Hitoshi Motoshima (20 February 1922-31 October 2014) was the LDP Mayor of Nagasaki from 2 May 1979 to 1 May 1995, succeeding Yoshitake Morotani and preceding Itcho Ito.
Biography[]
Hitoshi Motoshima was born in Shin-Kamigoto, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan on 20 February 1922, and he was raised in a Roman Catholic family. He was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1943 and served as an artillery officer in Kumamoto, and Japanese authorities suspected him of espionage because of his Christian faith and his illegitimate birth. He returned home six weeks after the atomic bombing of his hometown, and he worked as a teacher before entering politics with the Liberal Democratic Party. He served in the prefectural assembly for five terms before serving as Mayor of Nagasaki from 1979 to 1995, and he drew controversy on 7 December 1988 when he remarked about the dying Emperor Hirohito, "From reading various accounts from abroad and having been a soldier myself, involved in military education, I do believe that the emperor bore responsibility for the war." He was removed from his party positions as a result and was vilified by many conservative organizations, and 80 right-wing speaker trucks called for divine retribution against Mayor Motoshima. On 18 January 1990, a member of a yakuza-backed far-right group shot Motoshima in the back, but Motoshima survived his assassination attempt. He was re-elected in 1991 with the support of the Japanese Communist Party and other progressive forces, but he lost re-election in 1994 (his successor Itcho Ito was later assassinated by the yakuza). In 1998, Motoshima once again created controversy by saying that Japan did not have the right to criticize the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as it was a "matter of course" for Japan launching a "war of aggression". He died in 2014 at the age of 92.