Okinawan-Hawai'ians Stand with Sacred Stone

Okinawan-Hawai'ians Stand with Sacred Stone Camp

(Via (HOA) Hawai'i Okinawa Alliance)

Tokyo Ainu Stand with Sacred Stone Camp

Tokyo Ainu Stand with Sacred Stone Camp
(Via (HOA) Hawai'i-Okinawa Alliance)

Chie Mikami's Stop (making Okinawa into) a Battlefield, - Opens May 23, 2015 in Tokyo

Chie Mikami's Stop the Battlefield opens May 23 in Tokyo:

『戦場ぬ止み(いくさばぬとぅどぅみ)』劇場予告編

2014年8月14日辺野古沖は「包囲」された。沖縄は再び戦場になった。沖縄で今、­何が起きているのか？

「標的の村」の三上智恵監督が描く沖縄と辺野古。激しい対立だけを描くだけではない。­基地と折り合って生きざるをえなかった地域の人々の思いと来し方。苦難の歴史のなかで­も大切に育まれた豊かな文化や歴史。厳しい闘争の最中でも絶えることのない歌とユーモ­ア。いくさに翻弄され続けた70年に終止符を打ちたいという沖縄の切なる願いを今、世­界に問う。

ポレポレ東中野にて、5月23日(土)より緊急先行公開。7月11日より桜坂劇場、7­/18よりポレポレ東中野にて本上映。

Translation/Synopsis: 

On Aug. 14, 2014, the Siege of Henoko began when the Jp govt. sent a military flotilla against locals protecting their beloved natural cultural heritage, the coral reef & dugong ecosystem. Okinawa was once again a battlefield.

What is happening in Henoko now? Under much hardship, locals have nurtured the rich culture and history of Henoko. They withstand their severe struggle with song and humor. The earnest desire of Okinawans is to end the 70-year military regime at which they have been at mercy. They are asking the world for help.

The film opens at an emergency screening on May 23 at Theater Pole Pole in Nishi-Nakano, Tokyo.

Theater: Address B1F, 4-4-1 Higashi-Nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo
Transport Higashi-Nakano Station (Chuo-Sobu, Oedo lines)

Theater website: http://www.mmjp.or.jp/pole2/

Film FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/ikusaba.movie

Film website: http://ikusaba.com/

May 17: All-Okinawa Mass Rally for Preservation of Henoko, an indigenous sacred site, & Okinawa's most important natural cultural heritage site, habitat of the Okinawa dugong & the last fully intact coral reef in all of Okinawa

Via our friend, Dr. Masami Mel Kawamura, at Okinawa Outreach:

On May 17, a mass rally will be held at the Okinawa Cellular Stadium in Naha, Okinawa to demonstrate Okinawa’s determination to stop the construction of a US military base in Henoko and Oura Bay in northern Okinawa.

With this year marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the battle of Okinawa and of the World War II, this rally will certainly be one of the most important rallies held in Okinawa against the detrimental legacies of the war.

The people of Okinawa have suffered enough from the continuing immense presence of US military, which still occupies 18 % of Okinawa Island today. And for the last 19 years, the people have also suffered from the US and Japanese governments’ reckless pursuit of the Henoko base plan and their complete disregard for Okinawa’s democratic voice against the plan.

While the US and Japanese governments continue to do their talk in Tokyo or Washington, we the people of Okinawa know that the real struggle site that counts most is here in Okinawa. We are determined to fight through to protect our sea, our land, and our life.

Featuring Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga, along with other distinguished speakers, the rally will show how the people of Okinawa are united with each other and with supporters from around the world in our fight against the Henoko base construction.

When: Rally starts at 1:00 am on May 17, 2015

Where: Okinawa Cellular Stadium, in Naha

Reverend Kinoshita of Nippon Myohoji

witnessing for the protection of Henoko,

an indigenous sacred site, with shrines & rituals going back millennia, 

and Okinawa's most important natural cultural heritage site, 

habitat of the Okinawa dugong & the last fully intact coral reef in all of Okinawa. 

(Photo via our friends at Blue Vigil in Solidarity with Okinawa in NYC) 

"Okinawa's Future: Democracy or Military Dictatorship?" Last Day of WaPo Okinawa ad on the Online Opinion Page

Okinawa's Future: Democracy or Military Dictatorship?

Today is the last day of the 3-day Okinawa ad at the online Washington Post's Opinion Page.  The ad was taken out by The Okinawa Protest Advertising Action, an Okinawan group that, like all of Okinawa's civil society and government, opposes the Jp-US governments' plan to forcibly landfill and construction of a US military training base at Okinawa's most important natural cultural heritage site—against the will of the Okinawan prefectural government and citizens. As Okinawan Governor Takeshi Onaga has explained clearly in the past month, the Okinawan government and people have never consented to any U.S. military bases on their lands.

Every village, town, and city in Okinawa is united in opposing the planned construction of a new U.S. military airbase. If the plan goes ahead, the coral reef and sea-grass ecosystems at Oura Bay, Henoko, will be sealed under 740 million cubic feet of landfill to make way for U.S. military runways. This act of environmental vandalism will destroy the habitat of countless endangered species, including one of the world’s most threatened marine mammals, the Okinawan dugong, a species which on paper, though not in reality, is protected by U.S. and Japanese law...

