The Urgency for Japan — and for Us — of Disarmament
I am looking at large black-and-white photographs taken in 1945 in Japan, given to me last week at the Japan Peace Conference. The images show intimacy — a woman suckling her baby, both bleeding; a nurse looking on as a man removes maggots from an older woman’s burns. The woman is crying out. But the looks in people’s eyes seem distant, as if they’d seen something much further than we know.
The stillness in these stark pictures doesn’t explain the restless energy of the peace movement I witnessed in Japan. Relations between the US and Japan are at an impressive moment: Japanese voters have been throwing out leaders who have submitted to US government demands for keeping military bases on the southern island of Okinawa and elsewhere in the country. There is a strong sentiment for re-framing the overall US-Japan Security Agreement.
Okinawa suffers particularly from 37 Marine Corps and other military facilities nestled closely into densely populated areas, rubbing fences with schools and residences, and representing 75% of all bases in Japan. And its nonviolent struggle to close the worst bases and keep new ones from being built has been sustained and successful. Nonviolent direct action for seven years in the town of Henoko has prevented the development of a new base that would destroy habitat of the endangered dugong, a large marine mammal. Five out of six people in Okinawa want US bases there to be reduced and removed.
I met with Kyoko Iitaka, General Secretary of Japan FOR, which has campaigned to increase awareness of Japan’s constitutional provision against using the military for war, Article 9. In Yokosuka, where we marched to a US naval base, I chatted with “Jane,” an Australian woman raped by a US serviceman who returned to the US without ever facing trial. Her life was badly messed up by the attack, but she has made speaking out about it central to her recovery.
I also met Niihara Shoji, a researcher who last year discovered in the National Archives the 1953 agreement, still in force, that Japan would not prosecute crimes by US soldiers. “Japanese authorities do not normally intend to exercise the primary right of jurisdiction over members of the United States Armed Forces, the civilian component, or their dependents subject to the military law of the United Sates, other than in cases considered to be of material importance to Japan," the secret agreement says. Japan pays the United States more than $4 billion a year for the benefit of “hosting” the US bases.
The relationship between the countries is definitely complex. In Yokohoma, a prominent corner had a sign for “JONATHAN’S Café & Restaurant”, with no Japanese lettering. I asked if the staff there speak English, or the clientele. Apparently not. It is purely a status symbol to show American names that for most people are indecipherable.
The regeneration of the peace movement among younger activists provoked lots of discussion among the mostly older participants — something FOR and other peace movement groups in the US also discuss. But a youth rally last Friday night brought out more than 500 young folks to talk about military conscription, how poverty affects people’s ability to participate in activism, and other pressing matters.
I was invited by the Japan Peace Committee because of our work on foreign military bases. Folks were interested in the successful struggle of Ecuador to outlaw all foreign military bases, leading to the eviction of a US base in September. And they were interested in why so many US citizens support President Obama’s Afghanistan war plans. I assured them that a majority of people here don’t.
More than a thousand Japanese activists will be coming to the United States in May for the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, and hundreds will be fanning out across the country afterward to talk about their concerns with US communities. We need to hear them. We need to hear the testimonies of people like Jane, an Australian woman raped by a US serviceman who returned to the US without ever facing trial, and Yamasaki Masanori, accused of murdering his wife in 2006 though authorities already had security camera footage showing a US soldier killing her. We need to hear about the resistance of Japanese people to nuclear homeporting and to relocation of the Futenma base in Okinawa, about what it means for children and others on the ground to be assaulted by the deafening noise of military jets. We need to hear about Article 9, about Japanese people’s hopes and doubts for the new government, about their opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and about the Japanese movement’s peaceful responses to North Korean fears.
At the conclusion of the conference, we marched in Yokosuka to a naval base there. As we stood before the gates, I saw a young American man standing with his Japanese girlfriend. “Do you know what this is about?” I asked. “Yeah, but I’m not letting it get to me. I understand their frustration,” he said. I asked how he felt about the Afghanistan escalation. “It sucks,” he said. “But I’m not re-enlisting. And if I’m told to kill someone, it’s not going to happen.”
I hope so. I hope so.
