Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji - "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero

Our friends, Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji, performing "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" in Hiroshima 08/08/2015. Author/artist/vocalist/songwriter Alicia Bay Laurel and jazz multi-instrumentalist Takuji perform John Lennon's anti-war classics "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at a peace concert that was part of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 8, 2015, at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero in Hiroshima.

Peace for 70 years and infinity: MESSAGE FROM JAPAN to ASIAN COUNTRIES AND THE WORLD, 2015.

Via  SEALDs (Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy) Japan:

Published on Dec 24, 2015

《Peace for 70 years and infinity: MESSAGE FROM JAPAN to ASIAN COUNTRIES AND THE WORLD, 2015.》

Happy X'mas　そして、そろそろ今年も終わりですね。SEALDsで今年を締めくくる動画をつくりま­した。思えば激動の一年でした。法案は可決されましたが、今年得られたものはたくさん­あるはずです。戦後から70年。そして71年を迎え、戦後から100年たっても戦争し­ない国であることを願います。困難な時代にこそ希望があると信じて。そして一歩踏み出­す勇気を。
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・­・・
終戦から70年が経ちました。戦後日本の平和と繁栄は、先の大戦の大きな犠牲と引き換­えにもたらされたものです。私たちはいまこそ、この国の平和憲法の理念を支持し、それ­を北東アジア、そして世界の平和構築に役立てるべきだと考えます。自由、民主主義、普­遍的人権。それらの価値は、けっして紙に書かれた絵空事ではありません。人びとの自由­を護り、平和を築くために、過去から私たちに手渡された大切な種です。私たちがあきら­めてしまわない限り、日本国憲法の理念はその力を失うことはありません。知性と理性と­ともに、私たちは平和と、アジア諸国家の自由と民主主義の尊重を求め続けます。

Seventy years have passed since the end of war. The peace and prospect of post-war Japan were led by profound sacrifice of the war. We support the pacifist constitution of this country and use it for peacebuilding in north-east Asia and the world. Liberty, democracy, and universal human rights; these values are not just imagination. They are the important seeds that we were given by the past for defending liberty of people and constructing sustainable peace. The ideal of Japanese Constitution never loses its power unless we give it up. With intelligence and reason, we continue to claim for peace and respect for liberty and democracy in Asian Countries.

Iranian filmmaker & dissident Jafar Panahar (#SupportIranDeal): "War & sanctions bring about crises & crisis is the death of democracy, peace, and human rights...Let people choose their own destiny by ratifying the Iran Deal."

In 1995, Iranian filmmaker and dissident Jafar Panahi achieved international recognition with his film debut, The White Balloon, a 1995 film about a 7-year old Iranian girl on a quest to buy a goldfish for her family's New Year's Day celebration.  Depicted from a child's unique view of place, the city of Tehran itself plays a central role, supported by a cast of Dickensian characters who range from the kindly to the villainous.

Panahi's films reflect his deeply humanistic perspective on life in Iran, often focusing on children, girls, women, and the poor. His widely disributed 2006 Offside features a group of young Iranian girls who disguise themselves as boys (women are not allowed to watch soccer in Iran) to sneak into Azadi Stadium to watch the World Cup qualifying football playoff game between Iran and Bahrain.

In March 2010, the Iranian government arrested Panahi, his wife, daughter, and 15 friends, charging them with anti-government propaganda. Despite global support from filmmakers and human rights organizations, in December, Panahi was sentenced to a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media, or from leaving the country.

While appealing the judgment, Panahi made This Is Not a Film, a documentary feature in the form of a video diary of his house arrest.  It was smuggled out of Iran and shown at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and released on DVD, introducing Panahi, as a person as well as filmmaker, to people around the world.  In February 2013 the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival showed Closed Curtain (Pardé) by Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi, for which Panahi won the Silver Bear for Best Script.

As in the The White Balloon, Panahi casts the city of Tehran as a star of his newest film Taxi, which premiered  at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015, and was awarded the Golden Bear. Berlin Jury president Darren Aronofsky described the heart-warming film as "a love letter to cinema...filled with love for his art, his community, his country and his audience."

Jafar Panahar supports the Iran Deal:

I work with imagination, but not imagination alone. Imagination immersed in reality.

At present, I sense that what is happening in the US congress is imagination with no sense of reality. They think or they imagine that with sanctions and war, things can be accomplished. This is not so, this is not the reality of my country.

War and sanctions bring about crises and crisis is the death of democracy, the death of peace, and the death of human rights and civil rights. I ask the US congress to open their eyes to the reality on the ground and let people choose their own destiny by ratifying the Iran Deal."

More on the grassroots Iranian campaign for peace at "Prominent Iranians launch campaign calling on Congress not to kill Iran deal: Scores of high-profile Iranians, many of them sentenced to lengthy prison terms or enduring solitary confinement, express their support for the nuclear deal."via The Guardian:

Dozens of high-profile Iranians, many of whom have been jailed for their political views, launched a video campaign calling on the American people to lobby Congress not to jeopardise the landmark nuclear agreement.

The campaign includes messages from celebrated film-maker Jafar Panahi, Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and British-Iranian activist Ghoncheh Ghavami.

Many of the campaign’s participants have been persecuted in Iran for their beliefs or activism, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or even solitary confinement. But they have expressed support for the Vienna nuclear agreement struck in July between Iran and the world’s six major powers, calling it a good deal which could avert threats of war.

Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, one of the organisers of the campaign, said the video was intended to show “that those who have paid the highest prices for the cause of democracy and human rights in Iran are supporting the deal”.

The video messages were gathered, to show to the world “that not only the overwhelming majority of Iranians, but also almost all the leading human rights and pro-democracy activists, prominent political prisoners and the independent voices of Iran’s society are wholeheartedly supporting the Iran deal,” the activist, who spent five months in solitary confinement in Iran, said...

300,000 Japanese: "Protect the Constitution! Protect Okinawa from Shinzo Abe! Don't Start a War!"

Great video via Michael Penn of Shingetsu News Agency (SNA): Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs) protest against the Abe War Bill, forced U.S. military base construction in Okinawa, and in favor of the Peace Constitution, rule of law, and democratic society.

