Beyond the Fog of War: Widening remembrance of the victims of the firebombings of Tokyo, 66 other Japanese cities, Chinese cities, & all bombings in world history...

In Errol Morris’s documentary "Fog of War," 

former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara details the firebombings of Japan.

Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama...Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which, by the way, was dropped by LeMay's command. 

Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50 to 90% of people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people...LeMay said if we lost the war, we'd all be prosecuted as war criminals, and I think he's right. 

- Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Fog of War

Today is the 69th anniversary of the U.S. fire bombing of residential Tokyo. This was the most destructive bombing raid in world history. On March 10, 1945, 334 B-29 American bombers dropped napalm and white phosphorus incendiary bombs that destroyed 16 square miles of buildings and killed (minimum estimates) 100,000 people, and wounded another 150,000, almost all civilians, in Tokyo.

The Japanese government has apologized to survivors of Japanese carpet bombings in China; memorialized victims of the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, provided compensation to hibakusha; memorialized the military dead at Yasukuni, and provided compensation to Japanese Second World War veterans. However, the Japanese government has never commemorated the hundreds of thousands of victims of the firebombing of Tokyo and other historic Japanese cities, or compensated survivors, all whom were children at the time of the bombings.

Incongruously, the Japanese government, instead, honored Gen. Curtis LeMay, the commander of the “Superfortress” bombers that firebombed Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities.  He designed the firebombing campaigns in a way that would maximize suffering of Japanese civilians; oversaw "Operation Starvation," designed to stop food from reaching civilians; and commanded the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In 1964, during the administration of former PM Eisaku Sato, a 1974 Nobel Peace Laureate, LeMay was awarded the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun, given to those who have made "distinguished achievements in the following fields; international relations, promotion of Japanese culture, advancements in their field, development in welfare or preservation of the environment."

Some of the plaintiffs of the Tokyo firebombing lawsuit

Last year, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against the Japanese government by civilian victims and relatives of those who died on March 10. The plaintiffs demanded an apology and damages over the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo; all were children during the war; many became orphaned.

In December 2009, the Tokyo District Court dismissed the original suit filed by 131 plaintiffs who were demanding a government apology and ¥1.44 billion in damages. In April 2012, the Tokyo High Court turned down an appeal, citing the hundreds of thousands of other firebombing victims who received no acknowledgement and compensation from the government.

The task of remembering and commemorating the victims of the Tokyo and other Japanese firebombings has been left to the aging survivors, their descendants, and civil society.

Charred body of a woman who was carrying a child on her back. 

(Photo: Taken on March 10, 1945 by Koyo Ishikawa (1904-1989))

The task of remembering of all victims of bombings worldwide needs more attention by journalists, scholars, and civil society.

Locals from Chungking, China, left homeless by Japanese bombing, May 1939. 

(Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via The Guardian)

Ayoko Mie's "New map shines light on Tokyo air raid horrors: Scholars record wartime history politicians would rather forget," posted at JT yesterday explains how the Great Tokyo Air Raids Life of Victims Map created by the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage shows how Tokyo residents tried to flee the bombs and fires:

The Life of Victims Map is the most comprehensive effort to visualize the overall effect of the raids because it includes those killed by raids other than Operation Meetinghouse. Over 100 air raids were carried out on the capital after November 1944...

U.S. forces went on to conduct air raids on 66 Japanese cities in the final months the war. Over a 10-day period beginning on March 9, 1945, the strikes destroyed 40 percent of those 66 cities, according to scholar Mark Seldon’s research paper “Bombs Bursting in Air: State and Citizen Responses to the U.S. Firebombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan.”

Yet the central government has conducted little research on the air raids, even the ones on Tokyo, despite their gravity.

“In a sense, over-concentration on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed the dozens of cities attacked by firebombing,” said Cary Karacas, assistant professor of geography at the College of Staten Island, who with author Bret Fisk launched the bilingual historical archive Japan Air Raids.org in 2010.

It was not until 1970 that the impact of the Tokyo air raids would begin to be scrutinized by a citizens’ group led by Katsumoto Saotome, director of the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, with the support of then-Tokyo Gov. Ryokichi Minobe.

“The central government didn’t want to recognize the fact that much damage was caused in Japan’s capital city, Tokyo, and they did not want to compensate non-military Japanese people who suffered from the bombing,” said the 81-year-old Saotome, who was 12 when the bombs began dropping.

In "Tokyo firebombing and unfinished U.S. business," posted at JT on Feb. 15, historian Jeff Kingston provides more context and details of the firebombings; calling into question the judgment of the Japanese government; and blaming both Japan's wartime government and the Truman administration for prolonging the war, which resulted in deaths of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians:

Prolonging the war meant there was a price to be paid and, as in most modern conflicts, civilians paid the highest price. The firebombing campaign left some 5 million people homeless throughout Japan, killing perhaps 500,000 civilians and wounding another 400,000 — excluding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. LeMay also oversaw Operation Starvation, a strategy to mine Japan’s coastal waters and ports from the air, so disrupting shipping and the distribution of food. This supplemented a very effective submarine blockade...

The ashes of more than 100,000 air-raid victims are interred at Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward, where there is a modest memorial. And in Koto Ward, documents and oral histories have been assembled at a private library/museum — but there is no publicly funded Tokyo Firebombing Museum or state memorial commensurate with the scale of this ghastly event.

In 1990, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government set up a committee to prepare plans for a memorial, but in his recent book “Tokyo Vernacular,” Jordan Sand, a professor at Georgetown University, states that “this was ultimately derailed by politicians on the right and the national bureaucracy.”

In "Bombs Bursting in Air: State and citizen responses to the US firebombing and Atomic bombing of Japan," scholar Mark Selden has taken an in-depth look at the human consequences of the firebombings of Japan's cities. Selden argues that many more than 100,000 died on March 9-10.  He further demonstrates that LeMay's campaign against Japanese civilians set the stage for his bombings of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and later bombings Afghanistan, and Iraq, in the context of the culture of celebration of war:

The Strategic Bombing Survey provided a technical description of the firestorm and its effects on Tokyo...

The survey concluded—plausibly, but only for events prior to August 6, 1945—that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man...The largest number of victims were the most vulnerable: women, children and the elderly.”

