March 11, 2014 - Beautiful Energy's Global Candles Chain of light to honor survivors who lost their lives or loved ones, their homes, communities, and livelihoods on 3/11...

Today, March 11, will mark 3 years since the Northeastern Earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan, killing 15,884 people, destroying numerous villages along the Tohoku coast and disrupting the lives of millions. The whereabouts of 2,633 others remained unknown. On the same day the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster put an end to the peaceful lives and livelihoods of many people living in the vicinity of the plant.

2,973 people have died of suicide and other stress-related causes related to the evacuation, in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, the three worst-affected prefectures in the Tohoku region. In Fukushima Prefecture, more people have died from the evacuation than the natural disasters. 

267,000 people are still displaced, living in temporary housing and makeshift facilities. 

This candle joins prayers for support, healing, and strength for all victims and survivors of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns, especially for those who lost loved ones, their homes, communities and livelihoods by the natural disasters and the nuclear disaster; and reflects appreciation for  all who are remembering and supporting survivors (including animals) at this zone of thoughts of peace and healing co-created by Beautiful Energy-Global Candles Chain.

Beyond the Fog of War: Widening remembrance of the victims of the firebombings of Tokyo, 66 other Japanese cities, Chinese cities, & all bombings in world history...

In Errol Morris’s documentary "Fog of War," 

former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara details the firebombings of Japan.

Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama...Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which, by the way, was dropped by LeMay's command. 

Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50 to 90% of people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people...LeMay said if we lost the war, we'd all be prosecuted as war criminals, and I think he's right. 

- Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Fog of War

Today is the 69th anniversary of the U.S. fire bombing of residential Tokyo. This was the most destructive bombing raid in world history. On March 10, 1945, 334 B-29 American bombers dropped napalm and white phosphorus incendiary bombs that destroyed 16 square miles of buildings and killed (minimum estimates) 100,000 people, and wounded another 150,000, almost all civilians, in Tokyo.

The Japanese government has apologized to survivors of Japanese carpet bombings in China; memorialized victims of the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, provided compensation to hibakusha; memorialized the military dead at Yasukuni, and provided compensation to Japanese Second World War veterans. However, the Japanese government has never commemorated the hundreds of thousands of victims of the firebombing of Tokyo and other historic Japanese cities, or compensated survivors, all whom were children at the time of the bombings.

Incongruously, the Japanese government, instead, honored Gen. Curtis LeMay, the commander of the “Superfortress” bombers that firebombed Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities.  He designed the firebombing campaigns in a way that would maximize suffering of Japanese civilians; oversaw "Operation Starvation," designed to stop food from reaching civilians; and commanded the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In 1964, during the administration of former PM Eisaku Sato, a 1974 Nobel Peace Laureate, LeMay was awarded the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun, given to those who have made "distinguished achievements in the following fields; international relations, promotion of Japanese culture, advancements in their field, development in welfare or preservation of the environment."

Some of the plaintiffs of the Tokyo firebombing lawsuit

Last year, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against the Japanese government by civilian victims and relatives of those who died on March 10. The plaintiffs demanded an apology and damages over the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo; all were children during the war; many became orphaned.

In December 2009, the Tokyo District Court dismissed the original suit filed by 131 plaintiffs who were demanding a government apology and ¥1.44 billion in damages. In April 2012, the Tokyo High Court turned down an appeal, citing the hundreds of thousands of other firebombing victims who received no acknowledgement and compensation from the government.

The task of remembering and commemorating the victims of the Tokyo and other Japanese firebombings has been left to the aging survivors, their descendants, and civil society.

Charred body of a woman who was carrying a child on her back. 

(Photo: Taken on March 10, 1945 by Koyo Ishikawa (1904-1989))

The task of remembering of all victims of bombings worldwide needs more attention by journalists, scholars, and civil society.

Locals from Chungking, China, left homeless by Japanese bombing, May 1939. 

(Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via The Guardian)

Ayoko Mie's "New map shines light on Tokyo air raid horrors: Scholars record wartime history politicians would rather forget," posted at JT yesterday explains how the Great Tokyo Air Raids Life of Victims Map created by the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage shows how Tokyo residents tried to flee the bombs and fires:

The Life of Victims Map is the most comprehensive effort to visualize the overall effect of the raids because it includes those killed by raids other than Operation Meetinghouse. Over 100 air raids were carried out on the capital after November 1944...

U.S. forces went on to conduct air raids on 66 Japanese cities in the final months the war. Over a 10-day period beginning on March 9, 1945, the strikes destroyed 40 percent of those 66 cities, according to scholar Mark Seldon’s research paper “Bombs Bursting in Air: State and Citizen Responses to the U.S. Firebombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan.”

Yet the central government has conducted little research on the air raids, even the ones on Tokyo, despite their gravity.

“In a sense, over-concentration on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed the dozens of cities attacked by firebombing,” said Cary Karacas, assistant professor of geography at the College of Staten Island, who with author Bret Fisk launched the bilingual historical archive Japan Air Raids.org in 2010.

It was not until 1970 that the impact of the Tokyo air raids would begin to be scrutinized by a citizens’ group led by Katsumoto Saotome, director of the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, with the support of then-Tokyo Gov. Ryokichi Minobe.

“The central government didn’t want to recognize the fact that much damage was caused in Japan’s capital city, Tokyo, and they did not want to compensate non-military Japanese people who suffered from the bombing,” said the 81-year-old Saotome, who was 12 when the bombs began dropping.