Michael Hoffman's "A political turning point for Japan’s youth," published at The Japan Times on August 1, 2015, explores the mass student movement for democracy and peace for Japan and Okinawa:

Somebody needed to make the point that Abe’s primary accountability is not to U.S. lawmakers but to the people of Japan. Cynical calculations that the people of Japan wouldn’t bother were not unreasonable...

Years pass and nothing happens — then, suddenly, something does, and nothing is the same. What is the catalyst that turns passivity into activism? It’s like asking why this particular straw and not that one broke the camel’s back...

On July 1, 2014, the Abe Cabinet adopted a resolution sharply reinterpreting the Constitution as permitting what for decades had been regarded as forbidden: a global military role for the “pacifist” nation under the name “collective self-defense.”...On July 15, after a debate whose striking features were the vagueness of the government’s explanations and its hamfisted bullying of opposition lawmakers posing awkward questions, the Lower House voted, brushing aside the doubts of Constitutional scholars and of the public...

That was it. The camel sank to its knees...Sunday Mainichi magazine ventured a bold headline: “It’s begun — 300,000 people surrounding the Diet!”

That figure — 300,000 — is deeply significant. It takes us back to May 1960. The prime minister of the day, soon to be ousted, was Nobusuke Kishi, whose administration forced through the Diet a revised Japan-U.S. security pact in a manner strikingly similar to Abe’s handling of the current security legislation. Three hundred thousand is the prevailing estimate of the size of the enraged crowd that massed in front of the prime minister’s official residence, shouting for Kishi’s head. They got it. He resigned a month later.

The 1960 protests against PM Kishi's ramming through of the US-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO)

drew millions of protestors from all walks of life in multiple protests over months. 

 Demonstrators at the Japanese parliament building, Tokyo, June 18, 1960. 

(Photo © Asahi Shimbun Photoarchives)

Will Japanese just be American mercenaries? Tim Shorrock & Christopher W. Hughes on the Abe revision of the postwar Yoshida Doctrine

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers in Tokyo, 1936

Robert Whiting's Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan paints a disturbing account of the corrupt, checkered reality of the American Occupation, which was instituted ostensibly to "democratize" Japan. Whiting explains that at the end of 1947, the real rulers of Japan were not elected political representatives, but “bosses, hoodlums, and racketeers  in league with the political fixers, the ex-militarists, and the industrialists as well as legal authorities from judges and police chiefs on down." While some Occupation officials honestly tried to reform Japan's political culture, the intelligence section of the American Occupation, instead, collaborated with the "real rulers" to reverse the course of the Occupation from democratization to restoration of the prewar system, including the remilitarization of Japan, to achieve U.S. postwar expansionist aims in the Asia-Pacific.

Long before the end of Pacific War, American Cold Warriors had decided Japan and Okinawa would serve as the launchpads for new wars in Asia that would begin in Korea and Vietnam. However, they were up against the Japanese and Okinawan people who wanted to rebuild their lives in peace. The vast majority of citizens, including liberal political leaders who had opposed Japan's wars in the Asia-Pacific, supported the postwar Peace Constitution, which outlawed war as a means of conflict resolution between nations.

General Douglas MacArthur attributed Article 9, the Peace Clause, to Kijuro Shidehara, who was Japan's prime minister during the drafting of the new constitution. During the 1920s, Shidehara was known for his attempts to counter the rise of militarists, promote disarmament and enact the 1928 General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (Kellogg Briand Pact) that required member nations to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. The statesman was finally able to achieve his aim in the postwar Japanese constitution.

However, under the terms of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and Security Treaty, PM Shigeru Yoshida acquiesced to some U.S. military bases on the mainland and the division of Japan and Okinawa in exchange for the end of the U.S. Occupation. Thereafter the U.S. instituted a brutal military regime in Okinawa: soldiers seized tens of thousands of acres of private property and bulldozed entire villages, to build the military complexes throughout Okinawa; residents were afforded no property or human rights protections. The Japanese government sacrifice of Okinawa to US military aims allowed Yoshida and subsequent prime ministers, from Ichiro Hatoyama to Ishibashi Tanzan, for over a decade, for the most part, to resist US pressure to violate Article 9 and remilitarize Japan.

This changed in February 1957, when Nobusuke Kishi, wartime minister of commerce and industry under General Tojo, became prime minister, with support from the U.S. Government. Classified as a Class-A war crime (participation in a joint conspiracy to wage aggressive war) suspect, Kishi had been detained at Sugamo prison only 9 years prior to becoming the head of the Japanese state. However, on the same day in 1948 that the U.S. executed Tojo and six other convicted war criminals, the U.S. released Kishi and the other remaining Class-A suspects.  All, with the CIA backing, resumed positions of power, after promising to support US military aims in Japan, Okinawa, and East Asia.

In 1960, as millions of Japanese citizens protested, Kishi repaid the U.S. government for his release: he sacrificed his political career by ramming through a new US-Japan Security Treaty (AMPO) through the Diet. The treaty allowed for continued US military bases in Japan and military occupation of Okinawa. However, Kishi was unable to achieve his wish to amend Article 9, to allow Japanese remilitarization in service of US wars abroad. His grandson, PM Shinzo Abe, modeling  Kishi's method, is now trying to achieve this goal by ramming through a unilateral radical"reinterpretation" of the constitution, instead of following legal methods of constitutional revision. Almost all Japanese constitutional law scholars say this violates constitutional rule of law.

Before his November 25, 1970 ritual suicide in protest of the Japanese Peace Constitution, Yukio Mishima barricaded himself at the Ichigaya Japanese Self Defense Force camp in Ichigaya, Tokyo. Speaking to the soldiers from a balcony, Mishima cried out, "Where is the national spirit today? You will just be American mercenaries! American troops!" What would the Japanese ultranationalist author think today, as the constitution he despised is under threat of "reinterpretation," precisely for that aim?

