Shuichi Adachi, right, a lawyer who heads a civic group, hands in a complaint to a Hiroshima prefectural government official on July 12, 2021, to ask for the cancelation of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach's visit to Hiroshima. (Kyodo)

       HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) -- A civic group filed a complaint Monday with governments in Hiroshima Prefecture to cancel International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach's planned visit to the atomic-bombed city in western Japan later this week.

       The group argues that the visit by Bach, who is already in Tokyo for the upcoming Olympics, is aimed at politically utilizing the city promoting world peace, at a time when the IOC and Japanese organizers are sticking to the plan to hold the event despite public concern about the coronavirus pandemic.

       Such an attempt is considered a "dishonoring of hibakusha," the group said in the written statement submitted to the prefectural and municipal governments of Hiroshima, referring to survivors of the wartime U.S. bombing of the city in 1945.

       Bach, who arrived in Japan last week, is scheduled to visit Hiroshima on Friday, the starting day of an Olympic truce adopted by the United Nations.

       IOC Vice President John Coates is planning on the same day to visit Nagasaki, the other Japanese city devastated by a U.S.-dropped atomic bomb in 1945.

       The group also raised concern about Bach traveling to Hiroshima from Tokyo as the capital is under a state of emergency due to the pandemic.

       Meeting with members of the group, a prefectural official said, "It would be meaningful (for Bach) to share with the world what he felt in Hiroshima."

       An online petition launched last week by another civic group calling for the cancellation of Bach's visit to Hiroshima had received around 15,000 signatures as of Monday night.

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