 ...The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts...

Following the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, the firebombing was extended nationwide. In the ten-day period beginning on March 9, 9,373 tons of bombs destroyed 31 square miles of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Overall, bombing strikes destroyed 40 percent of the 66 Japanese cities targeted... the slaughter of civilian populations on a scale that had no parallel in the history of bombing.

...Overall, by Sahr Conway-Lanz’s calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Throughout the spring and summer of 1945 the US air war in Japan reached an intensity that is still perhaps unrivaled in the magnitude of human slaughter...The point is not to separate the United States from other participants in World War II, but to suggest that there is more common ground in the war policies of Japan and the United States in their disregard of citizen victims than is normally recognized in the annals of history and journalism...

With area bombing at the core of its strategic agenda, US attacks on cities and noncombatants would run the gamut from firebombing, napalming, and cluster bombing to the use of chemical defoliants and depleted uranium weapons and bunker buster bombs in an ever expanding circle of destruction whose recent technological innovations center on the use of drones controlling the skies and bringing terror to inhabitants below.

Less noted then and since were the systematic barbarities perpetrated by Japanese forces against resistant villagers, though this produced the largest number of the estimated ten to thirty million Chinese who lost their lives in the war, a number that far surpasses the half million or more Japanese noncombatants who died at the hands of US bombing, and may have exceeded Soviet losses to Nazi invasion conventionally estimated at 20 million lives...

 Washington immediately announced the atomic bomb’s destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and released the iconic photographs of the mushroom cloud... was banned under the occupation were close-up images of victims whether of the firebombing or the atomic bombing captured on film by Japanese photographers, that is, the human face of the atomic holocaust...

We reflect on the fact that there is no Sadako of the firebombing of Japanese cities, no carbonized lunchbox relic known to the world, or even to Japanese children. Yet there was precisely the killing of myriad mothers and children in those not quite forgotten raids. We need to expand the canvas of our imagination to encompass a wider range of victims of American bombing in this and other wars, just as Japanese need to set their experience as bomb victims against the Chinese and Asia-Pacific victims of their war and colonialism. Nor should American responsibility for its bomb victims end with the recovery of memory. It requires a sensibility embodied in official apology and reparations for victims, and a consciousness embodied in public monuments and national military policies that is fundamentally at odds with American celebrations of its wars.

Additional links:

"Children's World Peace Statue (Tokyo)"-- Plans for this statue and diligent fundraising

 were conducted by Tokyo junior and senior high school students while studying about

 the effects of the conventional and atomic air raids.

(Image: The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, Koto Ward, Tokyo) 

The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage

Japanairraids.org

One of the participants of a group of Tokyo residents paying pilgrimage to landmarks dedicated to the victims 

of the Great Tokyo Air Raids gives an offering to the Buddhist deity of mercy in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward 

on March 2, 2014, ahead of the 69th anniversary of the U.S. bombing on the capital. 

(Photo: Hirotaka Kojo, Asahi)

"VOX POPULI: Anniversary of 1945 Tokyo air raid warns us against past mistakes" (Asahi, March 10, 2014) 

"Woman's picture book recalls how mother saved her in Tokyo firebombing" (Hirotaka Kojo, Asahi, March 6, 2014)

"Fire Bombings and Forgotten Civilians: The Lawsuit Seeking Compensation for Victims of the Tokyo Air Raids" (Cary Karacas, The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 17, 2011)

"The Firebombing of Tokyo: Views from the Ground" (Brett Fisk and Cary Karakas, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jan. 17, 2011)

"China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945" (Diana Lary, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Nov. 29, 2010)

"The Great Tokyo Air Raid and the Bombing of Civilians in World War II", The Asahi Shimbun, reposted at The Asia-Pacific Journal, March 11, 2010)

"A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities and the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq [*]" (Mark Selden, The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 2, 2007)

-JD

Democracy Now! interview with filmmaker John Junkerman on Okinawa

Amy Goodman began her Democracy Now! program on Okinawa today with an excerpt from Korean American filmmaker Annabel Park's five-minute video interview with Hirotoshi Iha, "The Heart of Okinawa."

Filmed in Takae in 2010, Mr. Iha explains why he became a peace and democracy activist and the deep meaning of the "Heart of Okinawa." In 1955, his six-year-old cousin, Yumiko-chan, was raped and murdered by an American soldier, who was quietly returned to the U.S. after conviction. The life-long activist then explains why the majority of Okinawans don't want the noisy and dangerous Futenma training base "transferred" to Henoko: "because we know the human cost of it."

"Okinawa’s Revolt: Decades of Rape, Environmental Harm by U.S. Military Spur Residents to Rise Up" then segways into an interview with academic and activist Kozue Akibayashi and filmmaker John Junkerman, who describes the massive expansion [on private property acquired by force and coercion] of US military training and bombing support bases on the tiny island during the Korean War and Vietnam War.  US military bases now take up 20% of the island. Junkerman explains that nearly seventy decades of US use of Okinawa for war training and war support has violated the spirit of the Ryukuan people, who are traditionally pacifist.

Amy Goodman & Democracy Now! broadcasting from Japan

On Saturday, January 18th, Amy Goodman will be speaking in Tokyo at Sophia University at 10:00 a.m. at the International Conference Room, #2 Building.  On Sunday, the 19th, 7:00 p.m., she will be speaking in Kyoto with filmmaker John Junkerman and journalist Yasumi Iwakami at Kyoto Kyoiku Bunka Center (Kyoto Education Culture Center). On Monday, the 20th, the broadcast journalist will speak at the Foreign Correspondents Club (Yurakucho Denki Building) in Tokyo.

Goodman's Democracy Now! interviews in Japan this week explore shock doctrine politics, disaster capitalism, the Fukushima nuclear disaster (with a focus on the hundreds of thousands of nuclear refugees), the TPP, the resurgence of government militarism and censorship, and citizen opposition to military landfill at a biodiverse eco-region in northern Okinawa.

In "Shock Doctrine in Japan: Shinzo Abe’s Rightward Shift to Militarism, Secrecy in Fukushima’s Wake," Koichi Nakano, professor at Sophia University in Tokyo and director of the Institute of Global Concern at the university, explains his overview of the how unpopular policies have been forced in Japan during a period of prolonged confusion and disruption following the natural disasters and multiple nuclear meltdowns of 3/11.

