8.13 Rally commemorating the 2004 crash of a US military training helicopter into Okinawa Int. University - Ginowan City Hall, Ginowan City, Okinawa

(Photo: Kyoko Higa: 宜野湾市役所前で写真のタイトルの集会に参加しました。8年前と何ら改善されない現状に決意新たに取組む、オスプレイ配備は言語道断！、防衛大臣の来県を阻止しよう。)

Today's 8.13 protest rally in front of Ginowan City Hall commemorates the 2004 U.S. military helicopter training crash at the Okinawa International University campus. Okinawans have described the US military plan to deploy (test/train at low-altitude) V-22 "Osprey" aircraft in Okinawa as "outrageous."

They said they Okinawans are filled with a renewed sense of determination in opposing US military expansion plans in their prefecture: destruction of Oura Bay and Henoko to make way for a mega-base over a coral reef and Okinawa dugong habitat; clearing of old-growth trees (habitat of the endangered Okinawa woodpecker and Okinawa rail) to make way for V-22 "Osprey" helipads in one of the best-preserved areas of Yanbaru rainforest; and destruction of more old-growth forest for the enlargement of the live-fire artillery training ground at Mt. Ogura.

Background about the crash here.

Masako Sakata explores the legacies of Agent Orange: Living the Silent Spring

Masako Sakata: "Agent Orange is an indictment of US foreign policy and corporate greed,

as well as being a celebration of love’s ability to face enormous adversity."

Following the death of her husband, photographer Greg Davis, from liver cancer at age 54, Masako Sakata studied videography, aiming to produce an investigative documentary about the toxic chemical. She suspected that exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam during the 1970's caused her husband's illness.

In her first documentary, Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem, Sakata focused on the "forgotten victims of Agent Orange" and showed "how the toxic chemical erodes the human body from generation to generation, and how the Vietnamese have struggled, both in desperation and with affection, to support the victims."

Her 2011 film, Living the Silent Spring, follows the journey of an American second generation victim of Agent Orange, Heather Bowser, as she travels to Vietnam, and explores the lives of other American victims.

From August 10, 1961 to 1971, the US military sprayed 20 million gallons (80 million liters) of Agent Orange and related chemical weapons throughout Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia) during its war in southeast Asia. The environmental warfare campaign, called "Operation Ranch Hand," destroyed 500,000 acres of farmland and 5 million acres of forest in Vietnam alone.

The destruction of farmland resulted in widespread famine and the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. Agent Orange also contaminated the watershed as well as vegetation and soil. Dioxin, a carcinogenic toxin in the herbicide accumulated at the bottom of lakes and rivers, thereby entering the Vietnamese food supply through fish as well as through food crops.

Different sources estimate that between three and five million Vietnamese people suffer from diseases and disorders caused by Agent Orange. This includes 500,000 second and third generation children born with birth defects. Thousands of US soldiers and their children have also endured disorders caused by the toxin.

Attempts were made during the Vietnam War to stop the US use of Agent Orange. In 1966, Hungary introduced a resolution to the United Nations charging that the U.S. was violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which regulates the use of chemical and biological weapons, by using Agent Orange and tear gas in Vietnam. Washington denied the charge on the grounds that only anti-personnel weapons are covered by the protocol.

In 1991, after much lobbying by Vietnam War veterans and their families, Congress authorized some assistance to Americans exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

In 2004, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin sued Dow Chemical and other manufacturers. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2009, accepting a federal appeals court 2003 ruling in New York that dismissed the case on the "government contractor defense," which protects military contractors from legal liability.

Over the past five years, despite Washington's claim that the link between dioxin exposure and disease is "uncertain," Congress appropriated about $49 million for environmental remediation and about $11 million to help people living with disabilities in Vietnam regardless of cause.

