Robert Jacobs on the 1954 Castle Bravo thermonuclear blast as the turning point in global awareness about nuclear test fallout • July 19, 2014 • Meiji Gakuen Univ, Tokyo

Crew member of Lucky Dragon Number Five, suffering from acute radiation exposure

The fishing boat was 90 miles from the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test explosion epicenter.

If you live in Tokyo and want to learn more about nuclear radiation and the history of the nuclear-free movement, don't miss Hiroshima City University Professor Robert Jacobs' talk about how the 1954 Bravo Castle thermonuclear explosion catalyzed global awareness about the dangers of nuclear fallout.  A sharp, humane, and engaging writer and speaker, the nuclear historian will be speaking on July 19 from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm at the International Conference Hall at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.

Jacobs explains that during the atmospheric nuclear test explosion era (1945-1963) radiation became a part of the lives and bodies of people around the world, carried into their homes as radioactive fallout from hundreds of experimental nuclear explosions. However, it was not until the death of a Japanese fisherman who was exposed to radiation while trawling for tuna 90 miles from the epicenter of a US nuclear explosion at Bikini, a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands, that people realized the real consequences of experimental nuclear explosions.

Just as the shock of 3/11 spurred people worldwide to give louder voice to their fears about radiation from nuclear power plants, nuclear waste, nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons plants, and uranium mines—the shock of the Bravo Castle thermonuclear explosion in Bikini spurred people worldwide to give louder voice to their fears about radiation from nuclear test explosions.

Castle Bravo thermonuclear explosion on March 1, 1954

Bravo was one of six thermonuclear (H-bomb) explosions between March and May 1954 on Bikini and one of 67 thermonuclear test explosions in the Marshall Islands spanning 1952 to 1958 . The formerly inhabited tropical atoll (ring-shaped coral reef that encircles a lagoon) is one of the 29 atolls and five islands that compose the Marshall Islands. The largest (15-megaton) American H-bomb ever, Bravo hit the tropical atoll with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.  The explosion created an immense fallout cloud that covered thousands of square miles.

Bravo's fallout (radioactive dust from calcinated Bikini Island coral that resembled snow except it didn't melt) exposed over 1,000 fishing and naval vessels to high levels of radiation, causing significant exposures to crews. All of these vessels were outside the official exclusion zone.

The most famous of these vessels was the Japanese tuna fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5. Nuclear fallout fell on the boat and its crew for three hours.  When the Lucky Dragon returned to port three weeks later, the entire 23-member crew had to be hospitalized for acute radiation sickness; one crew member later died.

Roberts sums up, "This showed that you could be 100 miles away from a thermonuclear explosion and it could still kill you."

Suffering from nausea, headaches, burns, pain in the eyes, and bleeding from the gums, the Lucky Dragon crew returned to to their home at Yaizu Port, Shizuoka Prefecture, They were diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome and admitted to two Tokyo hospitals. Analysis of the fallout that fell on the ship revealed strontium-90, cesium-137, selenium-141 and uranium-237.

On September 23, Captain Aikichi Kuboyama, 40, died — the first Japanese victim of a hydrogen bomb. His parting message: "I pray that I am the last victim of an atomic or hydrogen bomb." Since then 13 other members of the crew died from cancer.

Lucky Dragon Number Five Captain Aikichi Kuboyama died on September 23, 1954.

We don't know the fates of the crew members of the other 856 Japanese fishing boats that were irradiated from Bravo and other nuclear test explosions in 1954. (The Asahi has brought to light some of the victims' experiences in "‘Forgotten’ victims of U.S. H-bomb testing dying in despair, hopelessness.")

Jacobs describes how Bravo's fallout cloud extended over 200 miles to the northeast of the explosion, creating a lethally contaminated area of 7,000 square miles of the Pacific. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) calculated that Bikini islanders (who had been located about 100 miles from the epicenter of the blast) were exposed to radiation at levels equal to that suffered from hibakusha 1.5 miles away from the epicenter of the Hiroshima blast. Many of the islanders suffered from radiation sickness, experiencing hair loss, low white blood cell counts, hemorrhages, and skin lesions. They and their descendants continue to suffer from cancers, miscarriages, and genetic defects.