After 2 decades of resisting the Henoko plan, and what in any genuine democracy would be regarded as decisive elections held in 2014, the people of Okinawa made their views clear to Washington and Tokyo...

On April 29, PM Abe, in an address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, is expected to tell President Obama and the American people that base construction in Okinawa is going according to plan, and even that the project will strengthen U.S. -Jp bilateral relations.

Pragmatists as well as idealists within the U.S. admin would do well to question this version of events. Some 60 years ago, during another period of unrest in Okinawa known as the Island Wide Struggle, U.S. troops forcibly removed Okinawans from their land using bulldozers and bayonets. At the time, senior U.S. diplomats warned of Okinawa becoming ungovernable, and  the most heavy-handed tactics of the period were abandoned in favor of negotiation.

Attempting to impose a new base on Okinawa by force, which appears to be the only option currently being considered by U.S. & Jp officials, threatens to repeat the mistakes of that period, at the same time undermining Washington and Tokyo’s credibility as agents of democracy, freedom and human rights.

See the entire ad here: http://www.okinawaiken.org/washingtonpost2015/.

Interrconnecting Peace Traditions: Blue Vigil in Solidarity with Okinawa on April 25 after Peace & Planet Event • Relaunch of The Golden Rule, a Quaker sailboat that protested US nuclear test bombing of the Marshall Islands in 1958

Blue Vigil in Solidarity with Okinawa in NYC on the coldest day of 2015.

(Photo: Blue Vigil in Solidarity with Okinawa in NYC)

Via our good friends, Blue Vigil in Solidarity with Okinawa in NYC:

With Reverend Kamoshita who has been praying in Henoko and Takae, we will have our monthly peace vigil for Okinawa! Please come and join after the Peace and Planet event.

The Okinawa vigil is part of supporting events  for the Peace and Planet Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World gathering in the NY this weekend, April 24-26. The focus of the gathering at Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan is to discuss how to encourage their governments more effectively for nuclear disarmament. Okinawan peace activists and global hibakusha (nuclear bomb and nuclear test bomb survivors) from Japan, Korea, Australia, and the Marshall Islands will participate.

Jun-san Yasuda and Peace Walkers. 

They walked from San Francisco to NYC for the Peace and Planet event. 

(Photo: Wabi Sabi: One earth, one sky, entirely at peace)

The Peace and Planet event precedes the ninth Nuclear Non Proliferation Review Conference which meets at the UN every 5 years. More than180 nations ratified the NPT 40 years ago, including the US, Russia, France, Great Britain and China, all nuclear states.  Article 6 of the treaty called for nuclear states to begin good faith negotiations toward the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately the nuclear states of Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan have refused to the NPT.

While NPT member nuclear states have made some progress in reducing the number nuclear warheads, they [notably President Obama, as demonstrated in his 2009 Prague speech] have strengthened their commitment to "nuclear deterrence" as the cornerstone of their respective foreign policy platforms, and have turned their focus to developing a "new generation" of  "smarter" and more powerful nuclear bombs. Moreover, despite overwhelming evidence of causation of birth defects and cancers, the US government has increased the testing and use of radioactive depleted uranium weapons worldwide.

This Nuclear-Free Movement is now a 70-year old global peace tradition. For decades, downwinder survivors of nuclear test bombing began joining Japanese survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, global atomic soldiers, indigenous peoples whose lands are used for uranium mining,  nuclear test bombing, and nuclear waste storage, together in dialogue and psychological healing.  They have witnessed together at the Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Nevada nuclear bomb test site, the former USSR nuclear bomb test site at Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands.  Although the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons started as a one-issue campaign, the movement is increasingly integrating at the global level with overlapping peace, environmentalist, indigenous, women's, and faith-based movements.

Albert Bigelow; Bert Bigelow; architect, former Navy commander, and Quaker, 

who sailed the ketch Golden Rule into the U.S. nuclear bomb test site

 in the Marshall Islands in 1958. This act of civil disobedience resulted 

in the arrest of Bigelow and his shipmates and their imprisonment in Honolulu. 

(Photo: Swarthmore Archives)

This year, at Peace and Planet, Ann Wright, a supporter of the Okinawa Movement, will tell the story of The Golden Rule, a crew of 4 Quakers in a 38-foot sailboat who attempted to sail from Hawaii to stop U.S. nuclear test bombing of the Marshall Islands in 1958. The U.S. Coast Guard jailed the crew twice to stop them. The Golden Rule inspired the formation of Greenpeace International, a longtime NGO supporter of Okinawa, which used boats to attempt to stop nuclear test bombing in the Pacific.

The Golden Rule was renovated by chapters of Veterans for Peace, another NGO supporter of Okinawa, in northern California. She will be launched on April 22, 2015 in Humboldt Bay, CA and sailed down the coast of California to arrive in early August in San Diego for the national Veterans for Peace conference.

Global Hibakusha will lead a workshop at the NY event at Cooper Union Great Hall on April 25. Participants include Japan Council Against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo): Japanese Hibakusha; Shim Jin Tae (Korean A-bomb survivor); Peter Watts (aboriginal nuclear test victim, Australia); Abacca Anjain-Maddison (Marshall Islands); Manny Pino (Acoma-Laguna Coalition for a Safe Environment). Their testimonies reveal and illuminate the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.  The over 2,000  nuclear test  bombings worldwide have devastated indigenous peoples and their ancestral homelands in the American Southwest, the Asia-Pacific,  Xinjiang,  China,  and Kazakhstan.  This personal level of understanding  is now recognized and discussed in the mainstream debate on nuclear weapons.