Parliamentarians protest forced passage of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960

Tim Shorrock's "Could Japan Become America’s New Proxy Army? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to alter a key provision of Japan’s constitution to lift the country’s 70-year ban on foreign deployments," published at The Nation on July 27, analyzes  the Abe administration's  radical move to "reinterpret" the Japanese Peace Constitution within the context of postwar US-Japanese history:

Over the last month, Japan has been shaken by the largest anti-war demonstrations since the late 1960s, when millions of students, workers, and ordinary citizens turned out to try to block their govt’s collaboration with the US war in Vietnam. The issue this time is the plan by PM Shinzo Abe to alter a key provision of Japan’s peace constitution to allow Japan’s “Self Defense Forces” to take part in overseas military operations for the first time since WW II...

Abe’s victory will transform Japan—with its surprisingly large, tech-driven military-industrial complex—into America’s new proxy army...

So who is this prime minister who has won the trust of the Obama administration while earning the enmity of the growing majority of its own citizens? Here’s everything you need to know about “our guy” in Tokyo:

• ABE’S LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS PUT IN POWER WITH THE HELP OF THE CIA AND BECAME ONE OF THE MOST SUBSERVIENT POLITICAL ALLIES THE US HAS EVER HAD.

...This was an easy shift for the corporate and financial conglomerates who backed Japan’s cruel war, according to Muto Ichiyo, a Japanese writer and activist who worked closely with the US anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The part of Japanese imperialism which was made powerless after the defeat in the war wanted, of course, to revive itself,” Muto once explained to me in Tokyo. “But they knew perfectly well that the situation had changed. They knew also that fighting against America again would be both impossible and purposeless. So they adopted a very clear-cut strategy: Japan will concentrate on the buildup of the economic base structure of imperialism, while America will practically rule Asia through its military forces.”

• ABE, WHO WAS PREVIOUSLY PM FROM 2006 TO 2007, REPRESENTS THE MOST RIGHT-WING FACTION OF THE PRO-AMERICAN LDP, AND SPEAKS FOR A VIRULENT MINORITY OF POLITICIANS AND CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS WHO IDEALIZE JAPAN’S WW II EMPIRE IN EAST ASIA AND WANT TO RESTORE ITS GREATNESS IN A MILITARY ALLIANCE WITH THE UNITED STATES...

• THE “UNFINISHED BUSINESS” OF AN EXPANDED US-JAPAN MILITARY ALLIANCE HAS BEEN PUSHED HEAVILY BY US NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIALS FROM BOTH THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES FOR DECADES...

Parliamentarians protest forced passage of Abe's War Bill.

Photo: KYODO via The Japan Times

Christopher W. Hughes' "An ‘Abe Doctrine’ as Japan’s Grand Strategy: New Dynamism or Dead-End?", published at The Asia-Pacific Journal on July 21, 2015, describes the loss of Japanese sovereignty under the radical Abe doctrine.  The current administration signals the end of relative peace and prosperity that Japan enjoyed [albeit at the expense of Okinawan suffering] in the conservative postwar period:

Abe’s diplomatic agenda...might be labeled as a doctrine capable...displacing, the doctrine of PM Yoshida Shigeru that has famously charted Japan’s entire post-war international trajectory. In contrast to Abe’s more muscular international agenda, the Yoshida Doctrine’...has long emphasized for Japan the need for a pragmatic and low-profile foreign policy, a highly constrained defense posture, reliance but not over-dependence on the US-Japan security treaty, and the expedient rebuilding of economic and diplomatic ties with East Asian neighbors...

Abe has only served two and half years as PM in this stint and may enjoy several more years...to continue to pursue his radical agenda. But the probability is that the Abe Doctrine, whilst making substantive differences to Japan’s foreign and security policy, will continue to fall short of its ambitions, and perhaps ultimately run into the sand. This is because of three fundamental inherent and irreconcilable contradictions. Essentially, these result from the fixation of the Abe Doctrine on attempting to escape the post-war order and the humiliations to national pride and sovereignty imposed during that period, and the fact that this in many ways only leads to Japan becoming further entrapped in the past with resultant tensions for the implementation of current policies and relations....

Abe’s hopes for more equal ties with the US cannot by definition materalize as long as Japan continues to lock itself into dependency on the US in a range of political, economic and security affairs. Abe’s attempts to strengthen Japan’s great power profile through deepening integration into the military alliance can only really spell dependency...the reality is that the Abe Doctrine is in many ways reducing Japan’s autonomy in international affairs, and this will only be compounded as its revisionism leaves it more isolated in East Asia with a limited range of other feasible regional partners.

One of many July rallies against the Abe war bill & forced military base construction in Okinawa. 

(Photo: Anti-war Committee of 1,000)

Women Cross DMZ: "Every step for peace is important!."

Via journalist Tim Shorrock: "Every step for peace is important!" "We're here because we don't believe in war!

The women who just crossed the DMZ include Suzuyo Takazato, co-founder of Okinawa Women Against Military Violence, Ann Wright), Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, an Article 9 and Okinawa supporter, Christine Ahn, a Korea scholar. This action reflects decades of cross-border interconnections between women's networks working for peace and democracy for all of East Asia and the world.

Great article by Jon Letman: "These Women Have Crossed the Line: 30 activists cross North Korea DMZ for peace":

In an historic move, a group of global feminist activists march into the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to create a space for a new type of conversation about truly ending the Korean war.

At the time of this blog post in Seoul and Pyongyang it’s already Sunday, May 24th, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, when a group of more than 30 women are scheduled to cross the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at Kaesong from North Korea into South Korea. Their goal: to draw attention to Korea’s “forgotten” and unfinished war, and move toward a real peace that can reunite families and, perhaps, a divided nation...

The Korean War (officially 1950-53) stands out for its bloody toll. Some 4 million people, mostly civilians, perished. Although a “temporary” cease-fire was signed, the last 62 years have been marked by a protracted cold war defined by ongoing threats by both sides of the DMZ, decades of profligate military spending, and what is effectively a permanent state of near-war and the fear of attack. The idea to walk from North Korea into South Korea began with a dream that lead organizer Christine Ahn had several years ago. The concept grew after Ahn connected with feminist icon Gloria Steinem who took a public stand in 2011 against the militarization of South Korea’s Jeju island.

The movement evolved into WomenCrossDMZ as Nobel Peace Prize laureates Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia joined Ahn, Steinem and what has grown to more than 30 women from South Korea, Japan, the US, Britain, Australia--at least 15 countries, in all.