Bravo fallout pattern 35 days after the explosion.

The Lucky Dragon's contaminated tuna was sold in Osaka and eaten. As with the post-3/11 experience, the Japanese public grew increasingly anxious about food safety as radioactive fish was found throughout the Pacific Rim.

Map of radioactive contamination of fish by the Bravo explosion. 

Lewis Strauss, the head of the AEC, issued a series of denials regarding the Lucky Dragon.  He said the lesions on the fishermen's bodies were not caused by nuclear radiation, but instead by the caustic burnt lime produced by calcined coral. He told President Eisenhower's press secretary that the boat may have been a "Red spy outfit", commanded by a Soviet agent who intentionally exposing the ship's crew and fish to embarrass the United States. 

However, nothing could keep the lid on what happened. Jacobs tells us the fact that the Lucky Dragon returned to Japan made it impossible for Washington to keep the massive levels of radioactive fallout secret although they had succeeded in doing this for three weeks.

Because the Lucky Dragon irradiation happened when Japan was about to introduce nuclear power plants from the United States, both Tokyo and Washington wanted to quiet the issue as quickly as possible. They, therefore, limited acknowledging the consequences of radiation exposure from the hydrogen bomb testing to the Lucky Dragon, and ignored the crews of other boats and vessels exposed to fallout.  Eventually the U.S. government paid "condolence money" to the Japanese government, but did not compensate the actual victims who were exposed to the nuclear test explosion fallout, not to mention the people who purchased and ate irradiated fish.

Jacobs explained in an email that the Lucky Dragon's return was a historical turning point: the thermonuclear blast's "terrible toll on human health and life marked the end of the previous containment of the issue of radioactive fallout" that Washington had been able to maintain for the first nine years of U.S. experimental nuclear test explosions.

The fact that someone located over 100 miles away from the blast epicenter died from radiation exposure led people all over the world to understand that the nature of the Earth’s ecosystem made it impossible to use highly toxic materials in one place without later contaminating many other places, raising ecological awareness.

Before Bravo, nuclear abolitionists opposed nuclear weapons in several countries.  After Bravo, "news about the irradiation of Lucky Dragon generated a large movement in Japan where it was seen that Japanese were the first victims of the A-Bomb, and then the first victims of the H-Bomb," said Jacobs. After the Bravo test, people began to protest against nuclear testing, and not just nuclear weapons. Japanese women opposing nuclear tests initiated a citizens' petition, the largest of its kind ever, signed by 32 million Japanese.  In August 1954, the first Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was held in Hiroshima.

Bravo did the same in the U.S., long irradiated by nuclear test explosions in Nevada:

By the mid-fifties, “residual” and “lingering” radiation had given way to almost universal use of the word “fallout.” Maps were printed in magazines and newspapers showing the paths of fallout clouds from tests in Nevada over the continental United States. The Bravo test had opened the eyes of Americans about the dangers of nuclear testing, and how radioactive their world was becoming—what they would see with these new eyes would very much surprise them.

Fallout patterns from nuclear test explosions in Nevada. 

The irradiation of the Lucky Dragon inspired the original Godzilla, the story of fire-breathing sea monster, spawned by nuclear testing, that attacks Japan. The film was released on Nov. 3, 1954. It was the first of hundreds of similar films about the terrors of nuclear test blast radiation.

Bravo catapulted worldwide public opposition to atmospheric nuclear weapon testing, Jacobs relates:

By the end of the 1950s it was clear to anyone that paid attention that there was no place that would be unaffected if the United States and the Soviet Union were to engage in a total global thermonuclear war. The battlefield would be the Earth itself, and the people of every nation, whether they were at war or not, would be its casualties. This understanding did have some positive outcomes. A great deal of the environmental movement as it emerged in the 1960s and 1970s built upon the worldview constructed through the awareness of the global nature of the threat of radioactive fallout in the 1950s. Bravo was where this awareness was born.

Nuclear weapon states realized that the only way to quiet rising opposition to nuclear weapon testing was to halt testing in the atmosphere and in 1963 the major nuclear powers signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty that banned testing in the atmosphere and moved most nuclear testing underground.