The late Western Shoshone leader Corbin Harney

praying at the Nevada Test Site on January 1, 2007.

The nuclear bomb test site was located on sacred indigenous grounds. 

NYC: Potluck dinner with Peace Walkers for a Nuclear-Free Future on April 24 • Global Hibakusha Workshop @Peace & Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, & Sustainable World - April 24-26. 2015

POTLUCK DINNER WITH PEACE WALKERS 

FOR A NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE

Jun‐san Yasuda and other Peace Walkers are completing their 500-mile walk from nuclear laboratories and uranium mines to reactors across the country uniting activists who are affected on all phases of the nuclear chain.

Join them with their urgent prayer to the United Nations where the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is scheduled.

Let’s meet Peace Pilgrims and think about how we can create Peace from here.

Date and Time: Friday, April 24  - 6:30pm - 8:00pm

Place: Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, 1576 Palisade Ave. Fort Lee, NJ 07024

For more info, please see visit the FB page of ABLE, a human rights, environmental, and peace advocacy organization:

Guri Mehta's post, "One Earth, One Sky, entirely at peace" is a great description of Jun-san and the 2015 walk:

Jun-san Yasuda

(Photo: Guri Mehta: One Earth, One Sky, entirely at peace)

Jun-san Yasuda is a member of the Nipponzan Myohoji, an order whose mission is to walk and pray for peace.  Guri Mehta's One Earth, One Sky, entirely at peace)  post at her Wabi-Sabi blog is a great description of the Engaged Buddhist nun and the 2015 Peace Walk:

 Jun-san Yasuda, the fearless leader of this initiative is a 66-year-old Japanese Buddhist nun. She is about 4-foot-11 inches, 100 pounds, and nothing short of a force of nature. She has walked cross-country three times.

 As we pass the Aztec dancers, who were dancing on the street for another event, she ran over and joined them in the dance. Her energy rivals that of a teenager...the elder from the Aztec group came forward with white sage incense, and blessed every-single-one-of-the-walkers before we moved on. There’s something stirring about an elder from one tribe, embracing another from a completely different tradition, who lives half-way around the world from them.

Jun-san’s teacher Nichidatsu Fujii, teacher of her Buddhist order, met Gandhi in India in 1931. Fujii was greatly inspired by the meeting and decided to devote his life to promoting non-violence. In 1947, he began constructing Peace Pagodas as shrines to World peace. They were built as a symbol of peace in Japanese cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki where the atomic bombs took the lives of over 150,000 people. By 2000, eighty Peace Pagodas had been built around the world in Europe, Asia, and the United States. They are a symbol of non-violence dating as far back as 2000 years ago, when Emperor Ashoka of India began erecting these throughout the country.

70 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and 5 years after the Fukushima disaster, Jun-san believes that we must never let such disasters happen again. Carrying this urgent prayer, she and 23 others will walk from San Francisco to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations in New York City.

Many Native Americans have been present throughout these walks. And I was initially unclear on the connection, but soon realized that many nuclear power plants have historically been built on indigenous lands not just in US, but also in Canada, Australia, South and Central America, Africa, and many others. The areas are rich in uranium, which is the fuel of these power plants...Instead of focusing on other types of energy or actually reducing our own consumption, we’re heading into something that is destroying the planet.

In these times, peaceful walks like these become a symbol of people’s voice. When nuns and monks who consciously try to live peaceful lives, leave the comfort of their monasteries and hit the streets, it’s a calling to take a close look at where we might be off...

Going back to my friends understandable concern: will this walk make an impact? A group of people peacefully walking and spreading their message, made a bigger impact on me than anything I could have ever read in the news. People that are not necessarily “against” but “for.” They’re standing for peace. They’re standing for better quality of life for all of earth’s inhabitants. They’re standing for making global decisions from a space of love and not greed. They’re standing for taking responsibility for how we treat the planet. How can I not stand with those people who are doing so much on behalf of all of us? Their very existence is making as impact.

The potluck for the Peace Walkers is one of the many supporting events for the Peace and Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World events being held in NYC (and around the world) from April 25 to 26 .

Global Hibakusha will lead a workshop at the NY event at Cooper Union Great Hall on April 25. Participants include Japan Council Against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo): Japanese Hibakusha; Shim Jin Tae (Korean A-bomb survivor); Peter Watts (aboriginal nuclear test victim, Australia); Abacca Anjain-Maddison (Marshall Islands); Manny Pino (Acoma-Laguna Coalition for a Safe Environment). Their testimonies reveal and illuminate the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.  The 2,083 nuclear test  bombings worldwide have devastated indigenous peoples and their ancestral homelands in the American Southwest, the Asia-Pacific; the Tarim Basin in China; Kazakhstan; and India.  This personal level of consequences  is finally recognized and discussed in the mainstream debate on nuclear weapons.

World Heritage Day: Nuchi du Takara (Life—including the life of nature—is the Greatest Treasure)

Nuchi du Takara (Life—including the life of nature—is the Greatest Treasure). 