Gwyn Kirk, a founding member of Women for Genuine Security, and one of the DMZ marchers, says WomenCrossDMZ is intended to create a space for a new type of conversation about ending the Korean war once and for all. After more than 60 years of tit-for-tat provocations, costly and dangerous brinksmanship and outright nuclear threats, Kirk says it’s time to create a different future.

That this movement is organized entirely by women is natural, says Kirk, pointing to UN Security Resolution 1325 which reaffirms “the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction…”

The visionaries are being criticized by mostly male (patriarchal?) journalists who appear threatened by their move to shift public narratives dominating political commentary in East Asia from that of fear and aggression to those of hope and reconciliation:

Independent investigative journalist Tim Shorrock had a different take. In an email from Seoul, he called the DMZ march “an important milestone because it runs against the grain of the militarist approach to Korea taken by the Obama administration and the hostility of the South Korean government.”

Shorrock, who has covered Korea and Japan for more than three decades, said the women’s march and symposia held in Pyongyang and later Seoul, sends a message to the North that peace and reconciliation are possible. He hopes the march will also spur the U.S. to “take measures to defuse the tense situation in Korea and adopt a more flexible approach to settling its differences with North Korea.”

Christine Ahn cuts to the chase of the tragic, absurd 60-year stalemate:

WomenCrossDMZ, Ahn says, seeks to “get to the root cause of the issue of divided families” and what she calls “crazy militarization” and “crazy repression” of democracy in both North and South Korea...

Ahn describes WomenCrossDMZ as “peace women” who want to find a peaceful resolution to the Korean stalemate. To do that, she says, requires listening, understanding, dialogue and a degree of empathy which is absent today. Dehumanizing the other side won’t bring peace, Ahn says. “It’s a tough place to be, but I really believe there is no other alternative.”

Tim Shorrock on the Kwanju Uprising in 1980 & Women Cross DMZ on May 24, 2015

Via our friend, journalist Tim Shorrock, who traveled to Korea this week to receive an honorary citizenship of Kwangju, and to report on the Women Cross DMZ.

On May 24, 2015, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, Gloria Steinem, Christine Ahn, and Suzuyo Takazato, founder of Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, and 26 women peacemakers from around the world will walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for an end to the Korean War and for a new beginning for a reunified Korea. They will cross the 2-mile wide De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) that separates millions of Korean families as a symbolic act of peace.

Tim Shorrock, the son of missionaries, grew up in Japan. His parents were colleagues of Toyohiko Kagawa, a Presbyterian minister who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his prewar and postwar peace activism in Japan and East Asia.  Shorrock is one of the most insightful and sensitive observers of Japan, Korea, and East Asia. His cross-border upbringing has given him a wide field of vision on this history, and his perspectives are always deeply grounded in humanitarian and democratic values.

His investigative reportage exposed the US role in South Korea in 1979 and 1980 when the  Carter administration supported the South Korean military "as it moved to crush the Kwangju Uprising, the largest citizens’ rebellion in the south since the Korean War ended in 1953."

As a journalist, I’ve been intimately involved with Kwangju since the first days of the uprising. In May 1980, as a student activist at the University of Oregon, I helped distribute some of the first on-scene reports of the military atrocities in Kwangju smuggled out of South Korea by Christian human rights groups and American missionaries.

Later that decade, I was one of the only journalists to visit Kwangju and document what had happened there. And over the course of the 1990s I obtained nearly 4,000 declassified documents that repudiated the official U.S. story that American officials and generals had no involvement in the events that led up to the rebellion.

5/3 - Available for online viewing: John Junkerman's Japan's Peace Constitution

Full-length version of John Junkerman's 2005 documentary film, Japan's Peace Constitution available for online viewing from 5/3, Constitution Day, until 5/7, courtesy of Siglo Films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1gQtnDvMfM&feature=youtu.be. Film description:

This timely, hard-hitting documentary places the ongoing debate over the constitution in an international context: What will revision mean to Japan's neighbors, Korea and China? How has the US-Japan military alliance warped the constitution and Japan's role in the world? How is the unprecedented involvement of Japan's Self-Defense Force in the occupation of Iraq perceived in the Middle East?

Through interviews conducted with leading thinkers around the world, the film explores the origins of the Constitution in the ashes of war and the significance of its peace clauses in the conflicted times of the early 21st century. Key interviews include:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower

Paris-based social theorist Hidaka Rokuro

Beate Sirota Gordon, drafter of the equal-rights clause of the Constitution

Political philosopher and activist Douglas Lummis

Political scientist Chalmers Johnson

Kang Man-Gil, president of Sangji University, South Korea

Shin Heisoo, co-representative, Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan

Korean historian Han Hong Koo

Chinese filmmaker and writer Ban Zhongyi

Syrian writer Michel Kilo

Lebanese journalist Josef Samaha

Linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky

Director John Junkerman is an American filmmaker, living in Tokyo. His first film, Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, was coproduced with John Dower and nominated for an Academy Award. His 2002 film, Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times, also produced by Siglo, received widespread theatrical distribution in Japan, the US, and Europe.

A companion book in Japanese, including the complete interviews with John Dower, Hidaka Rokuro, Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky, Beate Sirota Gordon, and Han Hong Koo has been published by Foil.

New Face of Empire v. the Anti-War Committee of 1000: No base in Henoko, Okinawa! NO WAR 4.26 Shibuya Sound Parade & 4.27 "Protect the Peace Constitution" Action

(Photo: Anti-War Committee of 1000)

The Anti-War Committee of 1000 (co-founded last year by Nobel Prize Laureate Kenzaburo Oe, former Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota,and other Japanese and Okinawan social and cultural leaders) brought the ubiquitous pink Okinawa Dugong balloon to Tokyo's Shibuya district on Sunday for the No base in Henoko, Okinawa! NO WAR 4.26 Shibuya sound parade. About 1000 people attended the "NO WAR in Shibuya! Solidarity in the struggle for Okinawa" rally, which overlapped with the Rainbow Pride parade.

