Group protests against removal of 'Barefoot Gen' calendar from school

[ShintoCanadianmale]

Group protests against removal of 'Barefoot Gen' calendar from school
Tuesday 21st October, 02:00 PM JST

HIROSHIMA —
A peace advocacy group in Hiroshima Prefecture filed a protest Tuesday with a municipal education board in the prefecture, challenging its guidance that led to a decision by a municipal junior high school to remove from its music classroom a calendar featuring popular antiwar comic “Barefoot Gen.” The Hiroshima Institute for Peace Education made the protest to the Onomichi education board in writing after the school in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, stopped posting the calendar that features Keiji Nakazawa’s classic autobiographical comic portraying the life of a boy who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

The institute, based in Hiroshima City, has been making and donating the ‘‘Hiroshima Peace Calendar’’ to Hiroshima schools on request every year since 1982. This year’s calendar features a picture drawn by Nakazawa for the 1999 edition. The head of the Hiroshima teachers union serves as the institute’s executive director. Since 2003, the Onomichi education board has instructed principals of elementary and junior high schools in the city to refrain from posting the peace calendar, citing the neutrality of education.

Group protests against removal of 'Barefoot Gen' calendar from school