In "Tokyo firebombing and unfinished U.S. business," posted at JT on Feb. 15, historian Jeff Kingston provides more context and details of the firebombings; calling into question the judgment of the Japanese government; and blaming both Japan's wartime government and the Truman administration for prolonging the war, which resulted in deaths of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians:

Prolonging the war meant there was a price to be paid and, as in most modern conflicts, civilians paid the highest price. The firebombing campaign left some 5 million people homeless throughout Japan, killing perhaps 500,000 civilians and wounding another 400,000 — excluding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. LeMay also oversaw Operation Starvation, a strategy to mine Japan’s coastal waters and ports from the air, so disrupting shipping and the distribution of food. This supplemented a very effective submarine blockade...

The ashes of more than 100,000 air-raid victims are interred at Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward, where there is a modest memorial. And in Koto Ward, documents and oral histories have been assembled at a private library/museum — but there is no publicly funded Tokyo Firebombing Museum or state memorial commensurate with the scale of this ghastly event.

In 1990, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government set up a committee to prepare plans for a memorial, but in his recent book “Tokyo Vernacular,” Jordan Sand, a professor at Georgetown University, states that “this was ultimately derailed by politicians on the right and the national bureaucracy.”

In "Bombs Bursting in Air: State and citizen responses to the US firebombing and Atomic bombing of Japan," scholar Mark Selden has taken an in-depth look at the human consequences of the firebombings of Japan's cities. Selden argues that many more than 100,000 died on March 9-10.  He further demonstrates that LeMay's campaign against Japanese civilians set the stage for his bombings of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and later bombings Afghanistan, and Iraq, in the context of the culture of celebration of war:

The Strategic Bombing Survey provided a technical description of the firestorm and its effects on Tokyo...

The survey concluded—plausibly, but only for events prior to August 6, 1945—that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man...The largest number of victims were the most vulnerable: women, children and the elderly.”

 ...The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts...

Following the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, the firebombing was extended nationwide. In the ten-day period beginning on March 9, 9,373 tons of bombs destroyed 31 square miles of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Overall, bombing strikes destroyed 40 percent of the 66 Japanese cities targeted... the slaughter of civilian populations on a scale that had no parallel in the history of bombing.

...Overall, by Sahr Conway-Lanz’s calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Throughout the spring and summer of 1945 the US air war in Japan reached an intensity that is still perhaps unrivaled in the magnitude of human slaughter...The point is not to separate the United States from other participants in World War II, but to suggest that there is more common ground in the war policies of Japan and the United States in their disregard of citizen victims than is normally recognized in the annals of history and journalism...

With area bombing at the core of its strategic agenda, US attacks on cities and noncombatants would run the gamut from firebombing, napalming, and cluster bombing to the use of chemical defoliants and depleted uranium weapons and bunker buster bombs in an ever expanding circle of destruction whose recent technological innovations center on the use of drones controlling the skies and bringing terror to inhabitants below.

Less noted then and since were the systematic barbarities perpetrated by Japanese forces against resistant villagers, though this produced the largest number of the estimated ten to thirty million Chinese who lost their lives in the war, a number that far surpasses the half million or more Japanese noncombatants who died at the hands of US bombing, and may have exceeded Soviet losses to Nazi invasion conventionally estimated at 20 million lives...

 Washington immediately announced the atomic bomb’s destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and released the iconic photographs of the mushroom cloud... was banned under the occupation were close-up images of victims whether of the firebombing or the atomic bombing captured on film by Japanese photographers, that is, the human face of the atomic holocaust...

We reflect on the fact that there is no Sadako of the firebombing of Japanese cities, no carbonized lunchbox relic known to the world, or even to Japanese children. Yet there was precisely the killing of myriad mothers and children in those not quite forgotten raids. We need to expand the canvas of our imagination to encompass a wider range of victims of American bombing in this and other wars, just as Japanese need to set their experience as bomb victims against the Chinese and Asia-Pacific victims of their war and colonialism. Nor should American responsibility for its bomb victims end with the recovery of memory. It requires a sensibility embodied in official apology and reparations for victims, and a consciousness embodied in public monuments and national military policies that is fundamentally at odds with American celebrations of its wars.

Additional links:

"Children's World Peace Statue (Tokyo)"-- Plans for this statue and diligent fundraising

 were conducted by Tokyo junior and senior high school students while studying about

 the effects of the conventional and atomic air raids.

(Image: The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, Koto Ward, Tokyo) 

The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage

Japanairraids.org

One of the participants of a group of Tokyo residents paying pilgrimage to landmarks dedicated to the victims 

of the Great Tokyo Air Raids gives an offering to the Buddhist deity of mercy in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward 

on March 2, 2014, ahead of the 69th anniversary of the U.S. bombing on the capital. 

(Photo: Hirotaka Kojo, Asahi)

"VOX POPULI: Anniversary of 1945 Tokyo air raid warns us against past mistakes" (Asahi, March 10, 2014) 

"Woman's picture book recalls how mother saved her in Tokyo firebombing" (Hirotaka Kojo, Asahi, March 6, 2014)

"Fire Bombings and Forgotten Civilians: The Lawsuit Seeking Compensation for Victims of the Tokyo Air Raids" (Cary Karacas, The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 17, 2011)

"The Firebombing of Tokyo: Views from the Ground" (Brett Fisk and Cary Karakas, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jan. 17, 2011)

"China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945" (Diana Lary, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Nov. 29, 2010)

"The Great Tokyo Air Raid and the Bombing of Civilians in World War II", The Asahi Shimbun, reposted at The Asia-Pacific Journal, March 11, 2010)

"A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities and the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq [*]" (Mark Selden, The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 2, 2007)

-JD

Souls of Zen - Buddhism, Ancestors, & the 2011 Tsunami in Japan; collective forgetting of coastal Tohoku's historic villages; and those left behind....

Souls of Zen - Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan: 
Trailer #1 from Jakob Montrasio on Vimeo.