(Photo: Anti-War Committee of 1000)

This is one of the many ongoing  protests in mainland Japan and Okinawa, opposing the Abe administration goal of reviving the Japanese wartime military order under US hegemony. Many onlookers see in the domestic struggle as a replay of the prewar Japanese political contest between pacifists and militarists.  And as a replay of the massive protests against the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO) forced through the Japanese Diet by PM Abe's grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi. The main point of opposition was that it would allow U.S. military bases to remain on Japanese and Okinawan soil.

Hundreds of thousands protested passing of the

 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the US andJapan (ANPO) 

that PM Nobusuke Kishi, grandfather of PM Abe, forced through 
the Japanese Diet on May 20, 1960, at the sacrifice of his political career. 

On Monday, the Anti-War Committee of 1000 held another rally at the PM's residence to protest the Abe administration's revision of US-Japan military guidelines which call for the increased integration of the US and Japanese militaries. Approximately 800 people participated in the 4.27 action.

The US has pushed for military integration with Asian countries since the first years of the Cold War.  President Eisenhower articulated the key concept in the early 1950s: "If there must be a war there in Asia, let it be Asians against Asians."  The Nixon Doctrine announced in Guam in 1969 consolidated the US government idea of international military integration under US domination. Historian John Dower's description of the Nixon Doctrine (in "Asia and the Nixon Doctrine: The New Face of Empire," a chapter in Open Secret: The Kissinger-Nixon Doctrine in Asia, published in 1970), also describes the motivation behind the ongoing integration:

...fundamentally a cost-conscious policy, aimed at maintaining a major U.S. role in Asia at less cost in both dollars and American lives. This combination has been given the policy a racist cast perhaps best illustrated by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker's comment that [this] means changing 'the color of the corpses...

While the primary thrust of the Doctrine is military and budgetary, this thrust interlocks with important considerations concerning the future economic development of Asia...

(Photo: Anti-War Committee of 1000)

Dower added that the US military and economic globalization strategy may be traced back to the Truman era:

...represents ittle more than the new face of American empire. It applies cosmetics to the scarred strategies of the past; here and there, where the old features of imperium have become particularly battered, there is even a bit of strategic plastic surgery. At this stage in history, after..decades of often tragic American policy in Asia, one looks for new questions, sensibilities, and committments which strike to the root of affairs...Upon close examination, it is fundamentally not even a new policy, but rather a pastiche of rhetoric and programs familiar since the early years of the cold war

(I)...containment remains the framework of miiltary strategy...and the U.S has reaffirmed its commitment to counterrevolution.

(II)The network of American bases and manpower commitments abroad is being rationalized and restructured, not reconsidered.

(III) Client armies are being developed to replace American combat troops in crusades largely defined by Washington and at costs to both Asia and the U.S. which are as yet incalculable...

(V) The possibility of the United States initiating nuclear wr in Asia has been immeasurably increased.

(VI) Economic policies remain structured in such a way that many Asian countries face  the prospect of becoming locked into permanent dependency as the neocolonies of the US...

(Photo: Anti-War Committee of 1000)

More:

"EDITORIAL: Revised Japan-U.S. defense guidelines a dangerous departure from pacifist credo", The Asahi Shimbun, April 28, 2015: 

The guidelines for Japan-U.S. defense cooperation have been revised for the first time in 18 years.

The new guidelines, which confirm the direction of the security policies of the Japanese and the U.S. governments, call for “seamless” and “global” security cooperation between the two countries. They will accelerate the “integration” of the Self-Defense Forces with U.S. forces...

Underlying the revision is the Abe administration’s policy initiative to change the government’s traditional interpretation of the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise its right to collective self-defense. This radical shift in security policy was formally endorsed by the Cabinet’s resolution in July last year.

Proposed security legislation in line with the Cabinet decision is the focus of the current Diet session. Although the Diet has yet to start debating the legislation, the new guidelines already reflect the Cabinet decision to make it possible for Japan to use its right to collective self-defense. They also include the SDF’s overseas minesweeping operations, an issue over which the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, are at odds...

"Japanese Catholic leaders voice concern over Abe administration in peace message", The Asahi Shimbun, April 28, 2015:

Dated Feb. 25, the statement read: “Seventy years after the war, memory of it is fading along with memories of Japanese colonial rule and aggression with its accompanying crimes against humanity. Now, there are calls to rewrite the history of that time, denying what really happened.

“The present government is attempting to enact laws to protect state secrets, allow for the right of collective self-defense and change Article 9 of the Constitution to allow the use of military force overseas.”

Kazuo Koda, a bishop from the archdiocese of Tokyo who was involved in drafting the document, said he and other priests were initially reluctant to argue specific policy measures. “But we became convinced that we must speak out with clarity that these are wrong,” he said.

"Oe vows to continue work of late Article 9 torchbearer Okudaira", The Asahi Shimbun, April 4, 2015:

Nobel-winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe has stressed that he and others are ready and willing to carry the torch lit by the late constitutional scholar Yasuhiro Okudaira, a leading supporter of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

Oe was one of six people who addressed a rally April 3 on the legacy of Okudaira, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo who died in January at age 85. About 900 intellectuals and activists attended the gathering in Chofu, Tokyo.

The writer said Okudaira believed that Article 9, the clause that outlaws war, has played a major role in molding the character of Japanese who grew up in the postwar period.

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.

Okinawa International Peace Research Institute: Ie Island, April 16, 1945

Photograph of the US invasion of Ie Island (Iejima) on April 16, 1945, via Okinawa International Peace Research Institute.

The US training bases on the island date back to airstrips built in April 1945 to firebomb Japanese cities during the last months of WWII. US soldiers burned down Ie islander houses, and relocated the Ie islanders, housing them in camps in the northern part of Okinawa's main island. The islanders were not allowed to return until  two years later, even though the Japanese government surrendered 4 months after the US invasion. When they returned many residents found their farms and homes transformed into a US military base, not for the invasion of Japan, of course, but for weapons testing and war training.

The Okinawan nonviolent struggle for return of seized lands, justice, and peace began at Ie Island, under Shoko Ahagon, founder of the Okinawan civil rights movement, after the US military invaded again in 1955 to violently seize even more farmland for a bomb testing range.

More on Iejima:

Iejima: an island of resistance: Jon Mitchell traces the roots of Okinawa's civil rights movement" (JT, May 22, 2011) 

Hibakusha stands with Okinawans in call to save dugong & coral reef natural cultural heritage site

Sign: The Sea is the Mother of our Heart. 

