Takeshi Araki

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] and in 1977 protested to the Japanese government about the possibility of further such reenactments.

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.

[3] On November 30, the two mayors met US Permanent Representative to the UN William Scranton and conveyed the same message.

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.

He also concluded a number of Sister City agreements with Hannover, Germany (1983) and Chongqing, People's Republic of China (1986).