May 23, 2015 - Kodansha release of I am Catherine Jane: "50 years ago, a US serviceman raped me too...I want to live my life again from today...With tears in her eyes & in mine, we embraced each other. I did not know her name. But to me, her name was Okinawa."

On May 23, Kodansha released the Japanese translation of "I am Catherine Jane" 

Fifty years ago, a US serviceman raped me too. For 50 years, I have lived in sorrow.

I am now over 70-years-old...I want to live my life again from today...

With tears in her eyes and tears in mine, we embraced each other. I did not know her name. But to me, her name was Okinawa.

This passage from I am Catherine Jane describes a meeting between a woman sharing her story of rape for the first time after hearing Fisher's shared story of rape and her quest for survival, healing and justice in the face of U.S. and Japanese government indifference to the assault.

Earlier this month, after giving speeches outside Camp Schwab, rape survivor Catherine Jane Fisher and over 30 supporters tied 100 meters of white ribbon in remembrance of the survivors raped by United States servicemen stationed in Okinawa since 1945, to promote awareness of violence against women.  The day before, 35,000-50,000 protestors attended the mass rally for Henoko in Naha.

A longtime supporter of Okinawa, Fisher clearly sees the interconnections between the 70-year history of US military rapes of Okinawan women and US military rape of the land and sea to build military bases. While the media is covering the ongoing Okinawan governent effort to save the coral reef and dugong habitat at Henoko from landfill and military base construction by the US and Japanese governments, background history starts in 1996 or 2006 or 1996, the dates of recent agreements between the two governments.

Australian rape survivor begins White Ribbon Violence Against Women" campaign 

outside U.S. military training base Camp Schwab

(Photo: courtesy of Catherine Jane Fisher)

This framing omits earlier history crucial for understanding the depth of the Okinawan movement: the  US military forcibly seized and demolished a vibrant farming and fishing community to build Camp Schwab during the 1950's period of "Bayonets and Bulldozers. This followed earlier seizures of Okinawan private property during and immediately after the Battle of Okinawa, when 400,000 Okinawans were detained in POW camps.

Fisher explains that many elder women protesters at Henoko and in those crowds are survivors of US military rape during this period.

The 1950s seizures throughout the prefecture were brutal, accompanied by assaults, including sexual assaults, against resisters. US military crimes against Okinawans, especially rapes, took place on a daily basis at this time, according to scholar Miyumi Tanji, in her 2006 book, Myth, protest, and struggle in Okinawa:

Victimization of Okinawan farmers and forceful acquisition of their land was combined with the physical violence inflicted on the locals personally...Violence directed towards the local populace by US military staff, especially rape, revealed the crudest and most brutal aspect of the power relations between the occupiers and the occupied...

'US land acquisition in Isahama and Ie-jima and the rape [and murder of 6-year-old Yumiko Nagayama] resulted the humiliation of all Okinawans, leading to what Arasaki calls the first wave of the "Okinawa Struggle.' ...These rallies became models for mass demonstrations in the community of protest of the future.

 Okinawan women protesting the forced US military seizures 

 of their homes and farms in July 1955.

On May 23, Kodansha released the Japanese translation of I am Catherine Jane in which Fisher relates the story of her uphill climb for justice after being raped by a U.S. sailor in Japan.  Vivid published the English-language version last year.

Damon Coulter's review at The Japan Times details Fisher's suffering and challenge to the indifference of the US and Japanese governments:

Fisher was physically raped in 2002 by Bloke Deans, a U.S. serviceman stationed at Yokosuka. Immediately afterward, she faced a psychological ordeal at the hands of the Kanagawa police force, who subjected her to 12 hours of questioning without food, drink or medical attention when she reported the crime. Finally, the United States government violated Fisher twice — first by giving Dean an honorable discharge, allowing him to leave Japan and flee charges, and then by later disdaining their own “zero tolerance” rape policy by refusing to acknowledge or take responsibility for their own corruption...

David McNeill's tells the even fuller story of Fisher's indomitable struggle in "From Yokosuka rape to U.S. court victory, ‘Jane’ commits her 12-year ordeal to print":

"I could have returned to Australia and closed my eyes, but somebody had to stand up.”

...Fisher won a civil suit against him in a Tokyo court in 2004 but the ruling had no jurisdictional authority in the U.S. Last year, after tracking Deans in America for several years, Fisher finally persuaded a circuit court in the U.S. to enforce that judgment for rape against him.

Fisher’s insistence that the U.S. military had helped Deans evade justice and that the Japanese government did little to help her pursue him was strengthened in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court by a statement submitted by Deans in which he claims a U.S. Navy lawyer told him to leave the country. The U.S. court’s decision was a victory for Fisher, but one that left her physically, mentally and financially exhausted, she says.

Fisher is now an advocate for rape survivors, campaigning for 24-hour rape crisis centers, and for making rape kits mandatory in police stations and hospitals. (The US government might consider funding these much-needed centers, as a matter of restitution and atonementl.)