(Photo: K.M.)

Today is World Heritage Day, a day launched by UNESCO in 2005, to heighten the global public's awareness about the diversity of cultural heritage & the efforts required to conserve it, as well as draw attention to its vulnerability.

Yanbaru subtropical rainforest. (Photo: Yoshio Shimoji)

Yanbaru, the magnificent ecoregion of northern Okinawa—mountains, subtropical rainforest, rivers, wetlands, and Henoko's dugong and coral reef ecosystem—is Okinawa's most important natural heritage site. Henoko is one of the most biodiverse and beautiful coastal areas in all Japan and the Asia-Pacific. With the support of Japan's Environmental Ministry, Okinawa Prefecture nominated the ecoregion for official recognition on UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 2012.

The coral reef is the last fully intact coral reef in all of Okinawa and Japan. It is home to almost 400 types of healthy coral (including the rare, mysterious blue coral); over 1,000 species of marine life  (including the beloved dugong, an indigenous sacred icon and natural monument); hawksbill, loggerhead, and green sea turtles; crustaceans; anemone; reef fish; and sea grass.  

Henoko's magnificent dugong and coral reef habitat.

Okinawan traditional heritage is inseparable from the natural world: the Okinawa dugong is an indigenous sacred icon. The shell middens on Cape Henoko go back thousands of years and people still observe traditional shrine rites preserved in this district from ancient times. Therefore, Yanbaru meets multiple requirements for UNESCO World Heritage status. It "bears a unique testimony to a cultural tradition which is living." The area is an "outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture, or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change."

Sea Turtle and Okinawa Dugong, a  sacred cultural icon and protected natural monument. 

Photo courtesy: Takuma Higashionna

The international community, from marine scientists to environmentalists to indigenous cultural and historic preservation advocates, have supported locals and Okinawans for 20 years in efforts to protecting this invaluable world natural cultural heritage because the world recognizes its universal value and importance.

Hawai'i-based Ukwanshin Kabudan perform at Governor Takeshi Onaga's All-Okinawa Victory Celebration

Via Save Henoko, an informal group of Okinawans and Overseas Okinawans who view the preservation of the dugong and coral habitat at Sea of Henoko as integral to the preservation of historic, traditional culture and the protection of human rights and dignity in Okinawa:

Members of Ukwanshin Kabudan (traditional performing artists) from Hawaiʻi were asked to play kachaashii at Onaga's headquarters to celebrate the victory right after the results were announced. But before kachaashii, they took it upon themselves to sing Kagiyadefu, to celebrate the auspicious day in true Uchinaa tradition.

Thanks to Brandon, we were able to share in this historical celebration of Onaga's landslide victory over Nakaima in the Okinawa governor's election which solidly showed the Okinawan people's stance against the new base in Henoko...

MP Keiko Itokazu representing Okinawa at the Indigenous World Conference starting today at the UN headquarters in New York

(Photo: MP Keiko Itokazu)

Upper House Member of the Japanese Diet, Ms. Keiko Itokazu, is representing Okinawa at the Indigenous World Conference starting today at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Indigenous peoples around the world have gathered. Mr. Shisei Toma, of the Association of Indigenous Peoples in the Ryukyus, is also in attendance.

Groups and individuals for peace, including Okinawan Americans and Japanese Americans who live in the NYC area, are supporting the Okinawan delegation's appeal to the U.N. community regarding human rights violations under ongoing forced US military expansion in Henoko and Takae.

The traditional local cultures and histories of Okinawa are deeply intertwined with the islands' distinctive ecosystems. Indigenous sacred places called utaki are situated in forest groves. Many have been destroyed or are now within US military bases built on land forcibly acquired in the aftermath of the Pacific War and during the 1950's "Bayonets and Bulldozers" period of military seizures of private property for base expansion. The Sea of Henoko is also considered sacred because it is the habitat of the Okinawa dugong, a sacred cultural icon, and because of the magnificence and abundant biodiversity of sea's coral reef.

Coral reefs have been an traditional part of Okinawan (and other Pacific Island) cultures for many centuries. However, most of the coral reefs on Okinawa Island are now dead, because of landfill, pollution, and coastal construction. Marine biologists say the coral reef at Henoko and Oura Bay is the best and most biodiverse coral reef in all of Okinawa prefecture. Okinawans are seeking to establish a marine protected area in Henoko to preserve the dugong and coral reef habitat and interconnected rivers, mangrove forests in this beautiful eco-region.

Follow-up: 

On Tuesday, September 22, Ms. Itokazu spoke on the "fulfillment of the rights of indigenous peoples at the national level and regional level" at the conference. She described forced new military base construction, adding that, in spite of the strong opposition of Uchinanchu (the indigenous people of Okinawa), the state is continuing to force the military base construction. Ms. Itokazu's conclusion: Uchinanchu are being deprived of the right of self-determination, contrary to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

(Photo: MP Keiko Itokazu)

(Photo: MP Keiko Itokazu)

United Nations asks the Japanese government to respect Okinawan people’s opposition against US military airbase at Henoko

Upper House Member of the Japanese Diet Keiko Itokazu and Naha City Councilman Caesar Uehara

 testify before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

(Photo via Keiko Itokazu on FB)

Via Ryukyu Shimpo:

On August 20 and 21, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) investigated on racial discrimination in Japan. They also discussed policies on the U.S. military bases in Okinawa...One of the committee members stressed that the rights of Okinawan people to access traditional land and resources should be recognized and guaranteed. Another claimed that residents should be included in the decision-making process for policies that might affect their rights. They agreed that there should be local participation at the early stages of decision-making, especially regarding the U.S. military base issues...