Photo of Mr. Yonezawa at Henoko via Sunshine Miyagi on Twitter.

Hiroshima nuclear bomb survivor, Mr. Tetsushi Yonezawa, stands with Okinawans, in call to save the coral reef and dugong habitat at Henoko, Okinawa's most important natural cultural heritage site, from US-Japanese government  destruction. The ecoregion is home to the critically endangered Okinawa dugong, a natural monument and beloved cultural icon, and Okinawa's only fully intact and best coral reef.  The area is a living manifestation of the most important Okinawan values: Nuchi du Takara, the right to life, including the right to life of nature.

Mr. Yonezawa witnessed the nuclear bomb hitting Hiroshima from a streetcar when he was 11-years-old.  He wrote a book about his experience after the Fukushima multiple meltdowns spoke to his conscience about the need to publicly witness for a peaceful, nuclear-free world.

The Asahi published a short account of Mr. Yonezawa's memories last year:

"Something flashed somewhere with a strong blinding light. Spontaneously, I closed my eyes. Then, I heard a tremendous sound that was the most terrible sound I have ever heard. It was like a hundred thunderclaps crashing all at once just a short distance away."

...As the streetcar approached the front of the Fukuya department store at the center of downtown, the A-bomb exploded. They were then about 750 meters (0.5 mile) from the hypocenter. It is said that the bomb blast that hit them had a wind velocity of some 220 meters (720 feet) per second. The windows of the streetcar all broke at once and the streetcar filled with screams.

Urgent Appeal by Nobel Prize Laureate OE Kenzaburo and 20 other leading Japanese intellectuals calling for the immediate suspension of construction of the US military base at Henoko, Okinawa.

Photo: Nobelprize.org

Urgent Appeal by Nobel Prize Laureate OE Kenzaburo and 20 other leading Japanese intellectuals calling for the immediate suspension of construction of the US military base at Henoko, Okinawa.

We are deeply concerned about issues surrounding the construction of an American military base in Henoko, Okinawa. The will of the people of Okinawa prefecture is beyond doubt. INAMINE Susumu, who opposed construction of the military base in his election manifesto, was reelected mayor of Nago City in an election held in January 2014. In the November election of the prefectural governor, ONAGA Takeshi, who also opposed construction, defeated the incumbent NAKAIMA Hirokazu by an overwhelming 100,000 votes; and in the general election held in December, anti-construction candidates won every seat. The fierce determination of the people of Okinawa prefecture to oppose construction of the American military base at Henoko has been demonstrated by “all Okinawa” in a way that transcends ideology and creed, politics and party affiliation.

The Abe government, nevertheless, is aggressively pressing ahead with land reclamation, using as justification the Public Waters Reclamation Accord signed by the previous governor Nakaima, who late in 2013 reneged on his election manifesto. The outrageous conduct of the national government is an act of violence that insults the will of the Okinawan people and destroys the foundation of democracy and regional autonomy in Japan.

The new governor has decided to establish an “Independent Committee on Procedures Involved in the Public Waters Reclamation Accord with Regard to the Construction of a Replacement Facility for the Futenma Airfield” (henceforth “Independent Committee”) to begin investigating whether there were any legal irregularities in the procedures undertaken by the previous governor NAKAIMA Hirokazu in concluding the Public Waters Reclamation Accord. In other words, there is a real possibility that the legitimacy of the reclamation accord, or the environmental assessment upon which it rests, may be stripped away. For the government of a purportedly democratic nation, the obvious course of action should be to suspend landfill operations at least during the period of investigation.

Governor Onaga announced a new decision on March 23. He ordered the Okinawa Defense Bureau to halt all operations, including boring exploration. In the event that his order is not carried out, he is considering rescinding the permit allowing coral reef shattering along the Henoko coast. If the government continues to insist on aggressively pushing ahead with construction, we fear not only a serious confrontation with the people of Okinawa prefecture and the fomenting of mistrust toward the mainland, but also the collapse of trust toward the nation of Japan inside the country and abroad.

We hereby declare our support for Governor Onaga’s position rejecting base relocation and our full support for his decisions pertaining to the order to suspend operations and to rescind the permit allowing reef shattering. We urgently call upon the government to heed the following requests:

The Japanese government should immediately suspend all operations relating to Henoko land reclamation [landfill], including boring exploration of the sea floor. The “Land Reclamation Accord” concluded by former Governor Nakaima, which the government uses as the basis for such operations, has been repudiated by the people of Okinawa prefecture.

Recently, the Japanese government has refused even to meet with Governor Onaga who represents the collective will of Okinawa. Such refusal repudiates regional autonomy guaranteed under the Japanese constitution and violates the spirit of democracy. Respect for the will of the people forms the basis of democracy. The government should accede in good faith to Governor Onaga’s request for a meeting and participate in serious talks about the issues at hand.

We call upon the Japanese government to put into practice its own slogan of “Regional Creation” by transferring to Okinawa Prefecture the actual authority to resolve issues connected to military bases and the construction of an autonomous economy.

The Minister for the Environment has a responsibility to provide appropriate commentary from a standpoint of environmental conservation with regard to the contents of the Environmental Impact Evaluation Report on reclamation operations for the construction of the American military base at Henoko. According to the Environmental Conservation Guidelines for the Island of Okinawa, Henoko and surrounding coastal regions in particular, designated as “zones for evaluating the strict preservation of the natural environment” (Rank 1), are precious bodies of water inhabited by numerous endangered species, not least of which is the Dugong. There is an extremely high risk that the artificial destruction and modification of natural formations will bring about absolute irreversible damage from which the island cannot recover. We urgently call upon the Minister for the Environment to carry out the solemn duty of preserving the beautiful Okinawan sea, a candidate for selection as a World Heritage Site.

Frustration and anger at a situation in which 74% of US military bases are forced onto Okinawa, which comprises only 0.6% of Japanese territory, underlie the determination of the people of Okinawa prefecture to oppose the construction of a new base at Henoko. We call upon Japanese citizens to squarely face this situation, which may be said to be a form of structural discrimination; and urge that all Japan should include this burden in considering issues of Japanese security.