Souls of Zen – Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan follows the "greatest religious mobilization in Japan's postwar history." Filmed from March to December 2011, the documentary by Tim Graf, a graduate student at Tohoku University, and director/cinematographer Jakob Montrasio explored  the everyday lives of Buddhist professionals in the disaster zone, and Japan’s tradition of ancestor veneration in the wake of 3/11, focusing on Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land Buddhism.

"Tsunami zone’s village culture fades into fog of history,"a soulful article by historian Jeff Kingston, published at JT today, updates Tim Graf's engagement with survivors. The young scholar's views are now more subdued in light of the collective forgetting of this historic coastal region, as he describes many survivors (and perhaps himself) experiencing what psychologists would recognize as symptoms of collective post-traumatic stress:

True, some of the larger towns seem to be on the rebound, but in between, the visitor is confronted by many “missing teeth” along Tohoku’s saw-tooth seaboard. A number of these towns were already dying, with the tsunami providing the coup de grace. We can better appreciate what Tohoku’s shoreline villages represented now that they have been washed away and former residents are marooned in soulless temporary-housing ghettoes where the greatest risks are isolation and boredom. Are we ready to write off the charming hamlets that used to be such a key feature of this coastal culture? I guess so, but recalling my initial visit there in 1982, I can’t help but feel nostalgia for this disappearing Japan...

Tim Graf, a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at Heidelberg University and research associate at Tohoku University, made a poignant and haunting video about the tragic events in 2011 titled, “Souls of Zen — Buddhism, Ancestors, and the Tsunami in Japan” (www.soulsofzen.com). Recently, Graf shared some of his reflections...

Conducting fieldwork is easier, Graf says, because people “are so happy to have someone to talk to, they just pour out their hearts, as fewer volunteers come by to listen these days.”

...Graf observes: “Of course, I knew that I wouldn’t be ‘done’ with the disaster topic, nor did I think that the people of Tohoku felt better three years on — I knew that life was no movie — but going back to the tsunami zone three years later had an even stronger impact on me. I think it was a shock to see that nothing had changed — and now, many new problems, and the fear that this would never end. My informants looked older — tired and exhausted, trapped in time.”

He adds: “It really surprised me how 3/11 continues to be one ever-growing mess. There is simply no end in sight; no recovery, nothing. Things only seemed to get worse. For many people, there is recovery. But things develop differently for different people. And I fear this gap will only widen over time. I think this must be even more stressful for those who feel left behind...

---

Chion-in, the head temple of Jodo (Pure Land) Buddhism in Japan will screen Souls of Zen in Kyoto after the 3/11 remembrance period:

13 March 2014 @ 13:30 14 March2014 @ 13:30 15 March2014 @ 16:30 Chion-in Wajun Kaikan, B2 Floor, Wajun Hall Free and open to the public.

More info at Chion-in's website (J): http://www.chion-in.or.jp/index.php

Links: Nuclear refugees may be in temporary housing for years to come; Tohoku recovery slow, nonexistent; Stress-related deaths in Tohoku: 2,973

"Lack of bids threatens to keep Fukushima evacuees in temporary lodgings" (via FUKUSHIMA MINPO via JT, Feb. 16, 2014 )

Because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that unfolded in March 2011, six towns and villages that had to be evacuated — Tomioka, Okuma, Futaba, Namie, Katsurao and Iitate — plan to build “out-of-town” communities where reinforced public apartments play a central role. The prefecture plans to build 4,890 units to house people from these and 13 other municipalities.

The prefecture has not come up with good ideas to expedite public housing, and the evacuees are facing the very real possibility they could be in temporary lodging for years to come. The fastest project to be completed so far is the 20-unit complex in Koriyama, which won’t start accepting residents until October.

When the evacuees move in, the prefectural government plans to let groups of residents who formed close ties in the shelters occupy neighboring units at the new apartments so those relationships can be preserved.

This is a lesson learned from the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, when the shift to permanent public housing severed bonds the evacuees had formed in its aftermath, leaving them socially isolated and leading to a surge in solitary deaths.

"Majority of Tohoku mayors say recovery slow or nonexistent," (via JT via Kyodo, March 2):

The chiefs of the radiation-tainted towns of Namie and Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture meanwhile said no progress was being made at all on reconstruction, even though all their residents have fled to avoid the radiation spewed by the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

In Iwate and Miyagi, municipality heads said the rebuilding of homes and infrastructure including roads, railway and port facilities has been slow.

Many mayors expressed concern that public attention is increasingly shifting from Tohoku’s plight to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

The death toll from the March 2011 disasters stood at 15,884 as of Feb. 10, with 2,636 still unaccounted for, according to the National Police Agency.

"THREE YEARS AFTER: Stress-related deaths reach 2,973 in Tohoku," (by Shinichi Fujiwara and Shiori Tabuchi, Asahi, March 7):

As of the end of January, in the three hardest-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, 2,973 people had died from physical and psychological fatigue since the disaster struck on March 11, 2011, the survey showed.

Fukushima Prefecture, which hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, accounted for 1,660 of those deaths, compared with 1,607 deaths directly caused by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

The stress-related death toll was 879 for Miyagi Prefecture and 434 for Iwate Prefecture, according to the survey.

In Fukushima Prefecture, more than 130,000 people have been evacuated because of the nuclear accident, and the emotional strain from living away from home is taking a toll.

“Older people tend to get ill due to changes in their environments,” a prefectural government official said. “Stress from anxiety about an unforeseeable return home also affects their health and can lead to death.”