Fisher is an esteemed member of the Okinawan movement for democracy, human rights, justice and healing which is characterized by intermutual respect and support, hallmarks of authentic community.  A visual artist and and author, Fisher created a FB page, Save Henoko, which focuses on inspirational images and thoughts to support the supporters of Henoko.

Born in Australia, Fisher has lived in Japan since the 1980s and has three sons.

Struggle for the Soul of Okinawa: "I saw so many military boats in the sea around 7 a.m. It reminds me of 1945."

Henoko on August 14, 2014. (Photo: Chie Mikami on FB)

Film director Chie Mikami on August 14, 2014, on location at Henoko : "I saw so many military boats in the sea around 7a.m. It reminds me of the history of Okinawa, year: 1945."

Today the Japanese government sent a military flotilla to Henoko, Okinawa, to put up buoys and patrol an "exclusion zone" in their plan to force drilling, dredging, landfill, and construction of a US military base at the the Sea of Henoko.  Observers said there were so many vessels, they were uncountable.

Japanese military flotilla surrounds the Sea of Henoko - August 2014. (Image: Ryukyu Shimpo)

US amphibious assault on Okinawa in 1945. 

Local residents have been protested and staved off repeated attempts military base construction at the dugong habitat and coral reef—the most biodiverse and best in Okinawa—since 1962. The current struggle has been ongoing for 18 years.

They are led by the Henoko elders, child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, the Pacific War's worst battle, and the only battle fought on Japanese territory.  In 1997, they created the “Inochi o Mamoru Kai” (Society for the Protection of Life) to oppose the destruction of the Henoko Sea, which fed them during the Battle of Okinawa, when there were no other food sources. The dugong and the sea both reflect and symbolize the Okinawan core value of Nuchi du Takara: the sanctity of life and the right to life for nature that nurtures life, and human right to live in peace.

85-year-old Fumiko Shimabukuro speaks at a June 28 rally at the Henoko Tent City sit-in. 

During the Battle of Okinawa, she suffered burns from American flamethrowers 

while hiding in a small cave with members of her family and three other families. 

Mrs. Shibakukuro joined the Tent City sit-in on the beach in 1996, when the plan was first announced.

 Mrs. Shimabukuro told the media in Dec. 2013, “This (approval) is not the end. As long as I am alive, 

I will continue to fight the government’s plans." (Photo: New Wave to HOPE)]

The islands have only been a part of Japan only since the late 1800s, when the Meiji government seized the Ryukyu Kingdom and renamed it Okinawa Prefecture. At the end of the Pacific War, knowing defeat was inevitable, the Japanese militarist government used Okinawa as a sacrificial pawn in a battle of attrition against the U.S. The fighting destroyed all the material culture on Okinawa Island and killed around 140,000 Okinawans, one third of the Okinawan population. After the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty were signed in 1951, Okinawa Prefecture was under U.S. military rule until 1972.  While Okinawa constitutes only 0.6 percent of Japan's land area, more than 70 percent of U.S. military bases in Japan were built there. Even after reversion to Japanese rule, the military bases remained.

Okinawans are comparing the forced expansion at Henoko not only to 1945, but also to the traumatic "Bayonets and Bulldozers" period of the 1950's, when the US military used coercion and violence to seize entire villages, the best farmland, the best coastland, utaki (sacred sites), and ancestral tombs throughout Okinawa prefecture to make way for  base expansion. Both Futenma in the middle of Ginowan City and Camp Schwab next to Henoko were built on forcibly acquired Okinawan private property.

This was also the period that the all-Okinawan nonviolent movement began. 250,000 rallied on June 30,1956 in Naha and Koza (Okinawa City). The Japanese and international media covered the struggle, generating global attention. The then president of the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the US Army asking it to halt land seizures and related human rights violations. Most of this history has been buried outside of Okinawa. However the Battle of Okinawa and "Bayonets and Bulldozers" remain a living part of the present for Okinawans who see the ongoing struggles as not new "anti-base" protests, but, instead, part of the latest chapter in a seventy-year struggle for property rights, human rights, environmental protection, democracy and peace in the islands of Okinawa.

Okinawan women protest US military seizure of their homes and land in Isahama (Ginowan) in July 1955.
Between 1954 and 1955, the US military forced owners from their property Isahama, 
to make way for the construction of Camp Zukeran, a training base and launchpad for the US war in Vietnam. 
(Photo: Okinawa Prefectural Government)).

In 1957, the US Army constructed Camp Schwab on land acquired by coercion that the Japanese government "leases" for the US  from local owners. The 5,000-acre base is used for live-fire and amphibious assault training, and the 300-acre Henoko ordnance depot, stores ammunition for most of the U.S. Pacific command.

In 1962, the US government began bombing the coral reef to build a military port. This blasts killed large numbers of fish and marine life.  Local resistance halted the destruction then (and again in 2004, the last time the Japanese government attempted a forced construction).

During the US military build-up in Okinawa during the Vietnam War, outsider organized crime gangs came to Henoko to open more bars and brothels. Members of the military trafficked drugs from Southeast Asia and sold military property in the black market. There were two discrete worlds in Henoko: the traditional fishing and farming village and a foreign wartime military subculture, serviced by a seedy, parasitic organized criminal subculture. Locals don't want to see the latter resurrected again, which would happen if the base construction continues.