To the Japanese government which does not recognize Okinawan people as “Indigenous People,” one of the committee members pointed out that it is important to consider how people in the Ryukyus identify and define themselves. Another pointed out UNESCO recognizes that Ryukyu/Okinawa has unique language, culture, and tradition and urges the Japanese government to recognize and protect such uniqueness...

One of the committee members claimed the Ryukyu Kingdom’s long relationship with Ming and Qing Chinese dynasties, the history of annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879 and assimilation policies promoted by the Japanese government all verify the indigeneity of Okinawans. He said it was wrong that Japan does not recognize this. Another said the Japanese government should respect Okinawan people’s will and guarantee their rights in light of this history.

MP Keiko Itokazu testifies about human rights violations in Okinawa at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Japan review in Geneva

(Photo via Keiko Itokazu on FB)

Via Upper House Member of the Japanese Diet Keiko Itokazu with Naha City Councilman Caesar Uehara at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Japan review yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland. The two Okinawan political leaders reported on Japanese government discrimination against the Ryukyuan people on August 19. They cited the Japanese government's use of riot police, security contractors, and military (Coast Guard) to force construction of US military bases at Henoko and Takae, against the democratically expressed will of the people.

The lawmakers asked for the UN body to support the immediate withdrawal of the Henoko new base plan; the withdrawal of planning and immediate cessation of Takae helipad construction; and he immediate closure and removal of the Futenma base.

UNESCO has recognized a number of Ryukyu languages (2009) and the unique ethnicity, history, culture and traditions of Okinawa, which was an independent country for 500 years before the Meiji Japanese military seizure in 1879. Human rights violations suffered by the people of Okinawa during US military rule (1945-1972) and the Japanese government (1972-present) are well-known. CERD has expressed strong concerns about structural discimination of Okinawans on the basis of ethnicity. However, the Japanese government has disregarded the indigeneity of the Ryukyuan people, despite overwhelming evidence, resulting in a continuing violation of their human rights.

Because of concerns, in the past, CERD has urged the Japanese government to engage in wide consultations with Okinawan representatives with a view to monitoring discrimination suffered by Okinawans, to promote their rights and establish appropriate protection measures and policies. However, the Okinawan people require more protection from the Japanese government's ongoing escalation of human rights violations in Okinawa.

Ms. Keiko Itokazu reported strong resentment and questions about the Japanese government's refusal to recognize Okinawans as a separate people; use of military violence to enforce human rights violations in Henoko and Takae, and promised follow-up actions.

-JD

Laura Kina's Blue Hawai'i & Wesley Uenten's "Okinawan Diasporan Blues"

"Graves By the Sea" by Laura Kina

In this excerpt from "Okinawan Disaporan Blues," included in Laura Kina's Blue Hawaii exhibition catalogue, Wesley Uenten describes the Japanese colonial rule's erasure of traditional Okinawan culture and ongoing resistance by a group of grandmothers and grandfathers, child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, to the US plan to turn the habitat of the Okinawan dugong, a sacred cultural icon, into another military base:

...At least on the level of cultural genocide, what happened to Okinawans was similar to what happened to Native Americans. It seems so familiar when I read about the...philosophy of the “Indian Schools” that prohibited Native American school children from speaking their own language or practicing their culture.... By the time that my grandmother was born in 1893, most Okinawan children were in schools, where they would be punished for speaking the Okinawan language and expected to worship the Japanese emperor. A large wooden tag with the words 方言札 (hōgen fuda), or “dialect tag,” was place around the neck of school children who spoke in the Okinawan “dialect.” The tag symbolically relegated the Okinawan language to the inferior status as a backward “dialect” of Japanese, while corporeally ingraining a sense of shame and fear in generations of Okinawans for speaking their own language and being their own selves...

Physical genocide did take place on Okinawa. Japan’s leaders knowingly caused about a fourth to a third of Okinawa’s population to perish in less than 3 months during the Battle of Okinawa when they used Okinawa as a buffer to hold off American troops heading toward Naichi (mainland Japan)...in 1945...

I stare at "Graves by the Sea." ...Departed souls encased in concrete tombs pushed up against each other. They are testament of the reverence for ancestors and tradition in Okinawa that contradicts the reality of the lack of space on Okinawa...There is a strong and powerful message that the ancestors and land is telling us through Laura’s work.

I end this essay at a time when I have just returned from a trip to Washington D.C. with an Okinawan delegation that was making a direct appeal against plans by the U.S. and Japanese governments to push ahead with construction of a new U.S. Marine Air Station on the clear blue waters of Henoko...At this time, both the Jp and U.S. governments are stepping up their attempts to push past unyielding local Okinawan opposition... Henoko is the site of a large thriving coral reef, turtle spawning grounds, seaweed beds, and an already endangered species of dugong. The blue ocean of Henoko will be no more if this plan goes through.