Peace On Earth/Earth Garden 3/11 remembrance, gathering to co-create a life-sustaining culture, March 3-11, 2014 @Tokyo

Links: Tokyo prosecutors drop charges against TEPCO; Nuclear crisis suicide & stress-related death toll: 1,656 victims in Fukushima

No one has been held accountable for the multiple nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.  AFP-Jiji's "Hundreds rally in Tokyo against dropped Fukushima crisis charges" details the injuries to the 15,000 people who brought a 2012 criminal complaint against the Japanese government and TEPCO.  (They are among the 160,000 who were evacuated after their communities were contaminated by nuclear radiation, forcing them to leave.  83,000 Fukushima residents are from the highly irradiated 20-kilometer evacuation zone.)   In September, 2013, prosecutors decided not to charge any TEPCO or government officials with negligence:

Hundreds rallied Saturday in Tokyo to protest a decision by prosecutors to drop charges over the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, meaning no one has been indicted, let alone punished, nearly three years after a calamity ruled “man-made.”

Official records do not list anyone as having died as a direct result of radioactive fallout after tsunami unleashed by the 9.0-magnitude quake of March 11, 2011, crashed into the Fukushima No. 1 plant, swamping cooling systems and causing three reactor meltdowns.

Excluded from those records are Fukushima residents who committed suicide owing to fears about the fallout showered on their hometowns, while others died during the evacuation process. Official data released last week showed that 1,656 people have died in the prefecture from stress and other illnesses related to the nuclear crisis.

“There are many victims of the accident, but no one” has been charged, chief rally organiser Ruiko Muto, 61, told the protesters, displaying a photo of the village of Kawauchi, which fell inside the no-go zone...

Campaigners immediately appealed the decision to the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, which has the power to order the defendants be tried. The committee members comprise 11 citizens who are chosen at random by lot. But since the appeal had to be filed in Tokyo instead of Fukushima, campaigners said the move was “aimed at preventing us from filing a complaint against their decision in Fukushima, where many residents share our anger and grief.”

...Campaigners allege that state officials and Tepco executives failed to take measures to bolster the plant against a natural disaster of the magnitude of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. They also hold them responsible for delays in announcing how the radiation was projected to spread from the No. 1 plant...

Hiroyuki Kawai, a lawyer representing the campaigners, said “there were lots of measures that officials could have taken to prevent the disaster.”

“We won’t give up (pushing for) indictment of the officials,” he said.

Campaigners last year filed a separate complaint to prosecutors over Tepco’s handling of the buildup of massive amounts of contaminated water used to cool the No. 1 plant’s wrecked reactors, accusing the utility of committing pollution-related crimes.

Separately, senior Tepco and government officials face several civil lawsuits that were filed by thousands of plaintiffs seeking compensation for mental and financial damage. The plaintiffs are demanding the full restoration of their hometowns to the pre-disaster state.

The Telegraph interviewed Aileen Mioko-Smith, of Kyoto-based Green Action for its report, "Prosecutors drop charges over Fukushima nuclear disaster":

"The investigation clearly stated this was an accident created by humans, not a natural disaster, but the judicial system here has now decided to side with the powers-that-be," she said.

"The government will be happy with the decision, but it is completely irresponsible," she said. "And I fear that failing to prosecute in this case will lead to another disaster in the future."

This  March 1JT editorial, "Fukushima’s appalling death toll" assigns blame for suicides and stress-related deaths to TEPCO and the Japanese government.  Furthermore, it cites studies demonstrating harm from 3/11, is ongoing, as a result of inadequate response by the Japanese Ministry of Health, especially for survivors still living in temporary housing:

The latest report from Fukushima revealed that more people have died from stress-related illnesses and other maladies after the disaster than from injuries directly linked to the disaster. The report compiled by prefectural authorities and local police found that the deaths of 1,656 people in Fukushima Prefecture fall into the former category. That figure surpasses the 1,607 people who died from disaster-related injuries...

In another report, the first of its kind since the disaster, the lifetime risk of cancer for young children was found to have increased because of exposure to radiation...

These two reports both show that despite the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s claims that things are under control, the disaster continues to threaten the lives and well-being of people in the hardest hit areas of Fukushima, Miyage and Iwate prefectures...

The government and Tepco could work to speed up the process of compensation. That’s especially important considering that about 90 percent of those who have died since the initial 3/11 toll were at least 66 years old. In so doing, they would considerably lower the stress on people still living in temporary housing or in difficult conditions...

There is still much left to protest about. Included on the long agenda of Fukushima disaster-related problems that still need to be dealt with should be improving the lives of disaster victims.

Global Candle Chain - 3/11 Third Anniversary Remembrance by Beautiful Energy @The World

(Photo by Teppei Sato (c))

Via our friends at Beautiful Energy:

Global Candle Chain - 3/11 Third Anniversary Remembrance by Beautiful Energy

When: Tuesday, March 11, 2014,  2:45pm in UTC+11

Where: The World

日本語は英語に続きます。

Light a candle this coming March 11 and join the Beautiful Energy - Global Candles Chain in memory of the triple disaster of March 11, 2011 and in solidarity with the global stand for a nuclear-free world.

March 11 it will be 3 years since the Northeastern Earthquake and Tsunami hit Japan, killing over 15,000 people, destroying numerous villages along the Tohoku coast and disrupting the lives of millions.

On that same day the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster also put an end to the peaceful lives of many people living in the vicinity of the plant.

Helps us create a global chain of light to honor those who lost their lives or loved ones.

Last year over 900 people in 47 countries joined our global candle chain. See here for many beautiful photos https://www.facebook.com/events/420275958062841/

You can join from anywhere in the world. Anytime on March 11 between 2.46pm Japan time (the time the earthquake first struck ) and midnight in your country light a candle and stand one minute (or more) in silence.