April 1, 2015

(Translated by Charles Cabell. List of petitioners omitted.)

The Story behind the Global Uchinaanchu Video Support Message for Henoko & its classic Okinawan antiwar song: "You & I are all leftovers from ships' bombings."

Via our colleague and friend, Dr. Hideki Yoshikawa of Citizens Network for Biodiversity in Okinawa, Save the Dugong Campaign Center, and Okinawa Outreach: "Inspiring Video by Uchinaanchu".

Support for the Okinawan struggle against the construction of the military base in Henoko/Oura Bay is pouring in from around the world. Here is a great example of such support.

Three Uchinaanchu (Okinawans/Okinawan descendants), Brandon Ing from Hawaii, Carolina Higa from Argentina, and Karina Satomi Matsumoto from Brasil, have created and uploaded this wonderful and inspiring video “No New Base in Henoko” on YouTube. 

Compiling photos of people from different parts of the world, holding signs supporting Okinawa’s struggle, this video is a powerful remainder to those of us in Okinawa that we are not alone and that we need to continue our fight.

Brandon, Carolina and Karina Satomi, thank you very much for creating and uploading this wonderful video!  Ippe nihe debiru!!!  

The Song and the Story behind

As an Okinawan myself, I was especially moved by their choice of the song accompanying these wonderful photos, "Kanpo nu kenukusa" ("Leftovers from the ships’ bombings), performed by the Deigo musume (Coral Tree Daughters). 

An Okinawan post-war classic song, Kanpo nu kenukusaa was written by Higa Kobin in 1971, who lost his parents, his first wife and children in World War II.

The song depicts in the Okinawan language the hardship and the hope that the “leftovers” (survivors) from the ships’ bombings experienced and embraced. The word “kenukusaa” (leftovers) captures the nature of the devastating bombings the Okinawan people experienced, as well as the feelings of guilt of those who survived them. At the same time, the everyday nature that the music expresses makes the word “kenukusaa” resonate with the meaning of the English word “survivor”: People who are able to cope with hardship.

Sadly, Kobin himself was killed along with his second wife after he wrote the song in 1971 in Okinawa in a horrible traffic accident caused by a drunken US soldier.

The singers, Deigo musume, are Kobin’s beloved daughters and they are one of the most respected Okinawan music groups (see this Youtube video).

I hope that this song and the story behind it help explain to people in the world why we Okinawans and our supporters are determined to stop the construction of the base in Henoko/Oura Bay and to challenge the militarization of our islands.  And I hope many people watch and get inspired by the Video.

Below is my humble English translation of "Kanpo nu kenukusaa."

H.Y.

"Kanpo nu kenukusaa"

1) When we were young, it was a time of war.

Young flowers never bloomed, Young flowers never bloomed.

Our houses, our ancestors, our parents, and our brothers and sisters were all targets of ships’ bombings

We had no clothes, no food, nothing at all.

We ate fern palms to survive.

You and I, you and I are all leftovers from the ships’ bombings.

2) We had no Gods and no Buddha to rely on.

With our farmlands enclosed by the fence, we had no way to make a living. With our farmlands enclosed by the fence, we had no way to make a living.

Our humble houses were blown off by the wind of war. 

Trying to steal food and goods (from the military) to survive, we were caught, pushed, pulled and rolled over.

All despite, we had honest and sincere hearts.

You and I, you and I are all leftovers from the ships’ bombings.

3) Rising up from the muddy ground,

I wanted to have a family, and I found my wife, I wanted to have a family, and found my wife.

We had and raised our first son, second son, and third son, just like snails do.

Amidst our hardship, we sought comfort and soul in the laughter of the children. 

You and I, you and I are all leftovers form the ships’ bombings.

4) Years have passed since peace returned

Our children are now all grown-up, our children are now all grown-up

Like a poor wild boar who got shot but still worrying about her piglet,

I cannot sleep at night,

worrying that the waves of war will return.

You and I, you and I are all leftovers from the ships’ bombings.

5) The war that ate my parents, 

The ships’ bombings that ate my village, the ships' bombings that ate my village.

How could I forget that, even if I were to be born again?

Who started this?

My resentment and my sorrow were never enough and never end.

I want to tell this as my last words to my children and grandchildren,

You and I, you and I are all leftovers from the ships’ bombings.

New Wave to HOPE, Team Zan, & Scholar Gavan McCormack survey the Sea of Henoko

(Photo: Team Zan:  http://teamzan.ti-da.net/e6488882.html)

Takuma Higashionna on right. (Photo: New Wave to HOPE)

Scholar Gavan McCormack, author of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, and an associate with The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, is now in ‎Okinawa‬ to support the Henoko community. Today he surveyed Oura Bay with Takuma Higashionna (co-plaintiff in the historic Dugong v. Rumsfeld Lawsuit), and members of New Wave to HOPE (local resident group) and Team Zan, an Okinawa dugong conservation group.

One of the photos of the translucent, aquamarine Sea of Henoko at the New Wave to Hope FB page. 

Today no spectacle is sadder to the regular visitor to Okinawa than to see, in the north, the steady pressure designed to impose a huge new military complex on the quasi-pristine waters and reef of Oura Bay (and associated helipads throughout the Yambaru forest)... Base-dependent development replicated two decades later than mainland Japan the worst features of the construction state,” with devastating consequences for the prefecture's economy and ecology. In 2010, however, the people of Nago City demonstrated that they had seen through this manipulative device and decisively rejected it.

-Gavan McCormack

Henoko elders (childhood Battle of Okinawa survivors) continue to lead movement to save Henoko, an 18-year second Battle of Okinawa

Henoko elders express commitment to saving Sea of Henoko at June 28 rally. 

(Photo: New Wave to HOPE) 

Some of Okinawa's elected officials, including MP Keiko Itokazu
 join Henoko elders on boat in the Sea of Henoko during June 28 rally. 

(Photo: New Wave to HOPE)

Henoko elders have always been the heart of the movement to save the Sea of Henoko. Supported by many of Okinawa's elected officials, at all levels of government, these Henoko residents, all child survivors of the first Battle of Okinawa, have been in this second Battle of Okinawa for 18 years. They have dedicated their lives to saving Henoko for their children and grandchildren.