Okinawan author Tatsuhiro Oshiro has written about Okinawa as a "sacrifice zone" where state power imposes sacrifice upon the weak.  In 2011, Oshiro published Futenma yo (To Futenma), a book of short stories that explores the human consequences of governmental abuses of power. In the first story, Oshiro addresses the history of Futenma through a family whose home and land was taken to expand the training base. The story ends with the heroine continuing to perform a traditional Ryukyu dance although the musical accompaniment is drowned out by the noise from U.S. aircraft training. Her determination symbolizes local Okinawan culture that refuses to be defeated by the heavy oppression of military bases. Oshiro explains. "My intention was to write about the identity of the Okinawan people who want to weave our history together and regain the land that's steeped with memories."

Oshiro's story also reflects the roots of the fierce struggle over Henoko, which may be viewed as an ongoing chapter of a continuation of the post-1945 struggle of Okinawans, a traditionally pacifist people, for recovery of local determination of their land and society.  Postwar U.S. military rule followed the Imperial Japanese pattern of using force to impose a militarist culture upon the islands.

Okinawans are fighting for their soul at Henoko, a place steeped in what little of traditional Okinawan culture survived: the living sea and the living Okinawa dugong, a cherished, sacred icon. After the Pacific War's destruction of almost all material culture, all that was left was the natural environment and intangible culture. The dugong and the sea, symbols Nuchi du Takara, the sanctity of life and the right to life for nature that nurtures life, and human right to live in peace are cultural forms of the Okinawan message to the world for 70 years, their dedicated witness for Nuchi du Takara was borne out of the wartime devastation they suffered because of a Japanese war with the United States.

Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Okinawa has become a focus for the study of peace because of the Battle of Okinawa, and  because Okinawans continue to appeal for relief from U.S. military bases and US military expansion in their prefecture. Former Governor (1990-1998) Masahide Ota, a child survivor of the battle, created  Okinawa International Peace Research Institute to study war and peace,  to introduce traditional Okinawa peace culture to the world, to lead Okinawa's transformation to an "island of peace," and build a global peace network, and to promote positive peace, peace education, and a peace economy.

Upper House Member of Parliament, Ms. Keiko Itokazu, 

protesting the Japanese government's installation of buoys to create an exclusion zone 

for drilling into and landfilling over live coral and dugong habitat at the Sea of Henoko.

(Photo: Ms. Keiko Itokazu on FB) 

Henoko residents had been supported by an all-Okinawa political coalition until late last year, when under claimed duress by the Japanese government, the current governor broke his 2010 campaign promise to protect Henoko, and signed an approval for landfill that was predicated on environmental protection information certified by engineers, not marine biologists or ecologists.

However, this summer the movement regrouped at the "All-Okinawa Conference" held in Ginowan City on July 27, to an overflowing crowd, under the banner:  “Stop the Enforced Henoko Works - Okinawa United in Resolve."  Takazato Suzuyo, who has long been involved in the movement for human rights and against base and military-related violence against women, issued a call, “At this gathering of people from all over Okinawa let us affirm our determination to really stop Henoko!”The conference resolution concluded:

We reject any future for Okinawa that would continue to be dominated by the bases. It is our duty to pass on to our children an Okinawan future full of hope and we have every right to build freely and with our own hands a truly Okinawan caring society.

July 27 "All-Okinawa" conference in Ginowan City. (Photo: Ken Shindo on FB)

Henoko residents have also been long supported by global peace, democracy, faith-based, and especially environmental advocates who repeatedly praise the wetlands, mangrove forests, rivers that make up the unique and delicate biodiversity of the Sea of Henoko's ecoregion. Its coral reef, the best in Okinawa, is renowned among marine biologists for its vitality and unique species. Most of the coral reefs at Okinawa Island are dead from landfill, pollution, and disease. The Sea of Henoko also has the largest and best seagrass beds, thus habitat, for the Okinawan dugong. The adjacent Sea of Kayo also has seagrass beds, but they're small, and planned landfill and base construction would degrade and eventually destroy them.

 

The dugong, a sacred icon, is of great cultural and historical significance in Okinawa.

(Image: Ryukyu Postal’s stamp to commemorate the Okinawa dugong's designation 

as a natural monument in 1966 (Via Save the Dugong Campaign Center)

In 1955, the Okinawa dugong, a revered and sacred animal for native Okinawans, was designated as a protected cultural monument by the autonomous Ryukyu Prefecture. Since 1972, the species has also been listed by Japan's federal government as a "natural monument" under the country's Cultural Properties Protection Law. It is also protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Because of the historical and cultural importance of the critically endangered dugong, In 2004, the American environmental law firm, Earthjustice, on behalf of Okinawan, Japanese, U.S. environment protection groups, and Okinawan residents filed a federal lawsuit , the "Okinawa Dugong versus Rumsfeld," in San Francisco, asking for protections for the dugong, under the National Historic Preservation Act. The case  is still open; a 2008 ruling required the defendants to negotiate with the plaintiffs regarding environmental issues and protection of dugong habitat. The plaintiffs are still waiting for this discussion. Therefore on July 31, Earthjustice filed a new lawsuit in the same court,  asking the US government to halt construction plans.

