Fukushima City, Towns Hold Relay to Attract 2020 Olympic Flame

October 15, 2018

Iwaki, Fukushima Pref.- Some 100 children in three coastal municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, have held a torch relay to demonstrate the local communities' bid to host the torch relay for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Local residents gave applauds on the roadside as the participants passed the torch, a replica of the torch used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The torch relay for the 2020 Games, covering all 47 prefectures in Japan, is set to start in Fukushima, on March 26, 2020. Relay routes will be drawn up by each prefecture, with an official announcement to be made around summer 2019.

Fukushima is one of the three prefectures hit hardest by the March 2011 powerful earthquake and tsunami. Fukushima is also home to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant heavily damaged by the disaster.

The torch relay event in Fukushima, held on Sunday, started at the J-Village soccer training facility in the town of Naraha, and reached the city of Iwaki via the town of Hirono. The participating runners spent a total of about three hours on the relay.

"We were able to reconstruct our communities thanks to support from the world," Ryuta Suzuki, a 15-year-old junior high school third-grader in Iwaki, said.

"I'm happy as I could show today that Iwaki is all right," he said. Jiji Press