In June 1976, the decontaminated Lucky Dragon Number Five (Daigo Fukuryu Maru) was restored and displayed at an exhibition hall in Yumenoshima Park, in Tokyo’s Koto Ward, open to the public.

This year, just after the 60th anniversary commemoration of the Bravo explosion on Bikini, the Republic of the Marshall Islands filed an extraordinary lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, suing all nine nuclear weapons possessors for failing to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The lawsuit explicitly demonstrates the connection of nuclear nonproliferation goals with humanitarian issues.

Event hosted by the Daigo Fukuryuu Maru Exibition Hall.  More info (Jp): https://www.facebook.com/events/500652913400130/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

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Sources:

"Managing Public Perceptions of Fukushima: First Emergency Response of the Nuclear Complex," Robert Jacobs, DiaNuke,org, March 10, 2013.

"Radiation as Cultural Talisman: Nuclear Weapons Testing and American Popular Culture in the Early Cold War," Robert Jacobs, The Asia-Pacific Journal, June 25, 2012.

"Whole Earth or No Earth: The Origin of the Whole Earth Icon in the Ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Robert Jacobs,The Asia-Pacific Journal, March 28, 2011.

"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.

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

Global Hibakusa (Robert Jacobs) on Twitter.

"Blast from the past: Lucky Dragon 60 years on," Jeff Kingston, The Japan Times, Feb. 8, 2014.

"The import of the Marshall Islands nuclear lawsuit," Avner Cohen and Lily Vaccaro, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 6, 2014.

"‘Forgotten’ victims of U.S. H-bomb testing dying in despair, hopelessness,"Hajimu Takeda and Yasuji Nagai, The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 28, 2014.

The Day the Sun Rose in the West: The Lucky Dragon, and I, by Matashichi Oishi, University of Hawaii Press, 2011.

 More Info:

Nuclear Savage: Islands of Secret Project 4.1 (Documentary film by Adam Jonas Horowitz that exposes the decades of human radiation testing in the Asia-Pacific.  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. The people of Rongelap describe an extreme level of suffering from recurring cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects that have affected multiple generations.)

"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.

"Remember," Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Feb. 26, 2013.

"Marshall Islander Darlene Keju's Historic Call for a Nuclear-free Pacific and World," TTT, April 29, 2013.

-JD

Shiga voters respond to "reinterpretation" of the Japanese Peace Constitution by electing Taizo Mikazuki as new governor

Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada congratulates her successor, Taizo Mikazuki.

(Photo via Mainichi: "Ex-lawmaker supporting nuclear phaseout wins Shiga gubernatorial race") 

Eric Johnston reports on the first electoral check of constitutional "reinterpretation" in "LDP Candidate flounders in Shiga governor race," published at JT today.

In a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling coalition, Shiga voters chose as their next governor Taizo Mikazuki, the designated successor to Yukiko Kada, over a candidate heavily backed by the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito.

The election was the first voter test of the ruling coalition’s decision to reinterpret collective self-defense, as well as the Liberal Democratic Party’s credibility after one of its Tokyo assembly members insulted a female politician...

 Support for Mikazuki, a former Lower House member from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), came from the grassroots: small-business owners, farmers,  environmentalists, nuclear-free advocates, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and the DPJ.

Mikazuki's election reflects a growing political mobilization of Japanese people outside of Japan Inc. to save what's left of postwar Japan's pacifist, middle-class society and to get rid of the nation's greatest threat to lives and well-being: nuclear power plants.  The administration favors international finance, construction, and nuclear industries to the detriment of Japan's mainstream.

Public debt-fueled quantitative easing has artificially boosted the stock market, resulting in quick profits for speculators. However, ordinary Japanese people are bearing the cost: the average standard of living in Japan is at its lowest point in three decades. The childhood poverty rate in Japan has climbed to 16%, under the current administration, the highest level recorded, since poverty surveys began in 1985. Over 16% of the entire population, 23.2% of people aged 65 and older, and 54.6% of single-parent households are suffering from poverty. On April 1, the Abe government raised the consumption tax, which disproportionately hurts the poor, from 5% to 10%; and wants to raise the consumption tax again, to 10% in 2015, if the GDP hits 3%. This is unlikely, as the GDP is now at 1.4%, and expected to decrease under Abenomics.