Background: 

"Okinawa’s “Darkest Year: The Battle of Okinawa, 2014," Gavan McCormack, The Asia-Pacific Journal, August 18, 2014.

“All-Okinawa Conference” Formed at Meeting of Over 2,000 People," Urashima Etsuko, The Asia-Pacific Journal, August 18, 2014.

”Assault on the Sea: A 50-Year U.S. Plan to Build a Military Port on Oura Bay, Okinawa,” Satoko Norimatsu, The Asia-Pacific Journal, July 5, 2010.

"Dugong Swimming in Uncharted Waters: US Judicial Intervention to Protect Okinawa's"Natural  Monument” and Halt Base Construction,"Hideki Yoshikawa, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Feb. 7, 2009.

” A message from Save Life Society, society for protection of all lives and livelihoods, Henoko, Okinawa, Japan,” June 26, 2008.

“Okinawan Dilemmas: Coral Islands or Concrete Islands,” Gavan McCormack, JPRI Working Paper No. 45: April 1998.

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

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

Moral Arc of the Universe Bends Towards Justice: Mayor Susumu Inamine, defender of Henoko, wins reelection in Nago

(Photo: Shingetsu News Agency)

Shingetsu News Agency President Michael Penn, who covered the campaign and election in Nago:

It's victory for democracy, popular sovereignty, citizen's movement against the bribes and intimidation from Tokyo.

Agree with Penn's POV.  See the reelection not as win against Tokyo per se, but, instead, as a victory for Okinawan and local determination to use established democratic procedures to protect the traditional community and beautiful natural environment of Henoko, a fishing village situated in an exquisite coastal area.

Penn's photo of the moment of the announcement of Mayor Inamine's reelection (after sixteen years of struggle in Nago to save Henoko, and especially after the shock of Governor Nakaima's abrupt late December hairpin switch from his 2010 campaign promise to protect Henoko) brings to mind this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, as Americans enjoy the peace and justice activist's birthday holiday weekend in the US:

"Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice...I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Mayor Inamine vowed to use his local authority to block the military landfill, proclaiming that his victory was an unofficial referendum on Henoko:

This election was easy to understand. It was about one issue, the Henoko issue...

Most of the politicians in Washington and Tokyo who have made deals concerning Henoko (and journalists writing about Henoko) have never visited Okinawa and this biodiverse coastal area, and, therefore, have no understanding of the precious ecosystem and cultural heritage at stake. It's much more than a "less densely populated area in the north of the island."

Biologists once called Okinawa the “Galápagos of the East” for its rich biodiversity. Although the herds of thousands of dugongs that once grazed on seagrass on Okinawa's coasts are gone, around fifty of the critically endangered sea mammals (cousins to the manatee) still swim with similarly endangered sea turtles in the coastal waters of Henoko. Together with rare birds, fish, crustaceans, insects (classified as rank 1, warranting the highest level of protection by the Okinawa Prefectural Government), the Henoko coast is still a prime habitat of the unique biodiversity of Okinawa. A colony of critically endangered blue coral was discovered in 2007. A World Wildlife Fund study found 36 new species of crabs and shrimps in 2009.  And Tokyo marine science researchers found a “rain-forest”-like variety of 182 different species of sea grasses and marine plants, four of which were probably new species, in Oura Bay in 2010.

In December 2013, Japan moved to designate Yanbaru, a subtropical rainforest (which includes the proposed military landfill site), a natural World Heritage site:

Environmental NGOs are concerned that the reclamation [landfill] and its concomitant introduction of invasive alien species like the Argentine ant would lead to the destruction of the vulnerable island ecosystem.

[The International Union for Conservation of Nature] IUCN has adopted three Recommendations/Resolution requesting the two governments [US and Japan] to review the construction plan.

The Okinawa dugong, a natural monument, is beloved in the mainland as well as Okinawa. Dozens of mainland Japanese environmental NGOs representing hundreds of thousands of Japanese people have supported their Okinawan counterparts and the elder residents of Henoko who have kept watch at a 24/7 sit-in Henoko since this struggle began in 1996.

On January 9, a plaintiffs group (and legal team of 126 people) announced they initiated a lawsuit seeking the cancellation of Nakaima's approval of the Henoko landfill:

Article 4 of the Public Water Body Reclamation Act requires that the landfill work properly and reasonably use national land. The act also requires the work to be environmentally friendly. The landfill approval by the governor does not meet the requirements of the act.

The plaintiffs and legal team are filing a suit against the Okinawa Prefectural Government. They seek cancellation of the approval. At the same time of the filing the action, they seek the stay of execution of the approval.

Kunitoshi Sakurai, a member of the Okinawan Environmental Network, and a professor and former president of Okinawa University, detailed the environmental protection problems in "Japan’s Illegal Environmental Impact Assessment of the Henoko Base," noting that Japanese backroom environmental assessment procedures and laws do not come close to the standards of other developed countries. The founding chairman of the Japan Society for Impact Assessment, Nagoya University professor emeritus Shimazu Yasuo described the Henoko EIA as the "worst in Japanese history."