Most of the officials, politicians, and researchers we met in Washington D.C. [during the Jan. 2014 Okinawan Delegation] had made up their mind about new base construction at Henoko saying that it is the best plan... However, what the delegation was trying to get across to deaf ears was that Okinawans have stopped the construction for 18 years by placing their bodies in front of ships and equipment coming to start construction. Old people, as old and tiny as my Baban in my memories of her, have come to sit on the beach everyday in quiet but unrelenting resistance to American Manifest Destiny and Japanese fatalistic dependency on that destiny...

Wesley Ueunten is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. A third generation Okinawan, he was born and raised in Hawaiʻi and received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Vote by March 15th for sustainable Tokyo-based solar-sail cargo ship Greenheart - nominated for Royal Dutch Society of Engineers Prize

Your vote for Greenheart counts- Even in Dutch!

Via Jen Teeter in Kyoto, please check out the latest from Greenheart, a visionary renewable energy project based in Japan:

Creating the world’s first solar-sail cargo ship tailored to fit the needs of marginalized coastal communities is an idea that has propelled a small Tokyo-based international team closer to winning a major engineering prize far from home shore.

International NGO Greenheart Project is but one of 10 nominees for the Vernufteling Prize, to be awarded by the Koninklijk Instituut Van Ingenieurs (the Royal Dutch Society of Engineers), De Ingenieur and Technish Weeblad magazines, and a Dutch association of consulting engineers, NLingenieurs. The finalists were chosen from a field of more than forty submissions based on four criteria: innovation, economic worth, technological advancement, and social value.

The Vernufteling Prize is awarded annually to the initiative that is developing an imaginative project that promises to have a significant social and economic impact. Competitors were asked to respond to the challenge of creating ideas that both embody the social importance of innovative technology. The competition also seeks to make the important work of engineers more visible and widely recognized.

In line with the Dutch word Vernufteling, a portmanteau of inventor, engineer and a lot of creativity, entrants are encouraged to utilize a combination of new and existing technologies to solve real world problems. The winning project also must show potential to attract young people to technical studies and inspire them.

Over the past eight years, 83 engineering firms have submitted a total of 376 ideas, projects and innovative solutions to the Vernufteling Prize. In 2013 Arcadis took home the award for their innovative Winterhard Wissel which keeps railways free from snow and ice in the winter.

As Gert Schouwstra, a Dutch consultant at AA-Planadvies, who nominated Greenheart Project explained, “This project can really work. This year, we shall see how Greenheart will prove itself.”

Greenheart ships are customizable to meet the needs of the end user, whether they be used for fishing, fisheries monitoring, , ecotourism, cargo or passenger transport.

A unique feature is an open source platform which ensures that the end-users can have a say in how future ships are built without the financial and technical burdens of paying for patent rights.

Intentionally designed to be small scale at 32 meters in length and 220 tons, the vessels are designed to be easy to repair and service while maintaining the elegance of a yacht. Through its foldable mast/crane the ship can be maneuvered under bridges allowing greater upstream access, and lift items large and small on and off of shore, whether cargo, a haul of fish or even floating debris such as nets during an environmental cleanup mission.

Greenheart class ships promise to play a hefty role in restoring economic and ecological balance to transport in vulnerable and remote coastal communities, while setting an example that vessels powered by renewable energies are a practical alternative to fossil-fuel based fleets.

Voting by the general public is open from February 25th to March 15th through the Van Dag de Ingenieur (Day of the Engineer) website. After tallying up the votes, the Vernufteling prize winner will be announced on March19, 2014 at High Tech Campus Eindhoven.

To vote for Greenheart...

1. Go to this site: http://www.dagvandeingenieur.nl/vernufteling/publieksverkiezing-2014/
2. Choose "AA Planadvies-Groen vrachtschip voor eilandengroep" from the pull down menu at the top of the page
3. Put in your name and email address
4. Click Stemmen (Vote).
*No need to check any of the boxes there (The page is in Dutch and English)
The Vernufteling Prize is awarded annually to the initiative that is developing an imaginative project that promises to have a significant social and economic impact. If we win it will give us the wide public exposure that will propel us to finishing the construction of the boat and getting more people interested in joining us in changing the paradigm of shipping and waterway transport.

Drawing upon, and endeavoring to be compatible with, the rich sailing traditions of coastal communities, Greenheart is working to radically amplify access to the oceanic commons and distant markets, while interacting with the environment in a more equitable and just manner. Greenheart is intentionally open source small-scaled, durable, adaptable, affordable, energy-efficient, solar/sail cargo ship that is easy to service and repair. It expects to rearrange the balance of opportunities among rich and poor by making safe, long distance sea travel accessible to marginalized and excluded sectors of the world population.

ABOUT GREENHEART PROJECT

The Greenheart Project is an international non-profit organization founded in Tokyo, Japan with offices in Europe and Japan, preparing to build the world’s first fuel-free, container-ready commercial vessel. The small sail-solar ship is specially designed for use by communities in marginalized coastal communities and can serve as a mobile solar power station. It will be built in Chittagong, Bangladesh and launched as early as this year.

To learn more about Greenheart Project visit: www.greenheartproject.org
Pat Utley, Greenheart Director
patutley@greenheartproject.org
P: +81-3-5606-9310

Irankarapte! Ainu to Aou Concert event @Osaka, Feb. 23, 2014

Irankarapte! Ainu to Aou Concert event   日本語以下　

Sunday, February 23rd 13:30 to 15:30 (Doors open at 13:00)

Irankarapte Ainu to Aou! Irankarapte- Let's meet Ainu!