KOICHI NAKANO: Right. The state secrecy law that was passed in December last year, just a month ago, basically two years after the big earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear power accident, that still continues to literally kind of shake Japan, and in the climate of anxiety and insecurity, the government basically is pushing in the classic sort of Naomi Klein kind of way of shock doctrine.

And for the Japanese, it is particularly worrisome because it reminds us of what happened before the Second World War, actually, when Tokyo was destroyed by a huge earthquake in 1923. And the peace preservation law that eventually led to the birth of state secret police and the brutality of the military regime was also enacted two years right after the big earthquake that destroyed Tokyo back in the 1920s. So, the parallel is quite spooky.

In "From Atomic Bombings to Fukushima, Japan Pursues a Nuclear Future Despite a Devastating Past," Goodman interviews journalist David McNeill:

...the effects of the radiation are hotly disputed, and they will go on for many years to come. You know, we are seeing reports of an increase in problems with thyroids among children in Fukushima. But the science is yet to be decided.

But what is really very clear, you know, completely without dispute, is that it has caused an enormous amount of disruption to people’s lives. First of all, as you said, 160,000 people were forced to flee from Fukushima. Another number—we don’t know how many—have voluntarily fled from Fukushima...

So, when people say the death toll from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is zero, they’re not correct. People have died from that disaster. And I think people will continue to die in the years to come, whether or not the radiation is the cause or not.

In "For Fukushima’s Displaced, a Struggle to Recover Lives Torn Apart by Nuclear Disaster," Goodman interviews filmmaker Atsushi Funahashi, director of Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story, which follows the lives of nuclear refugees from the small town Futaba, when they were evacuated to an abandoned high school building in Saitama (just north of Tokyo).

"Okinawan Heart" Witness for World Peace: From the Pacific War to the Present

Elder survivor pays respects at the Cornerstone of Peace memorial in Okinawa. 

(Photo: The Asia-Pacific Journal)

90 million people were killed by state violence in the 20th century — so far the bloodiest century in human history. 20 million people of these war dead (mostly civilians) were killed in Japan's wars in the Asia-Pacific, that began against Korea and China, even before Dec. 7, 1941.

Even after US firebombings decimated all of Japan's major cities, including Tokyo, the militarist government would not admit defeat, until after its loss in the Battle of Okinawa (the last battle of the Pacific War), and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is why Okinawa, together with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has remained a center of peace activism and peace education in Japan.

Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial:

In late March 1945, a fierce battle such as has rarely been seen in history took place on these islands. The "Typhoon of Steel" that lasted for ninety days disfigured mountains, destroyed much of the cultural legacy, and claimed the precious lives of upward of 200,000 people. The Battle of Okinawa was the only ground fighting fought on Japanese soil and was also the largest-scale campaign of the Asia-Pacific War. Even countless Okinawan civilians were fully mobilized.

A significant aspect of the Battle of Okinawa was the great loss of civilian life. At more than 100,000 civilian losses far outnumbered the military death toll. Some were blown apart by shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while other fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops. Under the most desperate and unimaginable circumstances, Okinawans directly experienced the absurdity of war and atrocities it inevitably brings about.

This war experience is at the very core of what is popularly called the "Okinawan Heart," a resilient yet strong attitude to life that Okinawan people developed as they struggled against the pressures of many years of U. S. military control.

The "Okinawan Heart" is a human response that respects personal dignity above all else, rejects any acts related to war, and truly cherishes culture, which is a supreme expression of humanity. In order that we may mourn for those who perished during the war, pass on to future generations the historic lessons of the Battle of Okinawa, convey our message to the peoples of the world and thereby established, displaying the whole range of the individual war experiences of the people in this prefecture, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum.

"War is Over! (If You Want It): Yoko Ono" • Sydney MCA • Nov. 15, 2013 - Feb. 23, 2014

"WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT IT)" opened Nov. 15, 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.  This is the first major survey in Australia of legendary artist, musician and peace activist Yoko Ono. "The exhibition encompasses five decades of practice in diverse media including eight participatory works. Themes include loss, conflict, humanity and the desire for world peace."  Ono designed the interactive parts of the exhibition to encourage collaboration, linked to a central theme of world peace.

Curated by MCA Chief Curator Rachel Kent, the title comes from a text by Ono and her late husband John Lennon that first appeared in 1969—in the middle of the Vietnam War—across public billboards in twelve cities worldwide, including Tokyo, Hong Kong, Toronto, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London.

While other visual artists have also engaged in peace art and activism, Ono is perhaps the most renowned peace artist of our time.  How did the impetus for her highly focused creative work originate?

Ono has explained that a childhood experience of the firebombing of Tokyo awakened her understanding of the human costs of military violence, fueling her peace art and activism for five decades.

Her father was an international banker and moved his family between the United States and Japan, so, as a child, Ono developed positive attachments to both countries. When the Pacific War broke out, she was eight-years-old, living in Tokyo.  She and her family survived (by taking shelter in a basement in their Azabu home) the firebombings of Tokyo, including the massive March 9-10, 1945 raid—the most destructive bombing raid in world history. At minimum, the napalm-fueled bombings destroyed 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city and killed 100,000 people.

In a 2007 interview with Amy Goodman:

I remember, when I was a little girl, a young — you know, when I was very young, one day I had high fever because of just a cold. You know, I had a cold.

And so, my family all went down into the basement to make sure that, you know, they’re alright. It’s a kind of shelter that they created in the garden actually. But I couldn’t go.

And I was just sort of in my bed, and I saw that all the houses next to us and all the places around me were just all fire. I go, "Oh." But, you know, when you’re young, and that’s the only reality you’re working through, you don’t really get totally scared or anything. You know, you’re just looking at it like an objective film or something like that. "Oh, this is what’s happening," you know?

And because of that memory of what I went through in the Second World War, I think that I really — it embedded in me how terrible it is to go through war.