Behind the scenes, the government is pushing forward on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) corporate trade agreement, which would undermine what's left of already eroded protections for small farmers, workers, and consumers.

A majority in Japan opposes the restart of nuclear power plants. Moreover, they don't approve of taxpayer subsidization of nuclear power exports; nuclear-free advocacy groups in Japan are closely connected with overseas counterparts.  Mikazuki, like his predecessor, supports a phasing out of nuclear energy in Japan. He campaigned on the issue of Shiga having a larger say in the massive nuclear power complex in neighboring Fukui prefecture.

Known as “Gempatsu Ginza," (“Nuclear Alley”) four complexes containing 13 reactors are clustered along a 55-kilometer (35-mile) stretch of coast facing the Sea of Japan. On May 21, the Fukui District Court in a landmark ruling, decided that it will not allow the restart of two reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear plant.

Shiga residents are also concerned about expanded use of Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force’s Aibano Training Area near the city of Takashima, on the western shore of Lake Biwa. The US military trained the accident-prone V-22 Osprey aircraft at low altitudes over residential and environmentally sensitive areas at Lake Biwa last year.

The Asahi reported on the protests on Oct. 7, 2013, Anti-Osprey protests spread to mainland where Japan-U.S. exercise planned :

About 1,000 demonstrators showed up Oct. 6 to denounce the inclusion of the U.S. military’s accident-prone MV-22 Osprey aircraft for the first time in joint Japan-U.S. drills to be held at a Self-Defense Forces training range here on the mainland...

“It is a lie (to claim) that the drills (here) will contribute to reducing the burden forced on Okinawa,” said Mitsunori Yoshioka, 67, one of the protesters who came here from Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, to participate. “I am afraid these exercises will only lead to the deployment of more Osprey across Japan.”

Shingetsu News reported that some analysts are suggesting that Mikazuki's victory may be a signal that New Komeito party members have stopped voting for LDP candidates. Last month, in defiance of its rank and file members, New Komeito, the LDP's coalition partner, approved the executive branch's unilateral "reinterpretation" of Article 9, the Peace Clause.

Residents of Kyoto prefecture (adjacent to both Shiga and Fukui prefectures) closely watched this election. 

Supermoon over Tokyo

Supermoon over Tokyo 
(Photo: Kimberly Hughes) 

わったー願ぇー聞ちくぃりよー！SAVE HENOKO!

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Gavan McCormack

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

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

(Photo: New Wave to HOPE) 

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

(Photo: New Wave to HOPE)

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

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

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

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

Miss Toguchi is still awaiting a reply.

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

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

Via Shingetsu News on Twitter and FB: 

Ground view of rally in support of Japanese Peace Constitution.

(Via Keibo Shinichi Oiwa Tsuji on FB)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Background: 

Article 9 Association 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew McConnell: "For Laos, the secret war goes on."

"6-year-old Kungian La lost his left eye after throwing a cluster bomb he found near his home." 

 "Land of the Bomb" photo series by Andrew McConnell

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the US secret war on Laos. Vietnam War era cluster bombs have transformed the once beautiful country into the most bombed place on earth.

Photojournalist Andrew McConnell documented the ongoing effects of the bombing on the people and children of Laos in his photo series, Land of the Bomb, in which he states, "For Laos the secret war goes on." 

Legacies of War, an advocacy group working to remove cluster bombs from Laos, details the enormity of the task:

From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance over Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years. The bombing was part of the U.S. Secret War in Laos to support the Royal Lao Government against Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army. The bombings destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civillians during the nine-year period.

Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped, up to 30 percent of the cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. in Laos failed to detonate, leaving extensive contamination from unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the countryside. These “bombies,” as the Laotians now call them, have killed or maimed more than 34,000 people since the war’s end—and they continue to claim more innocent victims every day.

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More Background:  

Stop Explosive Investments: http://www.stopexplosiveinvestments.org/

"50 Years After U.S. Launched Secret War on Laos, Unexploded Bombs Still Killing Civilians," Democracy Now, June 26, 2014

"The Responsibility of Intellectuals Redux: Humanitarian Intervention and the Liberal Embrace of War in the Age of Clinton, Bush and Obama," Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, June 16, 2014

"Fact sheet: Cluster bombs," Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), July 30, 2013. 

