Friday, August 30, 2013

No More War, Hands Off Syria

     The French President said that those responsible for the gas carnage should be punished. Those who have seen its photo will mostly agree.  But it is a different thing if they are willing to go to war for its sake.  Thus, the House of Commons has just vetoed the Prime Minister's motion to go into action.  The US Defense Secretary said several alternative scenarios are before the President to choose from,  but the President himself is said to be undecided, hopefully having become wiser than his predecessor.
     Unlike the case of Iraq, there do exist the weapons of mass destruction this time, and the UN team is busy investigating right now.  But suppose the WMD is found, would it automatically allow the strong powers to resort to the punishing activities?  True, Lebanon, Turkey, or possibly some others are also victims.  But has Syria attacked any one of them?  With all the sympathies to the victims, would the punishing actions be authorized by international law?  Has the Security Council the power to do so even if all the permanent members support it?
     It must be thought out what would happen if the punishment is given?  Many more would suffer.  And there will be no end, to the suffering and to the punishing action itself.  It will be another endless process to ruin one more country to the ashes.
     As for the US President, it is going to be really his war, from which it would be even more difficult to get out than Iraq or Afghanistan.  The US has armed, and is still arming, many of the countries in the region.  It is high time he made effort, together with the British PM, who lost because he went against the popular mood, to work on a Road Map for disarmament. That would be much more fitting for a Nobel Peace Prize Winner.             

Monday, August 19, 2013

How Japan is Divided as of 15 August 2013

     It is true that the Japanese opinion is divided, sometimes sharply.  On and around 15 August, the day Japan surrendered, a number of discussion meetings are held in the media on Japan's present and the future.  People want to know what kind of a country is this, and what is its purpose?  In this connection, a young man said at one such meeting on the TV this year that, while the views held by the conservatives are clear, those held by the liberals-leftists are usually vague.  They have not presented their alternative ideas.  I disagree.  Let me put forward a liberal-leftist view on some of the important issues dividing the nation today.

     We often quarrel among ourselves, even now, on the nature of the war, or the series of wars, Japan fought in the 19th and 20th Centuries.  Was it one of aggression, or of self-defense and liberation?  Why we conquered Colonies is a part of this debate.  There is one Yasukuni-Shrine in the midst of Tokyo where millions of the dead in the war are enshrined.  It openly says that the war was one of self-defense from the Western oppression on Japan and of the liberation of Asian peoples from the West.

     Conservative-minded people do visit the Shrine to offer prayers.  They include many public men, sometimes Ministers, even the Prime Minister.  They say it is the natural expression of their patriotism.  One of the three Ministers who did so on this 15 August said that it is purely our internal affairs and none of the foreign countries' business to interfere.  So he knows that the neighbouring countries are worried about our 'patriotism'.  But where did those soldiers die? Between the 13th-Century Mongolian invasions and the US bombing during the war, there was no foreign invasion of Japan at all.  All the war was fought on the foreign lands, to conquer them. Offering prayers at the Shrine implies that those who died dedicated their lives to defend the nation, which is a very wrong idea of history.  The Shrine also buried ,secretly, those who were executed as the result of the Tokyo Tribunal.  Japan accepted the judgement of the Tribunal by the Peace Treaty.  Thus those public men are also paying respect to those judged guilty for various crimes, in violation of the Peace Treaty.  They are guilty before our neighbours.  They are also guilty before the nation for throwing them into the fire of the war.  The US should know at least by now whom they are allied with.

     It is said that Japan has a right of self-defense, both individual and collective.  Do we really, even if the Constitution does not mention them, and the legal justification is usually based on the Article 51 of the UN Charter, as the Japan-US Security Treaty does?  Does it make a legal and political sense if the present Government want to make the right of collective self-defense exercisable, which has so far been presumed to be unexercisable?  And is it not dangerous in the sense that we would automatically get dragged into a US-sponsored war, like the invasion of Iraq?  These are all issues of crucial importance in determining the course of the country, but we are yet to have a serious debate on them.  In the above-mentioned televised discussion, some one said that even if we look around us, we do not find anyone except the US to be allied to. But why?  Is it not dangerous to be an ally of the US?  Where are the hypothetical enemies?  Why do we have to have a military alliance? Are we not suffering from the US bases in Japan?

     Japan's SDF(Self Defense Forces)were forced upon us practically by an order of the Occupation forces when the US forces stationed in Japan were moved to Korea as the war erupted there.  It was in clear violation of the Constitution denying to have any war potential. But many from the former Imperial Army and Navy were happy to join this newly created Reserve Police, under which name it started again.  Those conservatives who are crying for a made-in-Japan Constitution today has kept quiet on this. Similarly we are yet to debate among ourselves whether we should have a military alliance, and if so whether with the US.  The Security Treaty was also imposed upon us in the sense that it had been kept secret from the nation and only the Chief Delegate out of the seven-member delegation signed it.