Even a former Minister of Defense, Satoshi Morimoto, criticized what he described as the "sloppiness" of the Environmental Impact study and the concealment of “'inconvenient facts' of the appearance of the dugong...He asserted, "the Yambaru forest and rivers, whose biodiversity is recognized under both national and prefectural plans, cannot be protected under the planned relocation."

Additionally Earthjustice, a US environmental law firm,  the Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation (JELF) and  Okinawan environmental NGOS will file a new Dugong lawsuit in the US, at the same federal court in San Francisco (in which they filed the first Dugong Lawsuit in 2003):

The lawsuit aims to make the U.S. government stop the Japanese government from entering the area for the reclamation work. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of the United States requires its government to protect cultural heritage around the world. If the government’s actions could affect cultural assets in other countries it must take that impact into account...

The plaintiffs, including the Okinawa dugong and three Japanese citizens, as well as six Japanese and American environmental associations have brought another action against Secretary of Defense and the United States Department of Defense for violations of the National Historic Preservation Act. They allege that the defendants approved plans for construction of the Futenma replacement facility without taking into account the effect of the construction of the military facility on the Okinawa dugong, which is a marine mammal of cultural and historical significance to the Japanese people...

The plaintiffs are same environmental groups and individuals who filed the Okinawa dugong lawsuit in 2003, which they effectively won. In the interlocutory decision, the judge decided that the dugong is subject to the National Historic Preservation Act, and that the government not evaluating the impact on the dugong was a violation of the law.

Kagohashi said, “We considered protective measures for the dugong in the previous case, but this new lawsuit aims to block the construction involved in the landfill. The American Environmental Law is very strict when it comes to the destruction of the natural environment. Our chances of victory are better in the United States than in Japan.”

The first Okinawa Dugong Lawsuit was filed in 2003. The same federal district court determined in the interlocutory decision of Jan. 2008 that the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) applied to the Okinawa dugong as a protected species.

The new lawsuit will not only take protective measures for the dugong as the original lawsuit did; it will additionally more fully address the issue of military landfill construction. U.S. environmental laws are more comprehensive and impartially administered than Japanese environmental laws. According to legal experts, the issue of whether or not a ban on the construction is in the interests of the general public will be a central issue.

In 1966, Ryukyus postal stamp commemorates the dugong's designation as a natural monument. 

(Image: Save the Dugong Campaign Center) 

Kenji Utsunomiya: Nuclear-Free, Social Justice Candidate for Governor of Tokyo

Kenji Utsunomiya, former president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, is the embodiment of the best of progressive Japanese nuclear-free political and social vision. 

Last month, the lawyer participated in the November 11 Occupation by 1 Million People Against Nuclear Power Plants" that was hosted by the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes (an organization that has held nuclear-free rallies every Friday evenings since 3/11). 

His opponents, Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki Inose and former Kanagawa Governor Shigefumi Matsuzawa, want to continue Governor Shintaro Ishihara's neoliberal policies and expensive pursuit of the 2020 Olympics. A Tokyo Olympics would only benefit a few at the expense of the many in a metropolitan area experiencing increasing rates of homelessness and hunger because of structural poverty. Many neighborhoods in Tokyo are best characterized as slums and the homeless find the city's government increasingly hostile instead of supportive. 

Utsunomiya explains, adding that he would support job creation, public welfare and senior citizens: "Ishihara didn't care about enriching Tokyoites' lives. During Ishihara's tenure, the number of those who starved to death or went on welfare in the 23 wards doubled."

Inose, known for his chain smoking, supports smoking in public venues, despite the health consequences to non-smokers. He is also known for personal extravagance at public expense. In 2007, he had a private toilet was installed in his office at a cost of some ¥4.5 million ($50,000). 

Utsonomiya has dedicated his career to challenging structural poverty. As a lawyer, specialized in poverty-related law cases, including helping victims of predatory lending overcome the burden of multiple loans.  He even served as honorary mayor of a makeshift village for homeless workers in Tokyo's Hibiya Park in 2008. 

Utsunomiya has the support of former PM Kan, who supports a nuclear-free Japan. He  said he will cooperate with other municipalities to persuade the central government to go nuclear-free. The poverty lawyer promised to provide support for victims of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, promising to offer housing in Tokyo.

I want to push forward with a policy to abolish nuclear power starting in Tokyo...I absolutely cannot approve of nuclear power...

Okinawan author Tatsuhiro Oshiro: "Okinawa and disaster-struck Tohoku region sacrificed for Tokyo"

National sacrifice zones are part of every industrialized nation, located in areas where regional economies are not essential to national finance and industry. Nature and people who live in these national sacrifice zones are considered expendable. National sacrifice zones include communities and entire regions that "host" uranium mines, nuclear plants, nuclear waste sites, chemical plants, coal fields (mountaintop removal sites), fracking sites, oil fields, factory farms, uranium and nuclear weapons testing sites, and military bases.