Send us a photo of your candle, if you will. Upload to this page or send by email to globalcandlechain@gmail.com.
Or post on twitter or instagram with hashtag #candlesforpeace

And spread the word! Share this event page with your friends. The more people and countries join, the more powerful our chain will be!

Here are the global starting times of the chain:

イベント開始時刻 / Start time
グローバル・キャンドルチェーンの開始は、3月11日、東北地方太平洋沖地震発生時刻の14:46から同日深夜まで行う予定です。

各国の現地時間は下記リストからご確認ください。

6.46pm New Zealand (Auckland)
4.46pm Australia (Sydney)
2.46pm Japan, South Korea
1.46pm China & Hong Kong, Mongolia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines
12.46pm Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam
11.16am India, Sri Lanka
9.16am Iran
9.46am Russia (Moscow)
7.46am Finland, Estonia, Israel, Greece, Rwanda, South-Africa
6.46am Europe: Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland
5.46am Europe (UK & Scotland)
2.46am Brazil, Argentina, Trinidad, Chile
1.46am USA (Washington, New York, EST)
1.46am Canada (Toronto)
00.46am Peru
10.46pm Canada (Vancouver) (March 10)
> 10.46pm USA: (Los Angeles) (March 10)
> 7.46pm Hawaii (March 10)

来る3.11に、東日本大震災により、地震・津波・原発事故と、三重の被害を受けた方々への追悼と核のない世界を願い、世界中でキャンドルを灯すことで私たちのBeautiful Energyに参加しませんか？

Global Candle Chainは、世界中どこからでも、キャンドルに火を灯すことで参加できるワールドワイドなイベントです。
キャンドルであかりを灯す様子を写真に取って、イベントページへシェアして下さい！

15000人以上もの人々が犠牲となり、広大な地域を破壊した東日本大震災。現在もなお、多くの人々が避難生活を強いられています。
また3月11日に発生した大地震が誘発した福島第一原子力発電所の事故により、日本、そして世界中が原発の恐ろしさに気づかされました。

震災発生から3年目を迎える3月11日、震災犠牲者への追悼、
そして被災者のみなさまが一刻も早く穏やかな生活を取り戻せることへの祈り、また、核のない世界への願いを込めて、世界中をキャンドルの光で繋ぐグローバルな"Chain"を作ることに是非協力してください！

去年の3.11には、900人以上、47カ国の世界中の人々がこのGlobal Candle Chainへ参加されました。

前回のたくさんの美しい写真を見るにはこちら：https://www.facebook.com/events/420275958062841/

3月11日当日は震災の起きた14：46（日本時間）～0：00（あなたの住んでいる国）の間、いつでも、どこででも参加することができます。
キャンドルを灯し、心の光と共に黙祷を捧げましょう。

＜参加方法＞
あなたのキャンドルナイトの様子を、写真で撮って私たちに送ってください。
1.Instagram、Twitterを利用する（ #candlesforpeace のタグを使ってください）
2.Emailに添付（アドレス：globalcandlechain@gmail.com）する
3.このFBイベントページにアップロードする
※世界中からの参加者数をカウントしますので、ご事情でキャンセルしなければいけない場合は必ず「参加」を取り消してください。

311 Global Candles for Peaceは、オープンなイベントです。日本はもちろん、各国にお住まいの友人・家族にぜひこの活動を共有してくださいね。

B.E.メンバー一同より

About us:

https://www.facebook.com/BeautifulEnergyTokyo
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BeautifulEnergy/

March 1: 60th Anniversary of the "Castle Bravo" Thermonuclear Explosion on Bikini Atoll; Fukushima nuclear refugee visits Marshall Islands to learn from survivors of radiation & displacement

March 1, 1954 "Castle Bravo" Thermonuclear Explosion on Bikini Atoll
 (Photo: Peacecorpsonline.com)

March 1 is the 60th anniversary of the 1954 experimental explosion of a thermonuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll, an island that was part of a United Nations Trust Territory  administered by Washington. Codenamed Castle Bravo, the 15-megaton bomb was America's largest nuclear device and one of 67 nuclear bombings of Bikini and neighboring Eniwitok atoll.

Nuclear Remembrance Day (Marshall Islands), formally known as Nuclear Victims' Day and Nuclear Survivors' Day is a national holiday in the Marshall Islands honoring the victims and survivors of nuclear testing.

Bikini's fate as a nuclear testing ground was set on February 10, 1946, when Commodore Ben H. Wyatt spoke with King Judah, the leader of the Bikinians. Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshall Islands, told King Judah that Bikinians had an opportunity to bring about world peace.  Wyatt likened Bikinians to the children of Israel whom the Lord saved from their enemy and led unto the Promised Land. They only needed to agree to leaving their home “temporarily” so that the United States could explode a thermonuclear bomb on their island “for the good of mankind and to end all world wars."

King Judah, speaking for his people, devout Christians after decades of missionary activity on the island, replied, "If the United States government and the scientists of the world want to use our island and atoll for furthering development, which with God’s blessing will result in kindness and benefit to all mankind, my people will be pleased to go elsewhere.”

Thereupon, Navy Seabees helped disassemble the Bikinian church and community house and relocated the Bikinians 125 miles (201 km) eastward to Rongerik Atoll. This uninhabited island was one-sixth the size of Bikini Atoll and lacked water and food supply. The Navy left them with a few weeks of food and water, then abandoned them from July 1946 through July of 1947. A team of U.S. investigators concluded in late 1947 that the islanders must be moved immediately. Journalist Harold Ickes wrote, "The natives are actually and literally starving to death."

Castle Bravo hit Bikini with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Fallout (that resembled snow except it didn't melt) flowed down upon the residents of Rongelap and Utrik Atolls.  After the Cold War, declassified documents showed that, before the bombing,  the U.S. had organized  Project 4.1,"The Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons,” a medical study of the residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from Castle Bravo.

Rongelapese (Marshall Islands) child exposed to radiation from the Bravo Test. (Image: Dianuke.com)

Bravo's radioactive snow went far beyond the northern atolls of the Marshall Islands. 82 miles away, fallout drenched the 23-member crew of Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing boat, and, in the same vicinity, unacknowledged victims on 1,000 other boats and ships out at sea during Bravo and other explosions.  The Asahi has brought to light some of the victims' experiences in "‘Forgotten’ victims of U.S. H-bomb testing dying in despair, hopelessness." The Mainichi noted that U.S. government paid "condolence money" to the Japanese government, but did not compensate the actual victims exposed to the bombs' radioactive"death ash."

The contamination of the Lucky Dragon and other vessels in the Pacific (in an area that ranged from the Marshall Islands to Japan to Taiwan and beyond) gave rise to a vigorous postwar anti-nuclear movement in Japan.

Washington encouraged Bikini islanders to return in 1969, when officials deemed the island "safe" after an attempted "clean up."  However, Bikini islanders were forced to leave again in the 1970's when it was revealed their homeland would never be safe for habitation.

In response to the massive Bravo nuclear explosion, Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev ordered nuclear weapons designer Andrei Sakharov to create a bomb even more mind-boggling than Bravo. The result: a series of cataclysmic 20- to 50-megaton nuclear explosions in the Novaya Zemiya archipelago in the Arctic. The largest, the Tsar Bomb was designed to be 100 megatons, however frightened by the potential massive fallout, Sakharov halved its power.

On Oct. 30, 1961, the 50-ton nuclear device's mushroom cloud rose 40 miles (64 km) high after an atom bomb inside the device detonated a series of thermonuclear reactions.  It destroyed buildings 70 miles away and its shockwaves shattered windows in Scandinavia.

The Tsar Bomb was one in the last series of Soviet nuclear explosions conducted in the open atmosphere. The shocking levels of destruction from the Tsar Bomb and  radiation from Castle Bravo led the US and the Soviet Union to agree to an atmospheric test ban treaty in 1963.

Even before the use of the bomb during the Second World War, in July 1945, 155 Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition to Harry Truman stating they believed the offensive use of the nuclear bomb against Japan would be morally wrong and  catastrophic in consequences. Similarly, soon after the explosion of the Tsar Bomb, its creator Andrei Sakharov experienced a moral conversion, and became a witness against nuclear weapons proliferation:

A terrible crime had been committed, and I couldn’t prevent it! A feeling of impotence, unbearable bitterness, shame and humiliation overcame me. I dropped my face on the table and wept. This was probably the most terrible lesson of my life: you can’t sit on two chairs.

In the decades since the declassification of documents about the secret human radiation experimentation upon the people of the Marshall Islands, we have seen the development of cross-border sharing and solidarity between survivors of the 2,056 experimental nuclear bombs that nuclear nations have exploded throughout the world.  The concept of "global hibakusha" has entered public consciousness, and now includes victims of uranium mining, depleted uranium testing and use in warfare, nuclear waste disposal, and nuclear plant meltdowns.

Keiko Takahashi, third from right, attends a Mass for victims of nuclear experiments in Majuro, Marshall Islands, on Feb. 27. (Photo: Hajimu Takeda, Asahi)

This year a young nuclear refugee, Keiko Takahashi visited the Marshall Islands to help her understanding of the consequences of nuclear fallout in Fukushima. Takahashi was forced to leave her home in Okuma has only been able to visit her home once since her family's evacuation shortly after 3/11. The Fukushima University student called for continued dialogue, solidarity, and collaborative action between victims of nuclear radiation worldwide:

A clue to achieving a nuclear-free world will be found when people who suffered damage join hands, share lessons and face challenges.

In 1996, after France's experimental nuclear explosions in French Polynesia resulted in outrage in the Asia-Pacific and worldwide, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but it has not entered into force because China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified the Treaty; and India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed it. 

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Background:

Nuclear Savage: Islands of Secret Project 4.1 (documentary film by Adam Jonas Horowitz that exposes the decades of human radiation testing after Castle Bravo. The people of Rongelap describe an unbelievable level of suffering from recurring cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects that have affected multiple generations)

"Student visits bombed Marshall Islands to find way for Fukushima revival," (Hajimu Takeda, Asahi, March 2, 2014)

"Nuclear Conquistadors: Military Colonialism in Nuclear Test Site Selection during the Cold War" (Robert Jacobs, Asian Journal of Peacebuilding Vol. 1 No. 2, Nov. 2013): 157-177)

United Nations Report Reveals the Ongoing Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism in the Marshall Islands ( Robert Jacobs & Mick Broderick, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Nov. 19, 2012)

"BRAVO and Today: US Nuclear Tests in the Marshall Islands" (Tony de Brum, The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 19, 2005)

"Bikini and the Hydrogen Bomb: A Fifty Year Perspective" (Senator Tomaki Juda and Charles J. Hanley, The Asia-Pacific Journal, April 25, 2004)

"Islanders Want The Truth About Bikini Nuclear Test" (Yoichi Funabashi, The Asia-Pacific Journal, March 3, 2004)

"Nuclear War: Uranium Mining and Nuclear Tests on Indigenous Lands" (Cultural Survival, Fall 1993)

 "Secrets of the Dead: The World’s Biggest Bomb" (PBS, 2011)

Global Hibakusha (Bo Jacobs) on Twitter

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More background, via  Our Islands Are Sacred on Facebook:

“History Project," written and performed by Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIIrrPyK0eU)

Darlene Keju, Speech to World Council of Churches, Vancouver, 1983

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hxCGlA5oJQ

Banning nuclear weapons: a Pacific Islands perspective, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) report presented to the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Nayarit, Mexico, February 12-14

http://www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ICAN-PacificReport-FINAL-email.pdf Photo: The Bravo nuclear test on Bikini Atoll, 1 March 1954, part of Operation Castle

-JD

Vote by March 15th for sustainable Tokyo-based solar-sail cargo ship Greenheart - nominated for Royal Dutch Society of Engineers Prize

Your vote for Greenheart counts- Even in Dutch!