Song and dance concert based on beautifully illustrated Ainu picture books. Through this concert event children can learn about Ainu in an easy to understand way.

Entrance free!!

For more information contact:
Osaka Shimin koryu Center North
http://www.city.osaka.lg.jp/shimin/page/0000064688.html

(*Still looking for people to help out with the event, so if you are available get in touch through the minaminanokai facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/minaminanokai)

2／23日曜日 13:30(受付13時)〜15:30
出演:ミナミナの会
主催:大阪市立市民交流センターすみよし北 指定管理者 公益財団法人住吉隣保事業推進協会

場所:大阪私立市民交流センター
すみよし北ホール

「イランカラプテ アイヌとであおう」
絵本を通して唄や踊り、演奏を踏まえながら、お子さんから、わかりやすく
アイヌ民族を知っていただけるよう楽しいコンサートです。
入場無料(先着順)
※350名なり次第締め切りとさせていただきます。

お問合せ先
大阪市立市民交流センターすみよし北
地図 http://www.city.osaka.lg.jp/shimin/page/0000064688.html
〒558ー0054
大阪市住吉区帝塚山東5-3-21
☎︎06-6674-3731
📠06-6674-3710

【最寄駅】 南海高野線「住吉東」下車 5分 阪堺電気軌道「神ノ木」下車 5分

※人手不足のため、私達と一緒に前日のリハーサル、本番と裏方としてお手伝いしていただける方を募集しています。音響、証明、映像のお手伝いです。興味がある方はミナミナの会、フェイスブック上にてコメントいただければこちらからコメント通してご連絡いたします。
よろしくお願いします！

Stories from the spirit world and heart of Ainumosir @ Sakaimachi Garow, Kyoto - February 22, 2014

Ainu Art Project founder, artist and storyteller Yuki Koji will be in Kyoto for the first time in years to share his new hanga (woodblock prints) and stories from the world of the spirits. Nagane Aki will also be performing on the mukkuri and tonkori and tea and snacks will come with entry. **English translation not available.

Stories from the spirit world and heart of Ainumosir (note the play on words in the Japanese title!)

2/22 (Saturday) 15:00 doors open 15:30 event starts
Location: Sakaimachi Garow (http://sakaimachi-garow.com/blog/?page_id=110)
Nearest station: Karasuma Oike
Entrance fee: 2800円（with reservation 2500円）

For more information contact: information@sakaimachi-garow.com

NHK: "Ainu Find Their Voice"

Via Jen Teeter and Aotearoa Ainumosir Exchange Programme アオテアロア・アイヌモシリ交流プログラム:

NHK World (日本語は以下）has put together a story about our Ainu revitalization initiatives and Erana Brewerton's visit to Japan. With the main focus of the story being scenes in Nibutani of applying the Te Ataarangi method for Maori language revitalization to the Ainu language, there are also interviews of Maki Sekine and Erana. Through this five minute story, we hope that many people will come to realize just how hard and persistently we are working at the grassroots level for Ainu language revitalization.

You can also catch glimpses of these people and more!

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/newsline/201309261624.html

私たちのアイヌ語復興の取組みがエラナさんの来日とともに、NHK 国際のニュースで取り上げられました。マオリ語復興のテ・アタアランギ教授法をアイヌ語に応用している北海道、二風谷でのシーンを中心に、エラナさんや関根真紀さんなどのインタビューを紹介してくれています。５分間のニュースですが、地道な取組みが、たくさんの方の理解につながることを祈っています

South Dakota: America's "Secret Fukushima"

Ten-minute video via Charmaine White Face, of Defenders of the Black Hills, where the Great Sioux Nation, local residents, and environmentalists are working  to stop a uranium fracking permit and to make uranium mining companies take responsibility for spills, leaks; and to guarantee protections and restoration of any land or water they have contaminated.

The Black Hills arise in the Great Plains to a height of 7,000 feet. Charmaine White Face describes their historical and spiritual significance: "They cover a vast expanse of land from South Dakota, northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana, forming a sacred landscape for members of the Great Sioux Nation... More than 60 indigenous nations had been traveling to the Black Hills for millennia to conduct spiritual ceremonies, gather medicines and lodge poles.

Since the 1950's, uranium mining companies, seeking quick profits, have created thousands of uranium mining sites on both public and private land throughout the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.  Now the Black Hills are pockmarked with abandoned open pit uranium mines that contaminate the eco-region's air and water.

Now South Dakota is under siege by a Canadian mining company called PowerTech that wants to build hundreds of injection-recovery wells in Edgemont to extract uranium from ore formations hundreds of feet under the ground.  This method could deplete and contaminate  aquifers: the Rapid City Council opposes PowerTech's uranium fracking proposal.

[Alderman Charity] Doyle [whose background is water resources management] discussed the half-life of bi-products coming out of this mining procedure, and said she had heard people compare it to the same process used to put the uranium into the earth, but just reversing it. She said that would be like playing God, and if God wanted the uranium out, He would have accounted for that. Doyle also said Powertech can ensure safety with words on paper, but she can’t find any case of this mining process being done safely.