Last week, Washington announced it had awarded contracts to two U.S. companies to decontaminate Da Nang, a dioxin "hot spot" (former air base where American soldiers mixed, stored and loaded Agent Orange onto planes and helicopters). Some Vietnamese commentators have said this is "...too little...too late." Some children of American Vietnam vets have taken an even stronger view, commenting that this is a "classic example" of U.S. military industrial pattern of profiting from a U.S.-created cycle destruction and "reconstruction," as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Astonishingly, Hanoi has welcomed Dow and Monsanto, the two largest manufacturers of Agent Orange, to do business in Vietnam. Both companies profited from the production of the chemical weapon, yet have not have assisted in decontamination or compensated victims. In February, Monsanto announced it plans to introduce GMO crops (seeds are manufactured to be used with Round-Up, a toxic herbicide, or 2-4,D, a component of Agent Orange) into Vietnam.

However in May of this year, the Vietnamese government revealed profound domestic tensions towards these companies when it called for Dow (a multi-million dollar Olympics sponsor) to quit the games because of its participation in the production of Agent Orange. Thanh Nien News, a newspaper published in Ho Chi Minh City, quoted Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Rinh, former deputy defense minister, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange, and a sitting legislator: “My ultimate goal is to push the government to get both Dow and Monsanto out of Vietnam.”

Between 1,000,000 and 2,500,000 Vietnamese and over 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War.

Roger Pulvers' "Remembering Victims of Agent Orange in the Shadow of 9/11," published on September 4, 2011 at The Asia-Pacific Journal, and introduced by filmmaker John Junkerman (who edited Living in the Silent Spring) provides deep, sensitive contexts to the film:

I worked as the editor of the film, Living the Silent Spring, which Pulvers discusses in his essay. The film’s director, Masako Sakata, had been struck by the fact that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring appeared at virtually the same time that the US military began spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. Though Carson died soon after her book came out, her outrage at the irresponsible use of potent chemicals and her pleas for environmental and biological wisdom seemed to be a warning that went unheeded about the dangers of Agent Orange.

We were in the studio editing the film on March 11, when the massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. As the extent of the Fukushima nuclear disaster became known, and it became clear that the area around the plant would be contaminated with radiation for many decades to come, Carson’s description of chemicals as the “sinister partners of radiation”—and the film we were working on—took on a new resonance...

Living the Silent Spring takes up the Agent Orange story from both sides. Sakata returns to some of the villages she visited for her earlier film so that we may see how the children genetically maimed by their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange have fared. But this time she also introduces us to a number of Americans who have equally suffered — bringing home the message that, in war, we are all victims.

Petronella Ytsma: "Legacy of an Ecocide: Agent Orange Aftermath"

(Photographs: Petronella Ytsma: Legacy of an Ecocide: Agent Orange Aftermath)

"Legacy of an Ecocide: Agent Orange Aftermath"

Petronell Ytsma - Artist Statement

My work is concerned with social justice and ecological issues from an artistic perspective. Primarily through the lens of my Hasselblad, which allows the ‘unhurried visit’, I explore remnants and legacy, memory and mirror, and reflect on the civil contracts inherent between image maker, giver and viewer. Images from this body of work about intergenerational effects of Agent Orange on a specific population comprise a cautionary tale, a never-ending highly controversial one fraught with myriad complexities. As maker and viewer, they confirm my sense of being in the world and are for me the embodiment of a prayer.

From 1961 to 1971 the United States engaged in what can only be described as an ecocide - the most extensive and systematic use of chemical warfare in the history of mankind, for the stated purpose of defoliation in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Much was done in secret, with full denial, and with little thought to long-term consequences on troops, local populations or environment. The most toxic of the chemicals employed was Agent Orange containing high levels of Dioxin. The Vietnamese interpret this as a reclamation chemical to ‘bare the leaves of plants for making VN to become a place of fallow hill - empty house.’ Estimates of 80 million litres (12 million gallons) were systematically used, impacting about 25% of the land in South Viet Nam. It is also estimated that 4.8 million people were exposed, at least 3 million symptomatic and 85% of families having 2 or more children affected.

In 2007, and again in 2008, I spent several months in Viet Nam, researching and documenting issues surrounding Agent Orange/Dioxin. I visited various ‘hot spots’, interviewing government and community officials, 75 families and several long-term care facilities, documenting many children afflicted with a wide array of disabilities attributable to effects of Dioxin. Images are some of the portraits of second and third generations affected by this war that ended about 40 years ago.

