Takeshi Araki
Takeshi Araki (荒木 武, Araki Takeshi, March 4, 1916 – June 17, 1994) was the mayor of Hiroshima from 1975 to 1991.
In April 1947, he was elected as member of the Hiroshima city council, 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.[1] 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 Fred Ikle, a meeting attended also by mayor Yoshitake Morotani of Nagasaki with the purpose of promoting US policy of nuclear disarmament.[2] On November 30, the two mayors met US Permanent Representative to the UN William Scranton and conveyed the same message.[3]
Being a hibakusha himself, He helped found the organization Mayors for Peace in 1982. He also concluded a number of Sister City agreements with Hannover, Germany (1983) and Chongqing, People's Republic of China (1986).
Notes
References
- "Obituaries - Takeshi Araki; Hiroshima Mayor, 78". The New York Times. June 17, 1994. Retrieved June 19, 2009.
  | This article about a Japanese politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |