Nuclear survivor Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner: "Remember"

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Nuclear Savage: The Island Experiments of Secret Project 4.1: "They used us as a radiation experiment."

The word "savage" has been used to refer to people from so-called primitive cultures, but in his 2011 documentary, filmmaker Adam Horowitz turns the concept on its head and asks who was the real "savage" in the US nuclear human experiment "Project 4.1".  

 In the 1950s, the U.S. nuclear test bombed the Marshall Islands 67 times, vaporizing islands and exposing entire populations to radioactive fallout measured at 750 times the level of emitted by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After the people of Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one of these tests, the US intentionally moved them to a highly contaminated island to serve as nuclear test subjects for 30 years,  to measure the affects of nuclear radiation on humans. The experiment was conceived by scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of two U.S. governmental laboratories that designs nuclear weapons.

 In Nuclear Savage, the people of Rongelap describe an unbelievable level of suffering from recurring cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects (babies that look like jellyfish)  that have affected multiple generations.

Horowitz, a Santa Fe, New Mexico native, explains his life-long interest in this hidden history:

I always felt like I had nuclear weapons in my backyard. I wanted to find some story to tell about nuclear weapons that hadn’t been told. When I found out about this, I knew that this was one story to be told. It’s captivating about how these people have lived with this mess that was created around them...

“You imagine blue skies and clear water. But when I arrived it was so much worse than I dreamed.

“I didn’t believe it and was quite skeptical of the stories I was being told. But I started to meet a lot of survivors of the experiments and the story became stronger. I think in northern New Mexico, we get a pretty rose-colored view of the labs. We are taught that the labs created peace and kept the Soviet Union at bay. We’re getting a very sanitized view, and I found the history is so much darker than we were ever taught.

“I made this film to give the people in the Marshall Islands a voice. They had their land ruined and contaminated. Now the people are living with birth defects. I felt the responsibility to tell this story because people did need to hear it.

A 7-minute preview (from 2012) may be seen at the website of the Peace on Earth Film Festival and on YouTube.

ICAN: "What Nuclear Weapons Really Do to People & the Environment"

Int. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Statement at the conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo on March 2 & 3, 2013: "We wanted governments and diplomats to see what nuclear weapons really do to people and the environment. Happy to share with you the Civil Society video statement at the conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo"

During the US military occupation of Japan, US authorities censored all media discussions of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But by 1952, the end of the Occupation, accounts of nuclear survivors’ ongoing struggles with radiation sickness became widespread.

 In 1954, 23 crew members of the Lucky Dragon Japanese fishing trawler were irradiated when the US nuclear test bombed the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. In protest, 30 million Japanese people — over a third of the population — signed a petition demanding the end of nuclear test bombings.

The US nuclear test bombed islands in the Asia-Pacific over 100 times from 1946 to 1962. Survivors of the Bikini Atoll bombings have suffered from miscarriages, profound birth defects, and high rates of cancer. The US also nuclear test bombed the American Southwest over 1,000 times.*  Washington's most recent (underground) nuclear test bombing took place in December 2012, with almost no media coverage. Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui commented,  “I wonder why President Obama, who said he would seek a nuclear-free world, carried out the test."

Despite the well-known health and environmental consequences of nuclear radiation, and widespread protest, France nuclear bombed Mururoa, and its sister atoll Fangataufa in French Polynesia from 1966 to 1995.  Greenpeace reported that France's first nuclear (plutonium) bombing sucked all the water from the lagoon, "raining dead fish and mollusks down on the atoll", and  spread radioactive contamination across the Pacific to Peru and New Zealand.

The UK nuclear test bombed Australia from 1955 to 1963, exposing Australians, especially aboriginal Australians, to nuclear radiation. The Australian government forcibly removed tribal members from their homelands; when they attempted to return, they developed radiation-related health disorders. Radioactive contamination destroyed their way of life.

Although the human costs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are now known, the suffering of many hundreds of thousands of other nuclear (test bombings, depleted uranium weapons, uranium mining, nuclear weapons production, nuclear waste dumping) survivors worldwide remain much less known. However their suffering reflect a globally interrelated web of nuclear violence that touches us all.

* The National Cancer Institute runs a program to help Americans identify if they were exposed to radioactive 1-131 fallout from US nuclear test bombings  between 1951 and 1963; this isotope can cause thyroid disorder or cancer.

Tokyo Waka: A (cinematic) poem about a city, its people, and 20,000 crows

Thanks to Aki Gibbons, SF-based visual artist and writer, who blogs  at Tokyo Dreaming and Okinawa Blue, for the head's up on Tokyo Waka: A City Poem, screening at the International Buddhist Film Festival, which opens in San Francisco today.

A  meditative exploration of Tokyo and post-Bubble, post-3/11 Japan.

New York Peace Film Festival - Saturday, March 9 - Sunday, March 10, 2013

English version of "Barefoot Gen's Hiroshima" trailer! 

Showtime: Sat. March 9, 2013 @ 7:00pm.

 Director, Yuko Ishida will join us from Tokyo 

and we'll also connect to Hiroshima via Skype for Q and A!

Hirotoshi Iha explains the "Heart of Okinawa"

On September 4, 1955 – exactly 40 years to the day before the 1995 gang kidnapping, beating, and rape of a 12-year old Okinawan girl – an American soldier, Sergeant Isaac Hurt, kidnapped Yumiko Nagayama as she was walking to kindergarten. Then he raped her, disemboweled her, and threw her into a military base garbage dump. Less than a week later, another US soldier raped another child. 

The rape-murder of Yumiko-chan  took place during "Bayonets and Bulldozers" – a period of US forced seizure and destruction of 50,000+acres of land (including entire villages), to make build military complexes across the islands. The seizures – usually at gunpoint – left 250,000 Okinawans homeless and without means of livelihood.  Because the US did not allow Okinawans any real legal protections, Okinawans had no legal recourse against the US military violations of their property rights and human rights.

Okinawan mass protests, marches, and sit-ins date back to this period because the people had no legal power to resist the US use of force against them.  The pattern of American soldiers taking young girls from civilian houses at gunpoint to rape (and even murder them) began during the early days of the US occupation of Okinawa and worsened during the 1950's violent period of "Bayonets and Bulldozers."  At this time, the US military rape of women and children became synonymous with the rape-like taking and destruction of their land.

The 1955 murder of Yumiko-chan outraged the Okinawan public, sparking what Okinawan  Moriteru ARASAKI calls the first wave of the Okinawa Struggle for human rights and property rights. Okinawan resistance culminated in the 1956 "island-wide struggle" (shimagurumi toso) challenging US military  domination.

Korean American filmmaker Annabel Park's five-minute video interview of Hirotoshi Iha brings us back to 1955 by illuminating how deeply Okinawns have been injured by the pattern of US violent violations of human rights, land rights, and also why the US and Japanese governments have never been able to extinguish the Okinawan struggle for rights, self-determination, safety from US military violence, and peace.

Filmed in Takae in 2010, Mr. Iha explains why he became an activist and the deep meaning of the "Heart of Okinawa."  Yumiko-chan was his cousin.

The life-long activist then explains why the majority of Okinawans don't want  Futenma training base "transferred" to Henoko: "because we know the human cost of it."

"The Okinawa Problems" - Tokyo Symposium - Feb. 23, 2013

Via Okinawa Outreach:

The Okinawan Problems” will be discussed in Tokyo as Prime Minister Abe visits Washington


On February 23, Okinawan residents, scientists and environmentalists will gather and hold a symposium “The Okinawan Problems” in Asakusa, Tokyo to discuss the alarming situations of environment degradation, US military bases, and rampant development in Okinawa. The symposium is intended to raise national awareness about how these situations are closely related, derived from the unfair US-Japanese security relationship.

The symposium takes place at a critical time for Okinawa. It coincides with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Washington. Mr. Abe is expected to tell President Barack Obama that, with the completion of the Japanese government’s Environment Impact Assessment, their plan to construct a US military base in Henoko and Oura Bay is on track. The symposium will rebuff the results of the EIA. Meanwhile, the Japanese government’s recent listing of the Amami and Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands on its Tentative List for UNESCO World Natural Heritage Sites provides a new twist to these Okinawan Problems. The symposium will discuss the implications of this new development as well.

Date and Time:  February 23, 2013, 13:00-17:00
Place: Taito kumin kaikan (2-6-5 Hanakawado, Taito Ward, Tokyo)

Main Features:　
-Mr. Hiroshi Ashitomi (“Henoko Tent Village”) updates the Henoko situation.

-Mr. Masatsugu Isa (Takae, Higashi village) discusses the construction of “helipads” for the US Osprey aircraft in the forest of Yambaru.

-Dr. Mariko Abe (the Nature Conservation Society of Japan) reports on the massive blue coral and new shrimp and crab species recently discovered in Oura Bay.

CONTACT:
Hideki Yoshikawa
Citizens’ Network for Biodiversity in Okinawa
Tel: 090-2516-7969
Email: yhidekiy(atmark)gmail.com

3/11 Anniversary Remembrance by Beautiful Energy • 3/11 • Tokyo & Anywhere in the World

Via our friend, Jacinta Hin


下の方に簡単な日本語版があります。また編集します！

We are planning a series (day) of events on March 11 both in remembrance of the Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster, and in support of the global stand for a nuclear-free world.
Please join us on this special day, either in person or remote from anywhere in the world.

Join in person, in Tokyo:

We will get together from 1.30pm in Yoyogi Park. At 2.46pm, the time that the Earthquake struck, we stand still in silence and meditation to honor those who lost their lives and everyone affected by the horrendous events of March 11.

From 6pm we will get together for an evening of candlelight, music and…being peacefully together with people who share the vision for a nuclear-free Japan and world.

簡単な日本語版です。後日また編集します。
来る3/11に、私たちは連続したイベントを計画しています！
東北震災や津波や福島の原発事故を忍び、世界中で核をもたないことに賛成している人たちに
賛同し、支持するためのイベントです。この特別な日にぜひ皆さんでご参加ください！
イベントに直接お越しいただいても、遠隔で世界中からこのイベントページに参加いただく形も
大歓迎です！

直接お越しいただける方：
3/11　13：30～　代々木公園集合
14：26　震災が起きた時刻ちょうどに黙とうを
ささげ、震災でお亡くなりになった方や被災した方々
のために瞑想します。

18：00～　キャンドルライトや音楽などで平和をいのり、
核のない日本や世界へのビジョンをピースフルに共有します！
（場所や正確な時間は後日ＵＰします。）

Join from anywhere in the world:

We want to create a chain of 311 candles around the globe. People can join the chain anytime on March 11, preferable from 2.46pm Japan time onward. For this we will be inviting people from around the world to participate. Please help us by suggesting anyone or any groups who might be interested. Post here or facebook message or email Jacinta (jacinta.hin@embrace-transition.com).

More details will be announced shortly.

About us:

Beautiful Energy is an IMA project and movement born out of the weekly Friday anti-nuclear demonstrations in Tokyo in front of and around the Prime Minister Residence and Parliament. Through inspired, peaceful action we stand for a nuclear-free world that thrives on renewable energy. Our current, ongoing project is Candles for Peace. Every Friday, from 6-8pm Japan time, we gather in front of parliament in kokkai gijido, joining the weekly anti-nuclear protest, and create a beautiful display of candlelight to symbolize our intentions. Intrepid Model Adventures (IMA) is a nonprofit, open community of hundreds, supporting thousands, standing for positive social change. IMA members share a desire to help and strive to live their lives in such a way that they may act as a positive influence.

Visit our Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/BeautifulEnergyTokyo
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BeautifulEnergy/

Cactus Brothers performance: "Shadows of the Atomic Bomb" @ Kyoto - Jan 13 & 14, 2013

CACTUS BROTHERS is performing "Shadows of the Atomic Bomb"  原爆の影  at the Kyoto Prefectural Center for Arts and Culture (on Kawaramachi across from Kyoto Furitsu Hospital) this Sunday, Jan. 13 1800 and on Monday, Jan. 14 1000. 

 "Shadows of the Atomic Bomb" 原爆の影 is a satire on the US military establishment and its nuclear program.

The play is FREE.

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます｡

(Kagami Mochi Cat: http://2ya.sblo.jp/article/34490907.html)