The relevancy of this work lies in the fact that we remain a hegemonic power heavily invested in war and chemical industrial complexes. We fool ourselves into believing that other people’s children are not as precious, or human, as our own. These images serve both as a glimpse of the legacy we left, but more importantly, they are my testimony to the children, their families and to the mystery of what makes us human. For them and millions of others, that war is not over. They cannot close their eyes to it and simply move on. I believe it is vital that we meet their eyes and look into this mirror. May these images deny the wish to erase the past and ‘the other’ from memory.

Peace Boat's 63rd Voyage: Atomic bombing survivors (Hibakusha) dialogue with Agent Orange victims

(Agent Orange victim Phuong folding paper cranes with Toshiko Tanaka,

atomic bomb survivor from Hiroshima. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

(Little Van, an Agent Orange victim from Vietnam, sailed with Peace Boat for a week, and got a lot of love from Peace Boat participants, here with Marianna Aoki. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

(In Da Nang with a group of nuclear bombing survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

and Agent Orange victims. Photo courtesy of Lee, Jung Yong)

Via Rose Welsch, some remarkable photos from Peace Boat's 63rd voyage "for a Nuclear-Free World" that took place from September 2008 to January 2009. During the voyage, 102 Hibakusha visited 22 ports in 20 countries over three months to share their testimonies with people from around the world and called for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

At their first stop in Da Nang, Vietnam, the Hibakusha met and exchanged testimony with Agent Orange survivors and 2nd- and 3rd-generation victims.

Starting on August 10, 1961, the US military began spraying Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, throughout Vietnam to destroy forest canopy and farmland. The result: an ecological and public health catastrophe. According to the Vietnamese government, up to four million people in Vietnam suffer from diseases related to Agent Orange. Similarlly to nuclear radiation, Agent Orange damages DNA, and causes birth deformities. Just as the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki radiation impacted later generations in Japan, so has Agent Orange in Vietnam (and as is depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Da Nang was particularly affected because the US military stored and loaded Agent Orange onto planes at a coastal air base there. Phuong & Little Van, in the above photographs, are from Da Nang, and joined the Peace Boat Hibakusha Project for a week of sharing, mutual support, and love.

Constellation Earth - Nagasaki

People in Koodankulam, India pray for a Nuclear-Free World

People of Koodankulam, India praying for the victims of Hiroshima on August 7, 2012.

"We have chance to save Koodankulam ...."

(Photo: Amirtharaj Stephen, Dianuke.org)

Velcrow Ripper: "Lanterns of Memory"

Via fillmaker Velcrow Ripper:

"Each of us faces circumstances in life which compel us to carry heavy burdens of sorrow...Adversity assails us with hurricane force...Glowing sunrises are transformed into darkest nights...Our highest hopes are blasted...Our noblest dreams are shattered...

August 6, 2000. A Hiroshima atomic bombing survivor describes what she saw ("There was no place to hide...") and expresses her wish that this never happen again.

Woven throughout, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. ask us: why should we love our enemies?

Children's Peace Monument - Hiroshima

Hiroshima Day- ICAN booklet on catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons

Nagasaki bomb victim Sumiteru Taniguchi looks at a photo of himself taken in 1945.
(Source: ICAN Hiroshima Day booklet)

"As a 16-year-old boy, I was riding my bicycle down the street when the atomic bomb exploded 1.8 km away, scorching my back and leaving the skin on my right arm hanging down from the shoulder to the fingertips."

After 17 excruciating operations and a lifetime of struggle, Sumiteru Taniguchi, 67 year since the bombing of Hiroshima, still fights pro-actively to make sure no one has to suffer what he experienced in Hiroshima ever again.

