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Ichinoseki youth petitioning support for the ILC

Current and graduate students of Ichinoseki Daiichi Senior High School collected signatures of support for the International Linear Collider (ILC) project at an AEON shopping mall in central Ichinoseki on Tuesday.

The petition came about after Hironobu Asari, who graduated from high school this month, visited Mayor Osamu Katsube in January with classmate Ryota Konno. Hironobu then sought cooperation from students in his year and in years below, resulting in four graduating students and six students in lower grades joining the petition drive, which calls for the ILC – a next generation particle accelerator project involving world class expertise – to be built in the region.

 

On Tuesday, the students held ILC posters and flags and their enthusiasm showed when asking shoppers to sign the petition. Parents with their children stopped by to sign, and Mayor Katsube popped in to encourage the students, happy with what he saw and saying: “Realization of the ILC is at arm’s reach, so for young people in Ichinoseki to start this kind of activity is very reassuring.”

 

The students are hoping to get other high schools and junior high schools in Ichinoseki and other areas in Iwate Prefecture involved in the petition drive, and to collect 30-50,000 signatures by summer. The signatures are scheduled to be handed to the governor of Iwate Prefecture, who will deliver them to the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

 

Hironobu said: “Ichinoseki and Iwate still lag behind the big cities, but I’ve long thought that children shouldn’t be disadvantaged by the area in which they are born. I feel the ILC is the key to change. I want to take advantage of this chance and use it for development in Ichinoseki. I want to gather more signatures and turn the support of residents nationwide into a great force.”

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