Japan’s Tokyo Prefecture is said to be coordinating views on allowing an annual memorial ceremony to be held for Koreans massacred in the Kanto region nearly a century ago.

Kyodo News said Tuesday that the prefecture’s move comes after it received 30-thousand signatures protesting the prefecture’s initial decision to not allow the memorial event to be held at Yokoamicho Park this year. 

The prefecture had allowed a group of Japanese civic organizations to hold the event at the park every year on September 1. However, last December it suddenly demanded organizers submit a written pledge to not engage in any activity that would harm park management efforts, citing a clash they had with an ultra-right group that disrupted last year’s event. 

The organizers refused to submit the pledge, saying it’s unfair for the prefecture to take issue with last year’s event when they have been holding the annual ceremony without any issues for more than 40 years.

A prefecture official told Kyodo News that authorities have now dropped the demand for a written pledge following discussions with the organizers.

According to records compiled by South Korea’s first private newspaper, The Independent, more than six-thousand Koreans were massacred in Kanto by Japanese police, military and vigilantes after groundless rumors spread that Koreans were poisoning wells and rioting in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake that rattled the area on September 1, 1923.