Tokyo's use of Okinawa as a "national sacrifice zone" began during World War II, when Japanese government leaders knew they would inevitably lose the Pacific War against the US.  Some leaders, including Prime Minister Konoe, pushed for an early surrender, however his and other voices were drowned out by those who decided to "sacrifice" Okinawa in a last, hellish battle, seeking to prolong the war, in the belief this would result in better terms of surrender.

The cost of this decision: one third (100-150,000) of the population of Okinawa, 70,000 Japanese soldiers and 12,000 American soldiers; the dislocation of 90 percent of the Okinawan people, and the near-total destruction of material Ryukyuan culture. In the postwar period, Tokyo ceded Okinawa to Washington which seized and destroyed entire villages "by bayonet and bulldozer" throughout the prefecture, to make way for massive military bases used for weapons testing and training during US wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Even after the 1972 "reversion" to Tokyo rule, the US military bases remained.

In the 1990's, Washington resurrected expansion plans (including a massive war training base at Henoko and Oura Bay that dated back to the 1960's). Okinawans have protested this plan since its inception. 

Tohoko (along with Fukui) was decided upon as a national nuclear sacrifice zone also during the postwar period when US nuclear industry companies sought to introduce the "peaceful atom" to Japan. Eiji Oguma details Tohoku's history and the selection process (which exploited the region's economic poverty) in"The Hidden Face of Disaster: 3.11, the Historical Structure and Future of Japan’s Northeast", published at The Asia-Pacific Journal on Aug. 1, 2012. 

Mainichi writer Yudai Nakazawa article (published on March 16, 2012) gives voice to Okinawan novelist Tatsuhiro Oshiro's insights into the connections betweenTokyo's sacrifice of Okinawa and Tohoku.

Okinawa and disaster-struck Tohoku region sacrificed for Tokyo: Okinawan novelist

It was through Tatsuhiro Oshiro's collection of stories, "Hatsukayo," that I learned that hibiscus have a special place in the culture of Okinawa. I had arrived in Japan's southernmost prefecture amidst a festival celebrating the New Year in the afterlife, and the sight of people placing offerings of hibiscus -- known as "flowers of the afterlife" -- on their ancestors' graves in the cold rain was something to behold. It overlapped with Okinawa's tragic history.

Newspaper headlines that day were all about the U.S. military realignment, including the transfer of U.S. troops to Guam and the Futenma air station relocation issue.

"The papers here are like this all the time," Oshiro, 86, said as he glanced at the headlines. "I wrote some 20 years ago that Okinawa was a domestic colony, and I wondered at first if I'd gone too far. But these days, the expression 'domestic (internal) colony' has become widely accepted."

Looking over at the window, Oshiro continued: "It's cold these days, so I bury myself under the covers and wonder whether the people living in the disaster areas (in the Tohoku region) are warm enough. Who would've thought that Okinawa and the Tohoku region would be linked this way in solidarity?"

Oshiro says that the Tohoku region holds a special place in his heart. When he attended the award ceremony in Tokyo for the Akutagawa Prize, which he received for his novel "Cocktail Party," he had also traveled through Fukushima on the suggestion of a former college classmate.

So what is the "new solidarity" this writer -- who for years has focused on the suffering of Okinawa -- talking about? The answer is this: sacrifice that state power imposes on the weak. In other words, political discrimination.

The islands have been a part of Japan only since the late 1800s, when the Meiji government annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom and eventually renamed it Okinawa Prefecture. After the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty were signed in 1951, Okinawa Prefecture was put under U.S. military administration. As a result, while Okinawa constituted a mere 0.6 percent of Japan's land area, more than 70 percent of U.S. military bases in Japan were built there. Meanwhile, the Tohoku region, which relied heavily on the agricultural and natural resource industries, became an enormous source of labor for Tokyo. Furthermore, the electrical power produced by nuclear power plants that have been built in high concentrations in de-populated areas has not benefitted local communities, but rather Tokyo and other major metropolitan areas.

Both the numerous incidents and accidents that occur because of the military bases in Okinawa and the dangers of nuclear disasters in Tohoku have ostensibly been set off with massive subsidies handed out to local communities. However, we've arrived at a point now where we can no longer overlook the history of the weak being placed at the mercy of national policies, or the contradictions and inconsistencies that have long been left unaddressed.

"This imposition of sacrifice is a carrot-or-stick situation," Oshiro said. "To change this situation, there's nothing but for Diet members from Okinawa to do their job well..."

It was when Oshiro refolded his arms over his chest that a deafening roar was heard outside.

"That's a military plane," Oshiro explained. "They're always flying above, so this area's been designated as a noise pollution area. The nearby Shuri Junior High School is a soundproof facility. There are times when the planes fly even lower, and we have to stop talking altogether." This, I learned, was Okinawa's reality.

Last year, Oshiro published "Futenma yo" (To Futenma), a book of short stories. In the first story, whose title is that of the book, Oshiro eagerly tackles the Futenma relocation through a family who lives near the air station.