In remembrance of Hiroshima Day and all of the past and potential future victims of the nuclear industry, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has launched a booklet for free digital distribution on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. Download here: http://www.icanw.org/files/ICAN-CHH.pdf

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a movement of non-government organizations in 60 countries advocating such a treaty, believes that discussions about nuclear weapons must focus not on narrow concepts of national security, but on the effects of these weapons on human beings – our health, our societies, and the environment on which we all depend.

ICAN notes that the same humanitarian discourse was used successfully in banning landmines and cluster munitions. While sharing the stories of anti-nuclear advocates and the survivors of nuclear bombing, testing, and mining the booklet provides pertinent information on:

• the known existing nuclear arsenals in the world
• immediate- and long- term effects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• the devastation that would arise should regional nuclear war break out
• the consequences of nuclear testing
• the impact of mining on marginalized communities
• the massive diversion of public resources for the production of nuclear materials and technology
• currently standing international bans on weapons of mass destruction
• ICAN recommendations on how WE CAN act

With nuclear weapons and nuclear-based technology (including nuclear reactors) still proliferating no one is safe should disaster arise. Just recently, Japan's former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba's statement about the use of Japan's nuclear reactors as a deterrent was made public: "Having nuclear plants shows to other nations that Japan can make nuclear weapons."

In Nov. 22, 2011 Ishiba stressed that Japan isn’t about to make nuclear weapons. But, he said, with nearby North Korea suspected of working on them, Japan needs to assert itself and say it can also make them - but is choosing not to.

(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Unless we have a paradigm shift now, we will continue to be used by governments and industry as test mice of this obsolete nuclear deterrent ideology, living in a house of cards on a slanted table.

This booklet serves as a heart-wrenching reminder of the tragedies of the nuclear industry and the political stranglehold the industry maintains despite the enormous destruction it causes. It is a useful resource for anyone just learning about the consequences of nuclear weapons or fighting to make the shift to a nuclear-free world a reality.

Learn more about how you can abolish nuclear weapons:

ICAN homepage: http://www.icanw.org/
ICAN Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icanw.org
- posted by Jen Teeter

Satoko Oka Norimatsu and Gavan McCormack: Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States

Via Satoko Oka Norimatsu:

Please allow me to announce the publication of my book with Gavan McCormack: Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, by Rowman and Littlefield, July 30, 2012.

I hope this book will be useful for our cause of bringing justice to Okinawa.

Description:

Resistant Islands offers a comprehensive overview of Okinawan history over half a millennium from the Ryukyu Kingdom to the present, focusing especially on the colonization by Japan, the islands' disastrous fate during World War II, and their subsequent and continuing subordination to US military purpose.

Adopting a people-centered, view of Japan’s post Cold War history and the US-Japan relationship, the authors focus on the fifteen-year Okinawan struggle to secure the return of Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, situated in the middle of a bustling residential area, from US to Okinawan control. They also highlight the Okinawan resistance to the US and Japanese governments’ plan to build a substitute new base at Henoko, on the environmentally sensitive northeastern shore of Okinawa. Forty years after Okinawa's belated "return" to Japan from direct US rule, its people reject the ongoing military role assigned their islands, under which they are required to continue to attach priority to US strategy.

In a persistent and deepening resistance without precedent in Japan's modern history, a peripheral and oppressed region stands up against the central government and its global superpower ally. One recent prime minister who tried to meet key Okinawan demands was brought down by bureaucratic and political pressure from Tokyo and Washington. His successors struggle in vain to find a formula that will allow them to meet US demands but also assuage Okinawan anger. Okinawa becomes a beacon of citizen democracy as its struggles raise key issues about popular sovereignty, democracy and human rights, and the future of Japan and the Asia-Pacific."

Okinawa becomes a beacon of citizen democracy as its struggles raise key issues about popular sovereignty, democracy and human rights, and the future of Japan and the Asia-Pacific.

Endorsed by Noam Chomsky, John Dower, Norma Field, Sun Ge, Glenn Hook and Ron Dore:

Resistant Islands is a tour de force—not only a stunning introduction to the resilience and vision of the people of Okinawa but also a devastating critique of official Tokyo’s obsequiousness to dictates emanating from Washington.

— John Dower, Massachusetts Institute of Technology