Prospective tourists and retirees have been scared away from the area by the prospect of breathing and drinking uranium particles. Mining near Edgemont (where uranium was discovered in 1951) has already contaminated the groundwater of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

(Radiation warning sign. Photo: Save the Black Hills)

Some places in South Dakota actually have higher radiation levels than Fukushima's evacuation zone, according to Nuclear Physics Professor Kimberly Kearfott, of the University of Michigan, who compared the readings obtained in northwestern South Dakota at the Cave Hills abandoned open-pit uranium mines.

The radiation levels in parts I visited with my students were higher than those in the evacuated zones around the Fukushima nuclear disaster...

More about the upcoming hearing  on the State of South Dakota's large-scale mining permit for Powertech Uranium's proposed mine scheduled  for the week of September 23, 2013 at Black Hills Clean Water Alliance's website.

For a partial overview of destruction cause by the nuclear chain (from uranium mining to thousands of nuclear test bomb explosions) on indigenous lands worldwide, please see "Nuclear War: Uranium Mining and Nuclear Tests on Indigenous Lands" published at Cultural Survival.

Sketches of Myahk explores indigenous Japanese roots - still alive in northern Japan & Okinawa

Sketches of MYAHK Trailer

スケッチ・オブ・ミャーク 宮古島スペシャル

Koichi Onishi's documentary film, Sketches of Myahk, is a fascinating exploration of Japan's obscured indigenous heritage still extant in northern Japan and  Okinawa:

"I think Aomori connections with ancient Japan are much like those of Miyakojima," said Onishi, adding that he intends to shoot his next film in Aomori Prefecture.

Miyako is pronounced "Myahk" by locals. Two types of songs have been handed down through generations: "Aagu" folk songs that differ in style from traditional verses of the main Okinawa island and "kamiuta" sacred songs...

"Aomori (Prefecture) is home to the Sannai-Maruyama archaeological site and many other ruins from the prehistoric Jomon period (14,000 B.C. to 300 B.C.). Psychics closely related to folk beliefs like 'itako' shamans are still very much alive in our everyday lives," Onishi said. "(Aomori and) Miyakojima share a common bond in the way they retain traces of ancient Japan."

More about this beautiful film at Asahi.

Background: DNA research has confirmed that Ainu and Okinawans are direct descendants of Japan's first people, the Jomon, who entered what is now known as the Japanese archipelago through the area now known as Sakhalin, original home (along with the Kuriles, Hokkaido, and northern Tohoku)  to Ainu. Therefore Ainu and Okinawan cultures give us a sense of the richness of indigenous Japanese (Jomon)  culture.

Geneticists have also confirmed that mainland Japanese have descended from intermarriage of Jomon and later immigrants from Asia who brought rice and metal culture to Japan during the Yayoi period which lasted from around 300 BCE to 300. The later-comers entered the archipelago through Kyushu. New findings show that cultural exchanges went in multiple directions, with Asian mainlanders adopting Jomon culture as well as the other way around.

Nuclear survivor Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner: "Remember"

Via the Hawaii Independent, nuclear survivor Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's "Remember":

On the 59th anniversary of the dropping of the “Bravo” bomb on my home, I find myself wrestling with what it means to remember, recommit and resist.

From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in my home, the Marshall Islands, all of which were considered atmospheric. The most powerful of those tests was the “Bravo” shot, a 15 megaton device detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini atoll – which was 1,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Since then, the US has continued to deny responsibility while many Marshallese continue to die due to cancer and other radiation related illnesses. In my own family both my grandparents passed away before I was born due to cancer and just two years ago I lost my ten year old niece Bianca to leukaemia. Radiation related illnesses endure into today, and many more of our family members continue to battle with the effects of those tests which took place over 50 years ago.

We Marshallese grow up with this history and these stories. We know them all too well. Not just stories of cancer, but also stories of babies born with no limbs, of stillbirths and thyroid problems, of families starving on outer atolls after being displaced from their own homes, stories of ash that fell from the sky that looked like snow. And then there are the stories of the land we lost – the beautiful bountiful Bikini atoll, how the elders cried as they were ripped from the shores of their ancestors...

 I am proud to say I come from a line of activists who have fought against these atrocities. My uncle Dwight Heine was the principal draftsman of the Marshallese protest submitted in 1954 to the UN regarding the nuclear test. The document he wrote is quiet, dignified, and understated. “Some of our people were hurt during the recent nuclear test,” he wrote, “and we have asked the aid of the United Nations, of which the United States is a member and to which it is answerable for its administration of the trust territory, to stop the experiments there. Or, if this is not possible, then to be a little more careful..."

It’s time that the next generation, our generation, picks up the torch from our elders and continues the fight for justice for our people. Oceania Rising brings together the next generation of activists - not just from the Marshallese community, but also from Kanaka Maoli, Chamorro, Okinawan, Japanese, and Tongan communities. This event is not only about honouring Marshallese nuclear survivors, but it is also about honouring our shared histories of solidarity building against militarization, imperialism and the impacts that it’s had on our Oceania. I am grateful to be learning more about these shared stories within our Pacific brothers and sisters’ communities, and I am grateful to learn more about my own history as well. It is this history which gives us the strength that is needed to continue to remember, recommit, and resist, as we continue the struggle to bring about change for our people.