The story reaches its climax when the musical accompaniment to a Ryukyu dance is drowned out by the noise from U.S. helicopters, but our heroine continues to perform. Her determination symbolizes the local culture that refuses to be defeated by the heavy burdens of military bases. At the same time, however, the heroine's grandmother's plan to find a family heirloom buried on ancestral lands that have been seized by the U.S. military ends in failure.

In the book, Oshiro addresses uncompromising will and crushed hopes. "These two extremes represent the essence of the military base issue," Oshiro said. "My intention was to write about the identity of the Okinawan people who want to weave our history together and regain the land that's steeped with memories."

The Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami and nuclear disaster have forced many people from the Tohoku region from their homelands. Asked whether this tragedy is something that can be shared with Okinawa, Oshiro rips open a package to reveal the March issue of the literary journal Bungakukai. It features a debate between two of Oshiro's acquaintances -- Fukushima resident, novelist and monk Sokyu Genyu and former foreign ministry official Masaru Sato -- in a section titled "Interpreting 'Japan' through Fukushima and Okinawa."

Oshiro said: "I think it was Jan. 9 that Genyu stopped by here when he was in Okinawa to give a lecture. That's when he told me about his interview with Sato. Genyu said, "We have to do something that puts us in confrontation with the state.'"

In the magazine interview, Genyu said there was a parallel between the proposed construction of an intermediate storage facility for radioactive waste in Fukushima and the issue of U.S. military bases. Here, too, the government's failure to act has already led partly to the imposition of sacrifices. Amid the ongoing political confusion in Japan, is there any reason not to be pessimistic?

"Japanese people have grown accustomed to luxuries in their everyday lives, right? I wonder if an ideology or policy that will trim off the excess fat and desires from our lives won't emerge," he said. "But my outlook is not grim."

Asked why, Oshiro responded: "After the massive earthquake, those in the disaster areas didn't panic, and have been acting levelheadedly while being considerate of each other. That's hopeful. There's a very old concept of mutual support in Okinawa, too, called 'yuimaru.' If we're able to foster this spirit around the country, I believe that we'll be able to build a new kind of civilization."

Suddenly, instead of the roar of military jets, birds could be heard chirping outside.

After the interview, I got into a car driven by a local friend of mine, heading toward U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan. The city was in the midst of mayoral elections, and candidates and their campaign crews drove around, loudly appealing to voters for their support.

"Look, it's a KC130 refueling aircraft!" my friend said, suddenly. "It's a touch-and-go landing."

We watched as a dark aircraft made a sharp dive in the air right above us. Its explosive noise drowned out election pledges being shouted through amplifiers. This was everyday life here, I thought. Experiencing, if just for a moment, the "sacrifice being imposed on the weak," I was struck again by the weight of Oshiro's words.

(By Yudai Nakazawa, Evening Edition Department)

Jody Williams: "Demilitarization is not a dirty word"

Jody Williams' testimony on behalf of developing a global vision of  humane and environmental planetary security:

Demilitarization Is Not a Dirty Word

HUMAN SECURITY FOR GLOBAL SECURITY: Demilitarization is not a dirty word, nonviolence is not inaction, and building sustainable peace is not for the faint of heart

by Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1997)

The political, social and economic changes we all face are serious. Some might call the state of the world today chaos. The ongoing, dramatic changes in technology and communications are other elements adding to uncertainty and the feelings of insecurity that people around the globe are confronting. No one can predict the future but we can work hard to shape the outcomes.

Clearly there are huge obstacles to creating a world of sustainable peace with justice, equality and an end to impunity. A world free of militarism, armaments and the arms trade in which human and other resources are focused on meeting the needs of humanity rather than fueling conflicts and war. A world of sustainable development that nurtures our planet instead of continuing to devastate the environment and threaten life on earth. This will not happen over night. But worrying about the future is not a strategy for shaping it.

My own work, beginning with protests against the Vietnam War, has been against weapons, war and militarism. It is based on an understanding that sustainable peace is not simply the absence of armed conflict. The absence of armed conflict provides the bare minimum for the possibility of constructing sustainable peace based on socio-economic justice and equality. And to accomplish that we must change the understanding of security.

For centuries security has been defined as “national security” – which essentially has meant assuring the security of those in power and the apparatus of the state. Defending the state requires military power based on nationalism and patriotism. “Us” against “them.” How else could armies be formed that send other people’s children off to fight battles for resources, territory and to project the power of the state?

Now, with globalization where all aspects of life are increasingly and more rapidly interconnected around the world, it is time to move away from state-centric security to security based on the individual – “human security” not “national security.” The human security framework understands “security” as directing policies and resources toward meeting the basic needs of the majority of people on the planet: providing decent housing, education, access to medical care, employment with dignity, protection of civil and human rights and governments that respond to the needs of citizens. It means creating a world where people live with freedom from want and freedom from fear.

One part of being able to create that world is reclaiming and reasserting the meaning of “world peace.” It isn’t meditation, a rainbow with a dove flying over it, or singing peace songs. Nonviolence is not inaction and building sustainable peace must be understood as hard work every single day. We must all be active participants in change for the good. It doesn’t matter what issues people choose to work on – it could be global warming, an end to militarism, an end to poverty, or HIV/Aids for example.

What matters is that we all work on issues we feel passionate about and that our actions are for the benefit of everyone. By doing that our combined efforts enhance human security. We also must talk about our work in the context of human security so that people become familiar with the concept and understand the various elements that contribute to promoting and protecting human security.

Another aspect of creating a world based on human security not national security is to tackle demilitarization and the glorification of violence head on. It is an abomination that with the current global economic shake-down, countries still managed to find billions of dollars for weapons and the military while at the same time they are cutting funds for education, health care, job training, social services –the elements of daily life that are the basis of human security.

Demilitarization is not a dirty word. Civil society and national nongovernmental organization should confront demilitarization in our own countries. At the same time we must collectively press regional bodies such as the European Union, the African Union, the Organization of American States, and so on for global demilitarization. We also have another means of collective action, which is Article 26 of the UN Charter – not that we have illusions about the ability of the UN to seriously work for demilitarization. But every country that joins the UN commits to fulfilling the articles of the charter and Article 26 states:

In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating…plans to be submitted to the members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.

In the more than six decades since the establishment of the UN, the Security Council has done absolutely nothing to fulfill its Article 26 obligation. But the member states of the UN have not done a thing to pressure the Security Council on Article 26 either.

Collectively, global civil society should begin actions to force the Security Council to “formulate plans” under Article 26 as soon as possible. Knowing that they will do everything in their formidable power to continue to ignore those obligations, global civil society should draw up its own plans and recommendations for demilitarization and how to use the resources resulting from demilitarization to enhance global human security. We can develop strategies and tactics around our plans and recommendations to pressure governments nationally, regionally and internationally to begin the process of demilitarization.

With demilitarization, the possibilities of positive change and human security in our world would be limitless. Humanity has the right to the real security of sustainable peace not the false “security” of militarism, armaments and war.

Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit: The March 10, 1945 Fire (Napalm) Bombing of Tokyo's Residential Neighborhoods

Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit Plaintiffs/Defense Counsel/Support Society poster. (Image: Teruo Kano)

The Tokyo Air Raids
Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit* Plaintiffs/Defense Counsel/Support Society

At the end of World War II, the US took a "scorched earth" strategy and attacked 150 cities in Japan. Other than the disastrous damage by atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokkyo suffered the worst damage of them all.

In November 1944, the US started the air raids on Tokyo by dispatching the newly produced B29 airplanes from the Mariana Islands. At first, the targets were focused on the area of military industry. However, at the beginning of 1945, the US started the indiscriminate bombing to massacre the general public. They dropped fire [napalm] bombs and bombshells every day and night.

On March 10, 1945, the US made a bombing raid in the Kotoh area in Tokyo where the working people resided. After that, the US spread the targets to residential areas. The deck planes joined the attacks. Tokyo was exposed to almost 130 such air raids.

At the beginning of World War II, however, it was Japan that started such indiscriminate bombing in China. Japan almost destroyed Chongqing and other cities. We should never forget it was the Japanese Army that deprived many precious lives of mothers and children.

The number of fatalities of air raids in Tokyo exceeded 115,000; the number of wounded 150,000. And more than 3,000,000 people became war sufferers. 60% of metropolitan Tokyo fell into ruins, leading to the ending of World War II.

Air Raid on March 10, 1945

On March 10, 1945, when the strong north wind was blowing, Tokyo became a scene of carnage.

At dawn on March 10, about 300 B29s carrying full loads of high explosive bombs flew at a very low altitude over Tokyo Bay and started the bombing by creating an encircling net around densely populated Kotoh. Then they launched a series of attacks over the people who had lost all means of escape.

The flames ran through the roads and enveloped the houses and crossed over the canals and the Sumida River. The eastern part of metropolitan Tokyo was totally enveloped with raging flames. Although the air raid ceased within two hours, more than 1,000,000 people lost their houses in fire; about 110,000 were wounded; and about 100,000 died in the canals, bridges, and on the burned land. Most of these were women, children, and elderly people who were definitely not in combatant service.

In the world history of wars, there was no record of 100,000 soldiers being killed in a few hours in one action. In a sense, Tokyo was "the forefront" of World War II.

In December 1964, General Curtis Emerson LeMay, who commanded the indiscriminate bombing on Tokyo, was decorated with the First Order of Merit with the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government recognizing "his effort to bring up the Self Defense Forces of Japan after the war."

Children confined in a cell so as not to escape from the war orphanage in Odaiba, Tokyo, July 1946. (Photo: Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit Plaintiffs/Defense Counsel/Support Society)

*The Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit is the first group lawsuit brought by civilian victims against the Japanese government for neglecting its duty to help civilians after the Tokyo air raid by US bombers on March 10, 1945. The plaintiffs are seeking an apology and reparation for the damages suffered, insisting that "We must never suffer these horrors of war again."

Tokyo Air Raid Lawsuit* Plaintiffs/Defense Counsel/Support Society booth
at the 2007 Global Article 9 Conference in Tokyo (Photo:JD)