"Cluster bomb producers US, Israel, China, S.Korea refuse to sign landmark cluster munitions treaty; 1st meeting in Laos, "most bombed place on earth," TTT, Aug. 27, 2010. 

Chie Mikami's The Targeted Village exposes Okinawan struggle for human rights, cultural & ecological preservation, democracy, & peace

In this 2013 interview (highlighted again this week at Magazine 9's website and Facebook page), film director Chie Mikami discusses The Targeted Village, a documentary she released last year. It follows the struggle of the residents of Takae, an eco-village in northern Okinawa, over the use of their prefecture for hazardous V-22 Osprey training.

Because of a media blackout—although the protests in Takae have continued since 2007 and related protests against Osprey aircraft in Ginowan City in 2012 were unprecedented—the major media did not cover them.  Mikami said one of the few reports was a 2-minute report on Asahi's evening news.

One reason for this is the Japanese government's pattern of discriminatory treatment towards Okinawa. The prefecture was not afforded the relative peace and democracy that the Japanese mainland enjoyed in the postwar period. From end of the Second World War to 1972, Okinawa was under US military rule, which routinely used force to violate human rights, property rights, and democratic process in Okinawa. Even after "reversion" to Japanese rule, when Okinawans expected their closure, the bases remained, and the pattern of violations of rights and democratic process continued.

Between 1954 and 1955, US military forced owners from homes and rice farms

 in the former village of Isahama, to make way for US military training base construction.

(Photo: Okinawan Prefectural Government)

Okinawan women protest US military seizure of their homes and land in Isahama (Ginowan) in July 1955.

(Photo: Okinawa Prefectural Government)

Futenma in Ginowan City was built on land the US military forcibly seized from farming villagers during the Battle of Okinawa, and Camp Schwab in Henoko was built on farms and coastal property forcibly acquired during the 1950's period of military base expansion known in Okinawa as "Bayonets and Bulldozers." These communities are among many throughout Okinawa which experienced the same pattern of violent land acquisition. The ongoing struggles in Takae, Ginowan City, and Henoko are not new "anti-base" protests, but instead part of the latest chapter in a seventy-year struggle for property rights, human rights, ecological and cultural preservation, democracy, and peace in the islands of Okinawa.

In Myth, Protest, and Struggle in Okinawa,  Miyume Tanji writes:

In July 1955, one of the US military's most brutal land seizures happened in Isahama [a rice farming village in the Ginowan district], in central Okinawa...Anticipating the forced acquisition of their hamlet, farmers had formed a landowners' committee, & prepared for resistance...thousand of supporters from all over the Island came to protect the farmers in Isahama from the US forces. Kobuka Kotara...who was supporting the Isahama farmers' struggle, recalls....

"At around 3 am, when most supporters of the resistance had gone home, there were only 200-300 hamlet residents left. Slowly, one after another, bulldozers with their headlights off and military trucks filled with armed soldiers entered the hamlet. Off the coast, I could hear the sound of pipelines being connected to a military vessel to drain in the sand and water taken from the ocean It was just like war. At dawn, all the supporters helplessly watched the paddy fields being destroyed by soldiers across barbed wires. Farmers were still inside the last 32 houses, but were finally dragged out at gunpoint. [All were injured during their removals.] The bulldozers went over and flattened the houses, timbers, and roof tiles of the houses were collected to be discarded in the ocean. Women were screaming at this sight, and I could not help my tears." [quoting Kotaro Kokubo in Moriteru Arasaki, 1995, 63-65]...

Victimization of Okinawan farmers & forceful acquisition of their land was combined with the physical violence inflicted on the locals personally...Violence directed towards the local populace by US military staff, especially rape, revealed the crudest & most brutal aspect of the power relations between the occupiers & the occupied...

US land acquisition in Isahama & Ie-jima & the rape [& murder of 6-year-old Yumiko Nagayama, followed a week later by the rape of another young child by US soldiers] resulted the humiliation of all Okinawans, leading to what Arasaki calls the first wave of the "Okinawa Struggle." ...These rallies became models for mass demonstrations in the community of protest of the future.