To those who charge that she is "optimistic" or "naive," Ono points out that she is a simply a resilient pragmatist who cares about life and our planet—and does what she can do—which includes encouraging others to do what they can do to support peace building at multiple levels:

Well, you know, most people say, "Oh, you’re so optimistic. I mean, what’s wrong with you?" I’m not really that optimistic.

I am trying to make us survive. And in the course of survival, we don’t have the luxury to be negative. That’s a luxury that we can’t afford.

 And we just have to do what we can do. And I think that instead of getting so upset with some people, you know, or some countries which are doing this, doing that — "How dare they," whatever — I think we should just do what we can do.

 In a Reuters article about this current exhibition, she compares 1969 with 2013:

When John and I stood up, very few people were activists. Now I think 90 percent of the world is activists. If you're not an activist, you'd be considered a nerd maybe.

 (Image: Colin Davidson, The Guardian)

"Pieces of Sky"—WW II German helmets with blue jigsaw pieces inside.
Visitors are told, "Take a piece of sky. Know that we are all part of each other."

"Play It By Trust"/"White Chess Set"
(Photo: Iain MacMillan,© 1966 YOKO ONO)

Shinya Watanabe:"Through her simple alteration of the chessboard
 (a war strategy game), the artist made it extremely hard for the chess players to 
 fight each other, and this creates new relationships between the opponents."

Global Article 9 Conference in Osaka - October 14, 2013

Via Global Article 9: 

Invitation to the Global Article 9 Conference in Kansai 2013

Article 9 of Japan's Constitution states that Japan renounces both war and military capability.  This article has unique value in today's global society.

Across the world, more and more countries are adopting pacifist constitutions that not only prohibit war in favor of peaceful resolution of conflicts, but also ban weapons of mass destruction – including nuclear weapons. Having experienced the horrors of World War II, Japan's adoption of Article 9 is one of the earliest manifestations of such a legal norm. The preamble to the Japanese Constitution guarantees the right to live in peace, an important concept that overlaps with the notion of the 'Human Right to Peace' which is currently being debated by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In spite of this, the Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his Liberal Democratic administration are maneuvering to distort the pacifist constitution by revising Article 9. This coincides with dangerous moves to justify Japan's former invasion and colonization of countries across the Asia Pacific region. In the face of these threats, many peace-loving Japanese citizens have joined together to oppose this constitutional revision, and are working to spread the value of Article 9 around the world. While there may be some Japanese politicians who have appalled the world with statements that approve of war-time slavery, the Japanese people do not approve of these statements. The movement to protect human rights and peace is spreading across Japan, and has forged links with youth activists, and others campaigning for nuclear weapons abolition, to end end nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, and to protect employment, education and living standards.

After the great success of the “Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War” of May 2008, which attracted 30,000 participants, the 'Global Article 9 Conference in Kansai 2013' will be held in Osaka in October 2013. We ask you to consider attending, and further cooperation not only in preventing constitutional revision but also in together spreading Article 9's message of peace around the world.

Co-Initiators of the 'Global Article 9 Conference in Kansai 2013

Ikeda Kayoko (Translator)
Niikura Osamu (Secretary General of International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Lecturer at Aoyama Gakuin University)
Yoshioka Tatsuya (Peace Boat Co-Founder and Director)
Kido Eiichi (Osaka School of International Public Policy)            
Matsuura Goro (Catholic Bishop)

Wikileaks: Tokyo Rejected Suggestion of Obama visit to Hiroshima in 2009

(Photo: The Nuclear Abolitionist)

Thanks to Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, we know Tokyo nixed the suggestion of a presidential visit to Hiroshima in 2009.

This was a year of heightened hope after Obama's April 5 "Prague Speech" (in which the US president called for a world free of nuclear weapons).  Hibakusha and their supporters campaigned for an Obama visit to Hiroshima — to spark the nuclear abolition movement.  However, some in Tokyo wanted to dampen "expectations":

VFM [Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs] Yabunaka pointed out that the Japanese public  will have high expectations toward President Obama's visit to  Japan in November, as the President enjoys an historic level  of popularity among the Japanese people.  Anti-nuclear groups, in particular, will speculate whether the President  would visit Hiroshima in light of his April 5 Prague speech  on non-proliferation.  He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public's expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a "non-starter."

Filmmaker Oliver Stone in Hiroshima: "The specter of war has returned to Asia....The spirit of World War II is being revived..."

Video of part of American filmmaker Oliver Stone's speech in Hiroshima (he's traveling with Peter Kuznick, nuclear historian at American University and Satoko Norimatsu, co-author of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the US.)

Two years before she helped found the Network for Okinawa in 2010 (US-based network of environmentalist, faith-based NGOs and diverse think tanks, including the Institute for Policy Studies),  Satoko said she wanted to include Okinawa in the annual American University Hiroshima-Nagasaki summer study tour.  This year they're doing that.

In this clip at IWJ (Independent Web Journal), Stone challenges Tokyo's lip service to "nuclear abolition" and "peace" with his sobering observations about the ongoing Washington-Tokyo-Asia-Pacific military build-up:

...Obama's resupplied Japan with stealth fighters. Japan has the 4th largest military in the world. No one admits that. You call yourself a Self Defense Force...You're the 4th largest military in the world, after Great Britain and China. The US is your full accomplice in this. You are some of our best buyers. We make you not only pay for the weapons we sell you, but we make you pay for the wars we fight. We made you pay for Kuwait...Iraq...

We are bullies. You're facing a dragon of great size and the dragon is not China, it's the U.S.  Four days ago, I was in Jeju, Korea, where South Korea...is destroying a UNESCO World Heritage site, destroying the land and inhabitants...they're going to build the harbor so deep so the George Washington, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, carrying all kinds of nuclear missiles, is going to sail to Jeju. South Korea - armed to the teeth. Japan - armed to the teeth...Philippines...we're back in Subic Bay...

We are looking for arrangements in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and I heard India...India was always non-aligned...This is very dangerous...This is like NATO. It began as a defense arrangement and became an offense arrangement...

This year, the specter of war has returned to Asia...The spirit of World War II is being revived...So you can talk all you want about peace and nuclear abolition but the poker game is run by the U.S.

