Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe..."

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein

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

(Photo: Chris Marker)

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

In Level Five, Marker undertook a deep exploration of the repeated violations of Okinawa by the Japanese and U.S. governments, especially the incomprehensible devastation the two nations wrought upon the tiny, once idyllic archipelago during their 1945 battle with each other, which Okinawans call the "Typhoon of Steel":

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do they wage war?

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

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

So Okinawans hated violence?

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

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

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

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

In Level Five, Marker references Japanese military sex slaves (so-called "comfort women") and includes shocking footage of civilians forced to commit suicide by jumping off cliffs in Saipan.

Marker intersperses archival footage with interviews with Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima (whose motto was "'You have to tell the truth about your country, whatever it is") and Reverend Shigeaki Kinjo (who describes Japanese military forced collective suicide-murders in the Kerama Islands of Okinawa).  One archival excerpt shows the heartbreaking memorial service for the hundreds of Okinawan school children who died when the USS Bowfin sank their passenger ship, the Tsushima Maru (their parents had sent them away in an attempt to save their lives before the US-Japan battle).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okinawa was a Japan that kept its memory...

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