Japanese


"Osaka Needs No Olympics" citizens' union
OSAKA, JAPAN

May 17, 2000

His Excellency
Senior Juan Antonio Samaranch
President
International Olympic Committee


Dear Mr. President

I take the liberty to write you a letter in the hope that I may have my request met by you.
We are a Civil group that is opposed to Osaka's bid for the 2008 summer Olympics. We want to let you know that we object to the rationalized to justify the bid. In our opinion, Osaka City is not qualified to be a candidate for such a event.
If the point of view come to light, you will know how inadequate Osaka is for candidate.

For a more detailed analysis, please refer to the appendix.

1) Insufficient traffic measure
You may know the Osaka Olympics will be held on the landfill island. But some authorities estimated that the subway to go there wouldn't be completed by autumn 2008.
In the plan, the subway needs a car shed, 7.3km of railroad and 3 undersea tunnel.
It is the fact that 2.4km of subway would take 8 years to be completed.
They haven't had an environmental assessment yet. If any new soil pollution is detected, it will take a long time to cleanup before construction could be started.
In addition the landfill island has never completed yet.
Even if the subway would be completed by the opening ceremony, it is difficult to bring 80,000 people,40,000 by subway, 40,000 by bus to the events.
As for the subway, one of the routes require the passengers to transfer in the middle of the line, because the new subway adopted a different gauge.
We have filed an action suit in the court on May.17 2000. 146 accusers of our group are insisting that Osaka City should retreat because the subway will give us a heavy financial burden after the Olympics.
We estimated that subway company will have to bear 100 million dollars every year as construction cost and it Will be much larger than amount of fare.
Osaka City will have to make up the deficit.

2) Lack of taking citizen's opinion
It is certain that a million signatures have been collected for the Osaka Olympics. But the push for the olympics has been led by city officials and the bussiness commity, not on the street.
It is certain that Osaka City had a questionnaire in 1994. But it was before the Olympic plan and it wasn't neutral for pro and con.
Now the state of things has been changing since 1994, but we 've never heard that Osaka City would have a questionnaire again. We wonder what they are afraid of?

3)Poor facilities
They decided to move the main stadium and indoor swimming pool, because of dioxin soil pollution. But the islands are so narrow that they might have to remake the plan thoroughly.
Kyoto prefecture decided to resign to build Kyoto Stadium and the Osaka City lied to us about this information.
The equestrian stadium in Hyogo prefecture and the place for yacht racing in Shiga prefecture might be too narrow to have an international competition.

Yours Respectfully

KONISHI, Kazuto
President