Portrait of a Weapon Inventor as a Young Man: Hayao Miyazaki's Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)

Trailer for Hayo Miyazaki's Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises).  Based on the manga of the same name; in turn based on a short story by Tatsuo Hori, a prewar proletarian writer, poet and translator who died in 1953. Kaze Tachinu is a fictionalised biography of Jiro Horikoshi, chief designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, a long-range warplane used in bombing raids and kamikaze attacks during the Pacific War.

Interesting timing on the release of this film. Miyazaki's films invoke nostalgia for traditional Japanese community, family, and rural life; and contain anti-war and environmentalist themes.  In May of this year, Toshio Suzuki,  producer at Ghibli, the studio which produces Miyazaki's films, unequivocally pronounced his support for the Japanese Peace Constitution in an interview with Tokyo Shimbun (English translation at Anime News Network):

Suzuki spoke his support for the clause, saying, ”We should be proclaiming Article 9, which has brought peace to Japan, to the rest of the world.” He added, “I doubt most people outside of Japan even know that we have Article 9. After all, we have a self-defense force. They probably know about that. That's why we have to spread the word about the clause to the world. This peace that Japan has wouldn't have been possible without it."

Suzuki came to know the future Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki after Suzuki co-founded the magazine Animage for the publisher Tokuma Shoten. Miyazaki serialized his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga in Animage, and Suzuki participated in the production of Miyazaki's film version in 1984. When Ghibli separated from Tokuma Shoten in 2005, Suzuki was appointed to head the studio. Suzuki stepped down as the head of Ghibli in 2008, but he has remained an active producer on all of its films.

(July 21 update: Detailed analysis by Matthew Penney just published at The Asia-Pacific Journal on Hayao Miyazaki, war, peace, and Article 9; cites the filmmaker's belief that Article 9 should remain the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy; and cites Studio Ghibli director (and Miyazaki collaborator Isao Takahata: “We sacrificed the people of Okinawa and became collaborators in [America’s wars].” )

(July 24 update: More background at Mainichi with a link to a Ghibli pamphlet outlining both the studio's and Miyazaki's support of Article 9.)

Power of Okinawa: Irei no Hi 2013

Via The Power of Okinawa's great blog on Okinawan music and culture:

 

Today is Irei no hi – the day when the end of the Battle of Okinawa is commemorated throughout the Ryukyu Islands. As usual the biggest ceremony was held at lunchtime at Okinawa Peace Memorial Park in Mabuni, Itoman and I was there along with many others. It always seems to be a scorching hot day on the 23rd June and this was no exception as people gathered in the park under a blazing sun and in a temperature hovering around 32 degrees...

Masaharu Kina, the Speaker of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, made the most pertinent speech in which he noted that there are now 241,227 names on the Cornerstone of Peace (where the names of all those killed in the fighting are inscribed) following the addition of another 62 names this year. He also pointed out that this is a day when all Japanese should think about war even though Irei no hi is still a designated public holiday in Okinawa only. He went on:

"One of the lessons we learned from the sacrifices of countless irreplaceable lives during the war is that a people with no voice will perish. In light of our past being trifled with by national policies, and the currently unchanged situation of Okinawa, the people of Okinawa have held numerous rallies to demand the reduction and realignment of the U.S. military bases and alleviation of our burden. We have voiced our requests.

“Prompted by countless unreasonable actions against Okinawa, we, the people of Okinawa, are about to reach the limit of our patience. The non-partisan petition handed to Prime Minister Abe this January reflects our earnest collective will not to tolerate any more base burdens and to live peaceful lives.

“Under the circumstances we are here with solemnity on this day, which marks the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa. This is the day to inscribe indelibly into our hearts that such a miserable war should never happen again and to hope for a peaceful bright future.”

Women's Active Museum on War & Peace: "Military Does Not Protect Women: Okinawa, Japan’s Military Comfort Stations & Sexual Violence by the US Military"

Last 2 weeks  at the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo....

10th Special Exhibition

"Military Does Not Protect Women: Okinawa, Japan’s Military Comfort Stations and Sexual Violence by the US Military"

[ June 23, 2012 - June 30, 2013 ]

“Is it really possible to live in peace next to a military committed to exercising violence that trains night and day in ways to kill people?

This is the fundamental question posed by a woman in Okinawa who has been the victim of sexual violence by American soldiers.

As the Asia-Pacific War drew to a close, the lives of countless inhabitants were sacrificed in a 3-month land battle on Okinawa, which Japan viewed as a “barrier” protecting the mainland. Japanese troops deployed to Okinawa built comfort stations wherever they were stationed, over 145 in all, and turned women from Okinawa, Korea, Taiwan and the Japanese mainland into “comfort women.” After Japan’s defeat, rapes by US soldiers followed. Today, more than 40 years since the return of Okinawa to Japan, there is no end to the on-going incidents of sexual violence. The struggle of women continues.

The military deprived women of their lives and deprived the islands of peace. This exhibition conveys the reality of military as a repressive state apparatus of violence, focusing on the sexual violence of the Japanese military until 1945 and of the long-standing US military in Okinawa. It questions the responsibility of Japan for keeping Okinawa as militarized islands during and after the war.

Main Contents of the Exhibition:

• Okinawan History—from the Ryukyu Kingdom to assimilation policy under Japan rule

• Deployment of Japanese troops to Okinawa and the establishment of comfort stations

• A map of comfort stations throughout Okinawa

• The true face of the Okinawan War: civilian suffering, mobilization of school children and ‘mass suicides’

• Women who were in the Headquarters Shelter of Japan’s 32nd Army

• Women from Okinawa, Kyushu and Korea who were made ‘comfort women’

• Comfort stations on the islands of Tokashiki, Zamami and Miyako

• The American Occupation and sexual violence

• Women taking action against military sexual violence of the present and past

"LIFE IS A TREASURE" (Nuchi Du Takara) monument groundbreaking ceremony @ Okinawa Peace Prayer Park - APRIL 22, 2013

"LIFE IS A TREASURE" (Nuchi Du Takara) monument groundbreaking ceremony - APRIL 22, 2013 at OKINAWA PEACE PRAYER PARK:

Nuchi Du Takara "Life is a Treasure" monument groundbreaking (Hikoshiki) ceremony will be on Monday, Earth Day April 22nd from 14:00, at the "Okinawa Peace Prayer Park". The "hinpun" monument will be completed on Saturday June 8th World Ocean Day.