Via Jen Teeter in Kyoto, please check out the latest from Greenheart, a visionary renewable energy project based in Japan:

Creating the world’s first solar-sail cargo ship tailored to fit the needs of marginalized coastal communities is an idea that has propelled a small Tokyo-based international team closer to winning a major engineering prize far from home shore.

International NGO Greenheart Project is but one of 10 nominees for the Vernufteling Prize, to be awarded by the Koninklijk Instituut Van Ingenieurs (the Royal Dutch Society of Engineers), De Ingenieur and Technish Weeblad magazines, and a Dutch association of consulting engineers, NLingenieurs. The finalists were chosen from a field of more than forty submissions based on four criteria: innovation, economic worth, technological advancement, and social value.

The Vernufteling Prize is awarded annually to the initiative that is developing an imaginative project that promises to have a significant social and economic impact. Competitors were asked to respond to the challenge of creating ideas that both embody the social importance of innovative technology. The competition also seeks to make the important work of engineers more visible and widely recognized.

In line with the Dutch word Vernufteling, a portmanteau of inventor, engineer and a lot of creativity, entrants are encouraged to utilize a combination of new and existing technologies to solve real world problems. The winning project also must show potential to attract young people to technical studies and inspire them.

Over the past eight years, 83 engineering firms have submitted a total of 376 ideas, projects and innovative solutions to the Vernufteling Prize. In 2013 Arcadis took home the award for their innovative Winterhard Wissel which keeps railways free from snow and ice in the winter.

As Gert Schouwstra, a Dutch consultant at AA-Planadvies, who nominated Greenheart Project explained, “This project can really work. This year, we shall see how Greenheart will prove itself.”

Greenheart ships are customizable to meet the needs of the end user, whether they be used for fishing, fisheries monitoring, , ecotourism, cargo or passenger transport.

A unique feature is an open source platform which ensures that the end-users can have a say in how future ships are built without the financial and technical burdens of paying for patent rights.

Intentionally designed to be small scale at 32 meters in length and 220 tons, the vessels are designed to be easy to repair and service while maintaining the elegance of a yacht. Through its foldable mast/crane the ship can be maneuvered under bridges allowing greater upstream access, and lift items large and small on and off of shore, whether cargo, a haul of fish or even floating debris such as nets during an environmental cleanup mission.

Greenheart class ships promise to play a hefty role in restoring economic and ecological balance to transport in vulnerable and remote coastal communities, while setting an example that vessels powered by renewable energies are a practical alternative to fossil-fuel based fleets.

Voting by the general public is open from February 25th to March 15th through the Van Dag de Ingenieur (Day of the Engineer) website. After tallying up the votes, the Vernufteling prize winner will be announced on March19, 2014 at High Tech Campus Eindhoven.

To vote for Greenheart...

1. Go to this site: http://www.dagvandeingenieur.nl/vernufteling/publieksverkiezing-2014/
2. Choose "AA Planadvies-Groen vrachtschip voor eilandengroep" from the pull down menu at the top of the page
3. Put in your name and email address
4. Click Stemmen (Vote).
*No need to check any of the boxes there (The page is in Dutch and English)
The Vernufteling Prize is awarded annually to the initiative that is developing an imaginative project that promises to have a significant social and economic impact. If we win it will give us the wide public exposure that will propel us to finishing the construction of the boat and getting more people interested in joining us in changing the paradigm of shipping and waterway transport.

Drawing upon, and endeavoring to be compatible with, the rich sailing traditions of coastal communities, Greenheart is working to radically amplify access to the oceanic commons and distant markets, while interacting with the environment in a more equitable and just manner. Greenheart is intentionally open source small-scaled, durable, adaptable, affordable, energy-efficient, solar/sail cargo ship that is easy to service and repair. It expects to rearrange the balance of opportunities among rich and poor by making safe, long distance sea travel accessible to marginalized and excluded sectors of the world population.

ABOUT GREENHEART PROJECT

The Greenheart Project is an international non-profit organization founded in Tokyo, Japan with offices in Europe and Japan, preparing to build the world’s first fuel-free, container-ready commercial vessel. The small sail-solar ship is specially designed for use by communities in marginalized coastal communities and can serve as a mobile solar power station. It will be built in Chittagong, Bangladesh and launched as early as this year.

To learn more about Greenheart Project visit: www.greenheartproject.org
Pat Utley, Greenheart Director
patutley@greenheartproject.org
P: +81-3-5606-9310

Don't Forget Fukushima: "...if people don't make an effort to raise my voice, then no one outside of Japan will know what's happening. And that is...soul-destroying."

Via Greenpeace:  Over one hundred thousand Japanese people have been forced to leave their familial homes and livelihoods because of the second largest nuclear plant fallout in history. They have been ignored by their government and TEPCO, owner of the disaster site. They fear life will get even worse if they are forgotten by the world.  So Greenpeace brought six activists to Fukushima to see and listen.

Here is the page with links to the stories of Minako Sugano (mother of young children), Kenichi Hasagawa (former Iitate Village dairy farmer, now a nuclear refugee), Hiroshi Kanno (another former Iitate farmer, now a nuclear refugee), Tatsuko Ogawara (organic farmer) , Katsutaka Idogawa (former mayor of Futaba, an evacuated village), and Kenji Fukuda (a lawyer who advocates for 3/11 victims): "Fukushima: Don't Forget"

Many thanks to Fresh Currents on FB for a head's up re the video of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) press conference of the six activists, "Bearing Witness to the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster."

