was a Japanese politician and Mayor of Hiroshima

Hiroshima

is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...

 1955 - 1959.

Was elected to the Lower House of Diet in April 1946, but soon after lost his seat due to the purge of Japanese officials by the US occupation authorities. He was able to return to political activity only following the end of the Allied occupation in 1952.

In April 1955 ran against Shinzo Hamai

Shinzo Hamai

was the first popularly elected Mayor of Hiroshima . He created Hiroshima's image as a city of peace.-Life and career:...

, and won the election after making allegations of financial misconduct by his opponent.

In 1956, he inaugurated the statue of the goddess Kannon in the Peace Park in memory of those killed and in anticipation of peace. http://library.thinkquest.org/C006932/himeguri/bun/bun14.html

Watanabe is survived by his son Naoyuki Watanabe (born 1946), who is working to cultivate his father's legacy.

External links

• Interview by Watanabe to the Los Angeles Times
  Los Angeles Times
  The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
  
  http://www.marxists.org/archive/hansen/1958/xx/coexistence.htm
• Article in Time
  Time (magazine)
  Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
  
  mentioning Watanabe http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,810499,00.html
• Norioki Ishimaru, Reconstruction planning after the Second World War in Hiroshima