34-year memorial held for victims of Shiga train collision
A 34-year memorial ceremony for a train collision killing 42 people in Shiga Prefecture was held near the site of the accident in the city of Koka on Wednesday.
In front of a monument near the site, 21 participants, including bereaved family members and the heads of Shigaraki Kohgen Railway (SKR) and West Japan Railway, or JR West, observed a moment of silence and laid flowers.
"We will do our best to advance our work to achieve train safety," SKR President Seijiro Masaki said in a memorial address.
"We will engrave the tragedy of the accident and the preciousness of life in our hearts and continue to pass on the facts, remorse and lessons of the accident to future generations," JR West President Kazuaki Hasegawa pledged.
"I would like to keep demanding that the nation and railroad operators take further safety measures," said Seiji Shimomura, 66, who co-headed a now-disbanded group for train safety set up mainly by bereaved family members in the 1991 accident.
Shimomura lost his 2-year-old son in a July 2001 crowd crush on a pedestrian overpass in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture.
On May 14, 1991, an SKR train and a JR West train collided head-on in Shigaraki, now Koka, killing 42 people and injuring more than 600.
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