Until recently, this history was mostly hidden from non-Okinawans. However widespread popular opposition against US military expansion in Okinawa has increasingly garnered attention beyond the islands of Okinawa, among environmentalists, democracy, peace, faith-based advocates, and military veterans and their family members. In the process, disturbing revelations about past abuses by both the Japanese and US governments have become part of the public discourse on Okinawa. A young Okinawan-American, whose father was an American serviceman, explains her support for the Okinawa movement: "Enough is enough."

Protest Tent in Takae

Takae village is located in one of the most well-preserved tracts in Yanbaru, one of the last surviving subtropical rainforests in Asia.  Environmentalist NGOS worldwide have called for its preservation. The Center for Biological Diversity has highlighted the ongoing threat to the survival of the Okinawa Woodpecker.  The survival of the vlllage of Takae is also at risk. The US military use of Yanbaru for "jungle warfare" training has long been a public nuisance.  During the Vietnam War, villagers in Takae were made to don "Vietcong" dress for war games. Now, deforestation, new helipad construction, and low-level Osprey flight training has brought more concerns about stresses on the sensitive eco-region and the villagers' quiet lifestyle.

Mikami follows the Japanese government use of a SLAPP (Strategic lawsuit against public participation) lawsuit to attempt to intimidate and silence residents from protesting against this destruction of more of Yanbaru and interference with their lives. Last week, the Supreme Court of Japan, often criticized for its politically motivated decisions, ruled against their appeal.

Long-time peace and democracy activist  Mrs. Etsumi Taira,

was forcibly removed from the September 2012 sit-in site at Futenma. 
Mrs. Taira is the wife of Reverend Osamu Taira, an early leader in the peace movement..

(Photo: Tomoyuki Toyozato)

Mikami also discusses the related 2012 struggle over Osprey aircraft training at Futenma air base Ginowan. The notorious base was built in the 1950's in the middle of a community of rice villages, in the middle of the night on forcibly seized private and community property - farms, houses, stores, and schools.  Traces of the demolished villages attest to this past: half-buried tombs stick out from under barbed wire fencelines.

Locals saw the forced deployment of the aircraft as a replay of "Bulldozers and Bayonets" forced military construction.  Many of those pushed out of their homes in the 1950's—then children, now grandparents—led the 2012 protests before they were forcibly removed from the sit-in site. They knew the dozen or so troop carrier aircraft were not sent to Okinawa for the "defense" for the Okinawan or Japanese people, but to justify expensive military contracts. And now they must defend themselves, ironically, from the accident-prone aircraft and training pilots themselves.

Chie Mikami (Photo: Magazine 9) 

The Target Village will be screened in August at Theater Pole-Pole in Higashi Nakano, Tokyo (http://www.mmjp.or.jp/pole2/).

Magazine 9, founded in 2005 to support Article 9, closely covers the Okinawan Movement and other issues related to the Japanese Peace Constitution.

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June 29 will mark the 7th anniversary of the Takae struggle. 

More Background:

"The Targeted Village - An Interview with Mikami Chie (Director): The Pretense of Justice: Okinawa’s Unneutral Struggle," Yamagata Int. Documentary Film Festival, 2013

WWF "No Helipads in Yanbaru Forest: http://www.wwf.or.jp/activities/lib/pdf/yanbaru0706e.pdf

Voice of Takae: http://nohelipadtakae.org/files/VOT-english2013Oct.pdf

Takae Blog: http://takae.ti-da.net/

"Film details anger of Okinawans against U.S. military bases," Kazuyo Nakamura, The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 1, 2013. 

"Film depicts Okinawans’ fight against Ospreys," Mika Kurokawa, The Japan Times, Sept. 13, 2013. 

Nature Conservation Society of Japan: Giant corals are doing great; plenty of evidence of dugongs at Henoko....

Dugong feeding trails in the Sea of Henoko. (Photo: Nature Conservation Society of Japan)

The Okinawa Times recently reported on a reef check conducted in Henoko Bay by the Nature Conservation Society of Japan. Mariko Abe of the Society confirms that some of the massive corals in the area are doing great.

She stresses that there is plenty of evidence of dugong grazing trails in the seagrass.

Giant corals in Henoko Sea's coral reef habitat 
(Photo: Okinawa Times)