored speech under the press code it had issued in September 1945. The Chugoku Shimbun had adopted an editorial policy in compliance with the code and, in 1948, enacted a company policy of “strict adherence to the press code.” No articles directly criticizing the dropping of the atomic bombs were ever carried in the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper.

The article reporting on the gathering with its declaration supporting the abolition of atomic bombs might have been in violation of the press code because it could have been construed as being critical of the United States. As a staff writer for the Chugoku Shimbun, I investigated this matter with that in mind. Surprisingly, I found that the article had not been subject to censorship.

The GHQ, however, kept a watchful eye. Kiyoshi Matsue, one of the members of a group of chairpersons who died in 2005, recalled a conversation he had with the GHQ in the Chugoku Shimbun’s series “History of Hiroshima,” carried in the newspaper to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing. At the time, he was serving as chairperson of the Hiroshima Prefectural Trade Council.

The rally was the first full-scale, peace and anti-war gathering held by a private-sector organization. It also formed part of the International Day of Struggles for Peace, organized by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).

Added in response to remarks

Mr. Matsue was summoned by the GHQ intelligence section in the area of Yoshiura (in Kure City) and questioned about what sort of event it would be. “It’s a peace gathering. A democratic meeting to oppose fascism of the kind that was espoused in prewar Japan.” He replied in that way out of consideration for the occupation policy of promoting democratization in Japan. The GHQ officer in charge reportedly flashed a look of apprehension, concerned that the gathering might involve communist or radical anti-war and anti-nuclear sentiments.

The declaration, which had been shown to GHQ in advance, did not include the sentence containing the phrase “abolition of atomic bombs.” That language had been hastily added on the day of the rally, in response to remarks made by participants at the venue.

Hideyuki Omura, one of those involved in the preparations for the rally who passed away in 2011, spoke of his thoughts and feelings at that time. His statements were carried in a book titled Senryoka no Hiroshima: Hankaku, Hibakusha Undo Sosoki Monogatari (in English, ‘Hiroshima under occupation: a story of the early days of anti-war and A-bomb survivors’ movements’), published in 1995.

Keep short and unobtrusive

Mr. Omura served as the first chair of the Hiroshima Youth Cultural Federation, a group in which the poet Sankichi Toge also participated. Mr. Omura believed that the rally could only be held “if participants were prepared to face a military trial or be sent to Okinawa for violating occupation policy.” In fact, Shinso Hamai, Hiroshima City mayor at the time, as well as peace groups, both of whom had been scheduled to cooperate with the rally, withdrew as rally organizers one after the other.

The rally was held one year before the Korean War broke out, amid deepening conflict and escalating tensions in the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. In Hiroshima, on the other hand, reconstruction efforts had begun in earnest in line with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law, which had been promulgated and entered into force on August 6, around two months before the rally.

The staff writer who reported on the holding of the rally would surely have been aware of the background to that point as well as the situation both domestically and internationally.

The article should be kept short and unobtrusive. However, the language “declaration to ban the production of atomic bombs” must be included. Was that an attempt to slip the information through censorship by walking a fine line so as not to violate the press code? The article of only 12 lines makes one think about the painstaking efforts of reporters under the occupation.

(This series was reported by Kazuo Yabui, Appointed Senior Staff Writer, the Chugoku Shimbun)

(Originally published on October 6, 2023)