The monument will be at the "Cornerstone of Peace" (Everlasting Waves of Peace). Un-veiling and blessing ceremony will take place on Sunday June 9th from 14:00, everyone welcome.

Charity Live will be held at the Okinawa Peace Prayer Park Hall (Okinawa Heiwa KinenDou) from 14:00~

Adults: ¥3,000 / Children and Students free.
Performance by Ishihara Emi, Karate, Ryukyu Buyo etc,

Other live events that support this project will be announced under the "Blue Peace Live".

Hirotoshi Iha explains the "Heart of Okinawa"

On September 4, 1955 – exactly 40 years to the day before the 1995 gang kidnapping, beating, and rape of a 12-year old Okinawan girl – an American soldier, Sergeant Isaac Hurt, kidnapped Yumiko Nagayama as she was walking to kindergarten. Then he raped her, disemboweled her, and threw her into a military base garbage dump. Less than a week later, another US soldier raped another child. 

The rape-murder of Yumiko-chan  took place during "Bayonets and Bulldozers" – a period of US forced seizure and destruction of 50,000+acres of land (including entire villages), to make build military complexes across the islands. The seizures – usually at gunpoint – left 250,000 Okinawans homeless and without means of livelihood.  Because the US did not allow Okinawans any real legal protections, Okinawans had no legal recourse against the US military violations of their property rights and human rights.

Okinawan mass protests, marches, and sit-ins date back to this period because the people had no legal power to resist the US use of force against them.  The pattern of American soldiers taking young girls from civilian houses at gunpoint to rape (and even murder them) began during the early days of the US occupation of Okinawa and worsened during the 1950's violent period of "Bayonets and Bulldozers."  At this time, the US military rape of women and children became synonymous with the rape-like taking and destruction of their land.

The 1955 murder of Yumiko-chan outraged the Okinawan public, sparking what Okinawan  Moriteru ARASAKI calls the first wave of the Okinawa Struggle for human rights and property rights. Okinawan resistance culminated in the 1956 "island-wide struggle" (shimagurumi toso) challenging US military  domination.

Korean American filmmaker Annabel Park's five-minute video interview of Hirotoshi Iha brings us back to 1955 by illuminating how deeply Okinawns have been injured by the pattern of US violent violations of human rights, land rights, and also why the US and Japanese governments have never been able to extinguish the Okinawan struggle for rights, self-determination, safety from US military violence, and peace.

Filmed in Takae in 2010, Mr. Iha explains why he became an activist and the deep meaning of the "Heart of Okinawa."  Yumiko-chan was his cousin.

The life-long activist then explains why the majority of Okinawans don't want  Futenma training base "transferred" to Henoko: "because we know the human cost of it."

Keiji Nakazawa: "For humanity, the greatest treasure is peace."

Keiji Nakazawa, the author of "Barefoot Gen," had died (1939-2012). 
The drawing in the photograph reads "For humanity, the greatest treasure is peace." 

(Keiji Nakazawa (March 14, 1939 – December 19, 2012) was a Japanese manga artist and writer. He was born in Hiroshima, where he lived during the Pacific War.  The cartoonist survived the US nuclear bombing of the city in 1945. All of his family, who had not been evacuated, died from the bombing.

 In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist for manga anthologies.

 Following the death of his mother in 1966, Nakazawa began to memorialize the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima  in his stories.  Nakazawa's major work, "Hadashi no Gen" (Barefoot Gen) (a ten-volume series) explored the nuclear bombing and its aftermath, and examined the Japanese government's militarization of Japanese society during World War II.  "Barefoot Gen was adapted into two animated films and a live action TV drama.

Nakazawa was diagnosed with lung cancer and in July 2011.

Ryukyu Shimpo: "Okinawan people’s mass rally to reject Osprey deployment: Protect the sanctity of human life & become a cornerstone of peace"

(Photo courtesy of Ms. Yoko Miyazato)

The Ryukyu Shimpo, one of two major Okinawan newspapers, points out threat to public security is just one of many issues addressed by the rally opposing US V-22 Osprey aircraft low-level training and testing in Okinawa.  The rally is also about democratic process, environmental justice, decades of profoundly unequal and abusive relations between the US and Okinawa characterized by violent seizures of land by "bayonet and bulldozer" from owners, environmental destruction, toxic weapons testing, noise, military sexual assaults, and other crimes) 

The rally is also an Okinawan witness and testimony for peace, as their prefecture was the only Japanese battlefield during the Pacific War: 

For the people of Okinawa, today is the day of an historic mass rally. In this rally the young and the old, men and women and people of all walks of like will participate to express their opposition to the deployment of the MV-22 Osprey vertical take-off and landing transport aircraft to U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. People who value the spirit of democracy and the democratic process are filled with a sense of impending crisis. This thoroughly bipartisan rally will be the first motion that will culminate in a huge wave of opposition. The Okinawan people will not accept the “inherently defective aircraft” that threatens their lives, property, safety and security. Washington and Tokyo are advised to take this situation seriously, because people are standing up to take up action over the sanctity of life – the Government needs to understand that this rally is a committed cry of the people. Okinawans have applied themselves many times in various ways in an attempt to resolve base-related issues since the end of the war. Now, resentment towards the military-first policy that the governments of Japan and the United States have foist upon them has built up to a broader and deeper extent than ever before...

After the war, Okinawa faced many difficulties because the U.S. military forces seized Okinawan people’s land at the point of a bayonet and bulldozed everything in its path to construct military bases. To add insult to injury, U.S. military personnel further trampled on Okinawan people’s human rights by raping Okinawan women. In 1959, a military aircraft crashed into Miyamori Elementary School in Ishikawa, killing 18 pupils.

The deployment of the Osprey to Futenma essentially represents an “indiscriminate attack” on the Okinawan people among the many inhumane acts perpetrated in Okinawa by the U.S. military forces. If the Japanese and the U.S. government force the deployment of the Osprey aircraft on the prefecture, the Okinawan people will undoubtedly come to oppose not only the U.S. Marine Corps but all four arms of the U.S. military.