The press conference began with testimony from the Fukushima victims who all shared that it is their moral duty to tell the world about the nuclear catastrophe, especially given the inadequate response by the government and Japanese media to the catastrophe, and to a clean energy future for Japan and the world.

One of the striking themes from the global witnesses for Fukushima is how the catastrophe has raised global awareness about  the dangers from the nuclear industry. (In the years since 3/11, locals worldwide have began to speak out about nuclear issues in their own backyards, attributing their newfound outspokenness to Fukushima.  People are speaking out about uranium mining pits, nuclear waste, nuclear fuel plants, nuclear weapons, depleted uranium plants and depleted uranium weapons in their backyards).

Another theme is that people now realize governments and nuclear energy companies are incapable of controlling nuclear accidents. Chernobyl was written off as the an accident by a bumbling managers. Initially 3/11 was excused as the result of an unpreventable natural disaster, but we know now that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was preventable. TEPCO was incompetent and negligent.

A final theme is that Fukushima is an ongoing, planetary issue. It's not over.

Hisayo Takada. Greenpeace Japan Climate and Energy campaigner, pointed out that it's possible forJapan to end dependence on nuclear and fossil energy, and shift directly to renewable energy, combined with increased conservation efforts. In so doing, Japan could be a global model for clean energy policy.

(7:28) Minako Sugano, mother and former kindergarten teacher:

This is time I should be spending with my children -- and losing that makes me hate nuclear power plants even more.

So when I come to speak to you about my experience, I'm also thinking, 'Why do I have to do this?' I'm just a mother. Why should I spend time doing this when I should be spending it with my children?

But if people don't make an effort to raise my voice, then no one outside of Japan will know what's happening.  And that is even more soul-destroying. (crying...)

(8:10) Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba:

While the primary cause of the disaster was the tsunami, in fact, the real underlying cause of the disaster was that the managers had fallen asleep at the wheel and evaded their responsibilities.

Right at the moment in Japan, the regulatory authority only debates in terms of natural disasters being the only threat causing nuclear power plant accidents

And unbelievably and terrifyingly, among the regulatory authority and the managers, none of them have experienced on the front line themselves. And the real cause of the accident was that the people in charge don't have any experience, on the front line, where it counts. And without reflecting upon this at all, or thinking about why this is wrong, they are now, trying to restart nuclear reactors in Japan.

(10:15) Kenichi Hasegawa, former dairy farmer:

The biggest problem in Japan now is the deliberate cover-up of the levels of radiation that people have been exposed to and the health problems they have. There is a continual, purposeful concealment of facts that the media in Japan will not properly report.

So, what we need is for foreign countries to put pressure on Japan and hopefully bring the truth to light.

(13:08) Jean-François Juliard, Greenpeace France Executive Director:

...This is not just a natural disaster. You can't just build new houses...new infrastructure...and say, 'Okay we can forget about the accident.'

We cannot convey how important it is for the people of Fukushima to keep their stories alive....This is why I'm here, to take these stories back to my country...

Japan should not export nuclear materials to other countries. Japan should not relaunch new reactors. It has to be a nuclear-free country forever. This is not just a responsibility for the Japanese people, but for the whole world...

(16:45) Sundarrajan Gomathinayagam, director, Hard n soft technologies pvt:

The people of  a small village in the southernmost part of India have been putting up a spirited fight against the Koodankulam nuclear plant for more than two years. We owe this spirit to Fukushima. People have learned about the dangers of nuclear power after the catatrophic accident that happened in Fukushima. We woke up and are standing against the dangers because of Fukushima.

We know all is not well in Fukushima...Minako Sugano has charged us to take her voice to all the mothers across the globe; she believes it is the voice of the mother has the power to change things in the future...

Yoon Ho Seob, Green Designer and Professor Emeritus in Kookmin University:

The Fukushima disaster is clearly an ongoing global catastrophe, an unmistakable mistake in our era. The rights of Fukushima people to live healthy and happy lives have been violated...

Right after the March 2011 disaster, I felt the disaster was different from other disasters; something is very wrong, to the point I can't ignore. Then immediately I had a discussion with my family to decrease our energy consumption as much as possible...

The current situation of the victims and what they have gone through gives a clear impression that no government and no company can control a nuclear accident and protect people...Still the South Korean government is planning to increase nuclear reactors from the current number of 23 to 39, although the nuclear density is the highest in the world.  Also, we have millions of people living near nuclear power plants in Korea. If a nuclear accident happens in South Korea, the scale will be the highest in world history...

If we put our knowledge together, we already have cleaner and better options...

(38.08) Hisako Tanaka:

Currently about 12-13 percent of Japan's energy comes from renewable sources. That includes hydropower from water dams.

In-depth Background: "Toward a Peaceful Society Without Nuclear Energy: Understanding the Power Structures Behind the 3.11 Fukushima Nuclear Disaster" by Nishioka Nobuyuki, Translated by John Junkerman (APJ: Dec. 26, 2011):

Japan has experienced more exposure to nuclear bombs and radiation than any country on earth. August 6, 1945—Hiroshima. August 9—Nagasaki. March 1, 1954—Lucky Dragon No. 5. And March 11, 2011—Fukushima. Japanese people have repeatedly been the victims of radioactive contamination. And each time, they have pledged their opposition to nukes. With 3.11 as a starting point, the world is attempting to pursue a new way of living.

We aim to create a society without war that has no use for armies, bases, soldiers, and weapons. That society is also a no nukes society, free of nuclear power.