Times Recorder
Serving Zanesville and Southeastern Ohio since 1864
Friday, February 10, 1995
[photo, not shown here, captioned:]
By Karen Stein/Times Recorder
Members of a group marching for peace stopped in
Zanesville on Thursday. They will march toward
Columbus along U.S. 40 today.
Group marches for peace
Walkers take message to California
By Patrick Jackson
Times Recorder
Zanesville – About 25 people are braving a Midwestern winter
on a cross-country march to call for world peace.
Although the number is small now, the Rev. Yusen Yamato
says he expects the group to swell to more than 100,000
marchers when the Global Peace Walk arrives in San Francisco
to celebrate the United Nations 50th anniversary in June.
Among the people Yamato hopes will join in at the end of
the march is Pope John Paul II.
“Our people are not homeless. They are landless,” Yamato
said Thursday as the group rested at Trinity Evangelical
Lutheran Church. “All people must recognize the globe
is important. We must get back to the land. We must
get our knowledge back.”
Today, the group will march to Columbus along U.S. 40.
Yamato, a Zen Buddhist monk, has helped organize several
global peace marches, including one that began in Auschwitz,
Poland, and will end in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, the
50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
And marcher David Williams said he hopes the U.N.
heeds the group’s call to peace.
“There is war in 40 countries right now,” Williams said.
“And the U.N. is conscripting people to fight. The U.N.
is conscripting soldiers in Japan to fight wars even thought
the Japanese Constitution forbids Japanese troops to serve
overseas…The U.N. needs to end its mission of being the
policeman for the world and work for the cause of world peace.”
Karen Martens of Berlin, Germany, and Sondra Baque, who
was born near the site of the D-Day landings in France, said
they joined the march because they believed Yamato’s call
for global peace is important.”
“I am walking with someone from Germany and someone
from Japan because it is important for all people to realize
we are a global community,” Baque said. “We are all young
people and we are sacrificing six months of our lives to let
people know this.”
Marcher Chris Daniels said the group has received generous
support from people along the route.
“People are coming out and really being kind to us,” he said.
“Everyone from the mayors, to the storekeepers and the
truck drivers have come out and offered their support.”