There are 20 airspaces and 28 water areas used for training under the U.S. military administration around the islands of Okinawa Prefecture. Local people are not allowed to freely use the land, sea and sky that belong to Okinawa. Taking advantage of the Status of Forces Agreement, which grants privileges to the U.S. forces in Japan, U.S. forces exert extra-territorial rights to an inordinate extent. Does the U.S. government think that Okinawa is an American colony?

After Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese sovereignty, there have been 522 accidents, including U.S. military aircraft crashing, or making emergency landings. Up until the end of December 2011 those accidents had caused 34 casualties with another 24 people missing. The fiery explosion of a U.S. Marine helicopter that crashed onto the campus of Okinawa International University in the summer of 2004 is still fresh in our minds...

We cannot help but feel that the world is now asking us, the people of Okinawa, about our historical standpoint and our broader viewpoint. Japanese government leaders express rivalry with the emerging China. Should Okinawa play the role of the cornerstone of the Pacific from a military standpoint, or should we play the role of the cornerstone of the Pacific from a peaceful perspective in order to serve as a bridge between Asian nations. We would like the people of Okinawa to think of this rally as the starting point for action that shapes a future of their choice.

WAM Exhibition: "Comfort Stations in Okinawa & Sexual Violence by U.S. Forces" • June 23, 2012 - July 30, 2013 • Tokyo

Map of military sexual slave stations in Okinawa.

Poster: Women's Active Museum on War and Peace

Kyodo correspondent Keiji Hirano's "Exhibition portrays Okinawa's wartime sex slaves" covers the Women's Active Museum's exhibition on wartime Japanese military sexual slavery and postwar US military sexual assaults in Okinawa. The exhibition's opening in June coincided with the 40th anniversary of Okinawa's ostensible reversion to Japan:

In a yearlong exhibition through next June, the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace shows there were at least 145 "comfort stations" in the islands, at which women not only from Japan but also from Korea and Taiwan were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.

The exhibition, "Comfort Stations in Okinawa and Sexual Violence by U.S. Forces," also introduces testimonies from 300 Okinawa women who were sexually assaulted by U.S. military personnel in the postwar era, although they are believed to be just the tip of the iceberg.

"We hope to show that women have faced sexual violence by military forces in Okinawa in wartime as well as even in the postwar period," said Mina Watanabe, secretary general of the museum known as WAM.

"We expect visitors to the exhibition to be aware this has resulted in Japan's creation of comfort stations and its policy of forcing the bulk of U.S. military bases in Japan on Okinawa," she said.

The findings presented on more than 30 panels at the exhibition are based mainly on decades of research by historians, activists and journalists, who examined documents compiled by the Japanese military and municipalities of Okinawa while collecting testimonies of those who lived near the comfort stations and witnessed the exploitation of women, the organizers said...''

A panel quotes a history book compiled by the municipal government of Yomitan: "There were four Korean comfort women. On holidays, soldiers stood in line (in front of a comfort station) from daytime, leading the village residents to turn their eyes away from them."

A Haebaru resident remembers a girl aged around 13, who served as a nanny in the daytime and as a "comfort woman" in the evening, saying, "She sometimes innocently showed me money that she received from soldiers," another panel indicates.

Comfort stations were built even in remote islands, with Tokashiki Island, now a major diving spot, having seven Korean comfort women aged 16 to 30.

Among them was Bae Bong Gi, who was taken to the island from Korea in 1944, and forced to provide sex under the Japanese name, "Akiko."

She remained in Okinawa even after the end of the war and engaged in marginal work. Suffering headaches and nerve pain in old age, she died in 1991 at the age of 77 without returning home. Another of the seven on Tokashiki, meanwhile, died in a U.S. attack at the end of the war.

While Bae talked about her life in interviews before her death, "many women remained unable to come out," Watanabe said...

The exhibition was also held in Okinawa through mid-July.

The Women's Active Museum of War and Peace opened the summer of 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, to focus on "violence against women during wars and armed conflict, from a gender perspective."

See also "Statement of protest against the sexual assault on an Okinawan woman by a US Marine Corps serviceman, & demand for withdrawal of US Military Forces" posted on September 5, 2012, about a recent protest by Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence (OWAAMV) of yet another US military sexual assault upon an Okinawan woman (while returning to her home).

In Memory of Chris Marker, the Battle of Okinawa, & the Pacific War

(Photo: Chris Marker)

On July 30, French filmmaker Chris Marker at the age of 91. His films reflect a complex, multi-layered worldview; existentialist humanitarianism; and a fascination with Japan and Okinawa.

In Level Five, Marker undertook a deep exploration of the history of the repeated violation of Okinawa, focusing on the incomprehensible devastation of the Battle of Okinawa ("Typhoon of Steel"):

A peaceful isle out of the world, out of history, would stage the bloodiest battle of all time...Nowhere else except Nazi camps did people go on dying after battle.

The islanders were not true Japanese but Japanese enough to die...

The battle was lost in advance. The Japanese army could not win. The context was defeat....

Another consequence of ths context of defeat was that no effort was made to protect the civilian population [by either side], so civilian casualties far outnumbered military casualties...One third of the population.

The 1997 film traces Okinawan history back to Commodore Perry's unwelcome visits in the 1850's to Shuri Castle, palace of the Ryūkyū Kingdom:

...As if Japan needed a US soldier each century to enter a new era...For four hundred years, no one asked the Okinawans anything.

The film flashbacks again to an even earlier historical episode in which an Englishman described the traditional Okinawan respect for life and peace to Napoleon:

An English captian came to him after going around the Pacific and described a small island whose natives had no weapons.

"No cannons?" says the emperor, somewhat disgusted.

"No cannons, no pistols, no muskets, no weapons at all."

"How do they wage war?

"They don't. They're not interested."

Napoleon concluded that people without war are most despicable...Travelers enraged him with tales of Okinawa's gentleness. Gentleness? Is history made of gentleness? Do dragons honor gentleness?

So Okinawans hated violence?

They had it coming...A peaceful isle out of the world would stage the bloodiest battle of all time. A happy, life-loving woman was chosen to encounter death...