See more photos of the June 28 rally at Henoko at New Wave to HOPE's website. New Wave to HOPE is a local civic group in Henoko, made up mainly of young families.

Schoolgirl Wakana Toguchi, a member of the group, wrote a letter to Ambassador Kennedy last December that received widespread media attention. The letter reads:

Please do not build a new military base...Please, Caroline-san, come visit to see the beautiful sea of Henoko and Oura Bay. I am confident that you will love the sea, too.

Miss Toguchi is still awaiting a reply.

Majority of citizenry against PM unilateral "reinterpretation" of Japanese Peace Constitution

"Protest crowd so large that cars cannot pass at all. Shouts against war at PM Abe's office."

Via Shingetsu News on Twitter and FB: 

Ground view of rally in support of Japanese Peace Constitution.

(Via Keibo Shinichi Oiwa Tsuji on FB)

In despair over the PM's "reinterpretation" of the Japanese Peace Constitution, a middle-aged man set himself on fire yesterday in Shinjuku yesterday.  Protesting the same, over 10,000 rallied Monday evening past midnight in Tokyo today.

However, nothing, even the protests of 90% of its constituency has been able persuade New Komeito, the Liberal Democratic Party's coalition partner, from rubber-stamping the administration's unilateral move.  New Komeito, was founded in 1964 by the mass Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai. Around 3.3 percent of the population backs New Komeito. The religiopolitical party's success stems its voting machine, fueled by the devotion of lay members throughout Japan.

Both New Komeito and Soka Gakkai profess pacifism. Over the past two decades, however, New Komeito's actions have served to undermine, instead of safeguarding the Japanese Peace Constitution's anti-war aims. Party leaders say they will try to make their constituents "understand" this latest.  But will the rank and file go along with New Komeito's combination blow to Article 9, which outlaws war, and Article 96, which governs the process of constitutional revision? 

Fueled by harsh memories of prewar capitulation to the militarist government, mainline Buddhist and other faith-based groups in Japan remain steadfast and united in their support of Article 9, the Peace Clause, which renounces “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes." (This has been understood by the courts and all past governments of Japan to prohibit collective self-defense, or engagement in force, except for direct defense of Japan.)

A May 26 Asahi poll found that only 29 percent (around the percentage of voters represented by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Abe's political party) approve of Japan's taking up collective self defense.  Even less, only 18 percent, support the administration's improvised method of constitutional change.  The poll also found that 67 percent of Japanese voters consider the move for reinterpretation as "improper."

Concerned about their nation, high profile Japanese figures have increasingly spoken out on behalf of Article 9, the peace clause. On the eve of his birthday in December of last year, Emperor Akihito (tutored by an American Quaker during his youth) defended Article 9. Then, on the eve of his birthday in February of this year, Crown Prince Naruhito attributed Japan's peace and prosperity to the pacifist Constitution.

A-bomb survivors in Nagasaki are now demanding that explicit support for Article 9 to be included in this year's Peace Declaration, according to the Asahi last week.

Over the past few weeks, nearly 160 prefectural and local governments have condemned the "reinterpretation" of the Peace Clause, citing commitment to Article 9's anti-war aims and opposition to the extraconstitutional means used by the PM. These governments include Nagano and Gifu prefectures, the cities of Sapporo, Aomori, Naha, and Nago.

At this point, Japanese civil society groups and elected officials who honor accountability to their constituents must consider and initiate countervailing actions that will challenge this unprecedented executive overreach.

Background: 

Article 9 Association 

"Prefectural and local authorities warn government over Constitution," Eric Johnston, The Japan Times, July 1, 2014.

"Local New Komeito officials oppose collective self-defense," The Asahi Shimbun, June 29, 2014.

"‘Reinterpreting’ Article 9 endangers Japan’s rule of law," Craig Martin, The Japan Times, June 27, 2014.

"Abe hijacks democracy, undermines Constitution," Jeff Kingston, The Japan Times, June 21, 2014.

"LDP’s Gifu chapter blasts Abe’s rush to reinterpret Constitution," The Asahi Shimbun, June 16, 2014.

"1,760,000 supporters of the Japanese Peace Constitution ask PM not to change Article 9," TTT, June 15, 2014. 

"Japan’s Article 9 and Economic Justice: The Work of Shinagawa Masaji," Komori Yoichi, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, June 9, 2014.

"A Nobel Peace Prize nomination (with Henoko connection) for the Japanese and Okinawan people who support Article 9, the Japanese Constitution's Peace Clause, " TTT, April 24, 2014.

"Shinzo Abe’s Biggest Enemy: the LDP: Internal party discord shows the narrative of Japan’s rightward shift under Abe is not as simple as it might appear," Shunsuke Hirose, The Diplomat, April 14, 2014.

Mizuho Fukushima (SDP) and Taro Yamamoto (Independent): "Opposition lawmakers state their case against the administration's plan (Exercise of Collective Self Defense)," Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan YouTube Channel, March 27, 2014.

"Japan’s Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined," Colin P.A. Jones, The Japan Times, March 26, 2014.

"Kenzaburo Oe, Jakucho Setouchi, Masahide Ota found “1000-member committee to prevent Japan from entering wars" (Rally @Hibiya Park, March 20, 2014)," TTT, March 18, 2014.

"Mr. Abe’s constitutional runaround," The Japan Times, August 9, 2013.

"Makoto Koga: Election win not mandate for constitutional revision," The Asahi Shimbun, July 22, 2013.

"Japan’s Democracy at Risk – The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change," Lawrence Repeta, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 15, 2013.

"Inroads or Crossroads? The Soka Gakkai's Pacifist Endeavours in Japanese Foreign Policy,"
Timothy O. Benedict, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Jan. 31, 2011. 

"The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition of War," John Junkerman, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 25,  2008.

"The Postwar and the Japanese Constitution: Beyond Constitutional Dilemmas," Yoshikazu Sakamoto, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, November 10, 2005.

The Constitution of Japan: Pacifism, Popular Sovereignty, and Fundamental Human Rights," John M. Maki, Law and Contemporary Problems: Vol. 43: No. 1 (1990).