Marker underscores the historical fact that the Japanese Imperial military knew they were going to lose the Pacific War in advance of the Battle of Okinawa, which was undertaken as a sacrificial delaying tactic that resulted in the devastation of the Okinawa's main island and the deaths of over one third of the people. Documentary filmmaker Junichi Ushiyama explains in the film:

The purpose was to fix the aftermath and reinforce the imperial system...

Another consequence due to this context of defeat was that no effort was made to protect the civilian population, so civilian casualties far outnumbered military casualties.

Perhaps the quiet climax of this cinematic essay is Chris Marker's reference to the island itself:

From above Okinawa is like a beast...a crouched beast ready to jump, to unfurl into who knows what form - a lizard, a dragon?

As if all History's fierceness was in that island. Where people are so peaceable, they infuriate History...

So thought the island...the big dragon in the island..ready to pounce, like a cat, like a tiger, biding his time...

The people of Okinawa are resentful, even now. There is a feeling of injustice over the past. The war isn't over...

Okinawa was a Japan that kept its memory...

Level Five includes references to Japanese military sex slaves (so-called "comfort women") and shocking footage of civilians forced to commit suicide by jumping off cliffs in Saipan. Marker also excerpts later footage (by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima) of a heartbreaking memorial service for the hundreds of Okinawan school children who died when the USS Bowfin sank their passenger ship, the Tsushima Maru (their parents had sent them away in an attempt to save their lives before the US-Japan battle).

An excerpt from John Huston's Let There Be Light provides a glimpse into the damage to Americans in Okinawa. The US Army produced the 1946 documentary about American soldiers suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, but it was subsequently censored. It is now available for free screening (and download) at the National Film Preservation Foundation website.

Near the end of the film, Marker takes the viewer for a visit to the market in Naha. The mood feels haunted as the camera's gaze catches mostly women vendors (their men were killed during the Battle of Okinawa).

Children's Peace Monument - Hiroshima

Cornerstone of Peace & the "Okinawan Heart"

Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, the only land battle on Japanese soil. Okinawans commemorated the lives of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa, and prayed for peace for Okinawa and the world.

After the battle's end, instead of bringing peace and democracy to Okinawa, the U.S. government positioned Okinawa as its military "Cornerstone of the Pacific."  Soldiers seized ancestral farmland and homes ("by bayonets and bulldozers") from war survivors to make way for US military bases on 20% of the island's land mass. After fifty years of enduring the US expropriation of their land for war (Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq)  training, Okinawans countered this unwelcome militarist moniker with their pacifist self-definition when they named a memorial erected on Mabuni Hill in Itoman the "Cornerstone of Peace" ( (平和の礎 Heiwa no Ishiji).

The massive monument was dedicated on June 23, 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War and the Battle of Okinawa. Its purpose: (1) Remember those lost in the war, and pray for peace; (2) Pass on the lessons of war; and (3) Serve as a place for meditation and learning. Mabuni Hill was the site of the Japanese military headquarters and scene of heavy fighting in late June 1945, towards the end of the Battle of Okinawa. The names of over two hundred and forty thousand people, including Imperial Japanese and American soldiers, as well as over 100,000 innocent Okinawan civilians, who lost their lives are inscribed on the memorial:

It conveys to the Japanese as well as people of the world, the "spirit of peace" which has developed through Okinawa's history and culture. The names of all those who lost their lives in the Battle of Okinawa- regardless of their nationality or whether they ware of military or civilian status- are inscribed on "The Cornerstone of Peace," serving as a prayer for eternal world peace.

The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum:

In late March 1945, a fierce battle such as has rarely been seen in history took place on these islands. The "Typhoon of Steel" that lasted for ninety days disfigured mountains, destroyed much of the cultural legacy, and claimed the precious lives of upward of 200,000 people. The Battle of Okinawa was the only ground fighting fought on Japanese soil and was also the largest-scale campaign of the Asia-Pacific War. Even countless Okinawan civilians were fully mobilized.

A significant aspect of the Battle of Okinawa was the great loss of civilian life. At more than 100,000 civilian losses far outnumbered the military death toll. Some were blown apart by shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while other fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops. Under the most desperate and unimaginable circumstances, Okinawans directly experienced the absurdity of war and atrocities it inevitably brings about.

This war experience is at the very core of what is popularly called the "Okinawan Heart," a resilient yet strong attitude to life that Okinawan people developed as they struggled against the pressures of many years of U. S. military control.

The "Okinawan Heart" is a human response that respects personal dignity above all else, rejects any acts related to war, and truly cherishes culture, which is a supreme expression of humanity. In order that we may mourn for those who perished during the war, pass on to future generations the historic lessons of the Battle of Okinawa, convey our message to the peoples of the world and thereby established, displaying the whole range of the individual war experiences of the people in this prefecture, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum.

Nuclear-Free Activist & Artist Mayumi Oda speaking at the 2011 Moana Nui Conference

Longtime nuclear-free activist and artist Mayumi Oda reveals dark, obscured interconnections between Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima in this moving talk given at the 2011 Moana Nui conference in Hawai'i.

Known to many as the “Matisse of Japan,” Mayumi Oda has done extensive work with female goddess imagery. Born to a Buddhist family in Japan in 1941, Mayumi studied fine art and traditional Japanese fabric dying. In 1966 she graduatied from Tokyo University of Fine Arts. Mayumi’s unique apprenticeship dying fabric for kimonos influences the color and composition of all of her work.

Mayumi has spent many years of her life as a “global activist” participating in anti-nuclear campaigns worldwide. She founded Plutonium Free Future in 1992. On behalf of her organization, Oda lectured and held workshops on Nuclear Patriarchy to Solar Communities at the United Nations NGO Forum and the Women of Vision Conference in Washington DC.

Notes from her speech:

I'm 70-years-old now. I was born the year right before Pearl Harbor. For 70 years, I've been struggling with nuclearism. I was 4-years-old when my country was detonated with atomic bombs...

The shadow image of people without any body left stuck in concrete walls...just absolutely scared me as a child.

When my sister country, Korea, had a war, and people crossing over in the cold, it just made me so anxious, I grew up with this kind of fear of....As a child, I thought it was a kind of stupidity, how could people get involved with this.

Now with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, I feel like Japanese were born to deal with this incredible legacy of nuclear development...