     It would also be wrong to make too much of an issue of terrorism.  True, thousands were killed on 9/11.  But who brought up the Al-Qaida into a Frankenstein?  Or Saddam Hussein? The world should know when suicide bombing started, against whom, and why?  Also the world should know that there could have been, and still are, ways to politically disarm terrorism.  Otherwise we would always have to find enemies, and talk of the deterrence, which is bound to be nuclear deterrence, as Japan's own defense documents have clearly mentioned.  As long as we are caught by this thinking, the world could not hope to see early nuclear disarmament.

     It would be a much changed Japan if we could have a serious debate on these points.  The Asian neighbours would begin to look at us differently.  What is important for us, but has been lacking so far, is to be with the many ordinary members of the UN.  They really constitute the 'international community', while we have meant only, or mainly, the US, or the US and China, under that name, although these two are very important.  Here enters the Constitutional issue. The conservatives would above all like to struck the Article 9, which has been the objective of the LDP since its inception in 1955.  The people have been able to push back the move.  What is to be noted here is that this particular Article is a sort of a promise made by the people of Japan, the like of which has never been made by any LDP Prime Minister, that by denying the possession of any war potential, the Japanese people will never fight other peoples again, especially Asian peoples.                    

Friday, August 16, 2013

Excerpts from the two "Peace Declarations"

     I have already referred to the two "Peace Declarations", read by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on their Bomb Anniversaries, 6 August and 9 August, respectively.  I would like to give here a little more extended excerpts of both.

     Mayor of Hiroshima.
     Some 'hibakusha'(radiation-affected people)have felt that 'they have enjoyed not a single day of their lives on this earth'.  To some ladies their mothers-in-law had been kind, but when the latter came to know that they are hibakusha, they were immediately divorced.  The fear of radioactivity sometimes draws out the human ugliness and cruelties, and have given immense suffering to many hibakusha at the important epochs of their lives such as marriage, job placement, or pregnancy.  Indeed the nuclear weapons are "an absolute evil".
     We will endeavour, in cooperation with the 5,700 mayors who are members of the conference of peaceful cities, the UN, and the like-minded NGOs, to abolish the nuclear weapons by 2020. We will also try to realize the non-nuclearization of North Korea, and to found a Nuclear-Free Zone in Northeast Asia.
     Right now our Government is going ahead with concluding a nuclear treaty with the Government of India.  It may help build a close economic relation between the two countries.  It may, however, create a block in the way of the abolition of nuclear weapons.
     The hibakusha are getting older(78 years on the average).  We request the Government to intensify the support to them, and also to extend the geographical concept of the 'black rain' area(radioactivity-containing black rain showered on a wide area immediately after the bomb-dropping).

     Mayor of Nagasaki
     When a draft statement on the non-human character of the nuclear weapons was proposed at the NPT-related committee, held at Geneva in April last, our Government refused to sign it, by saying that we could not agree to the words 'under any circumstances'.  Thus we showed that we may agree to the use of the nuclear weapons under some circumstances.  Our stand should be that no one in the world shall experience the suffering from the nuclear bomb again, and the above stand goes against it.
     Similarly, the ongoing nuclear negotiations with India, who has become a nuclear power without signing the NPT, would justify the move by North Korea and others to withdraw from the NPT to become a nuclear power, and obstruct the move toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
     The Japanese Government should get back to the position befitting to the only country that suffered from the nuclear weapons, and take the initiative in an effort to create an Northeast Asian Nuclear-Free Zone.
     President Obama and President Putin are requested to quicken the pace of decreasing the number of their nuclear warheads.
     To the people of the younger generation!  Have you heard the voice of the hibakusha?  They are crying, 'No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki, no more war, no more hibakusha'.  You are the last generation capable of hearing the voice of the hibakusha directly.  Listen to it, and think, and discuss, if the nuclear weapons can be allowed to exist in this world, and in the future.    

Friday, August 9, 2013

Nagasaki Day 2013, and the New MDS Diseases

     Three days after the Hiroshima Day, this is the Nagasaki Day, 9 August.  Millions have offered prayers at two minutes past eleven in the morning, when the bomb exploded.  The list of those persons who have gone to the other world in the past one year contains 3,404 names, bringing the total of the dead because of this bomb to 162,083.  The slogan of "let it be the last nuclear explosion" has been echoed by many.
     As in Hiroshima, the Mayor of Nagasaki has read out his Declaration for Peace.  And again as in the former, it has requested the Government to take some concrete and urgent steps at the UN and elsewhere to join forces with other peace-loving people and organizations.  He has made specific reference to the desirability of the Nuclear-free Northeast Asia.  On those points, the two Mayors are much more advanced than the Prime Minister, Mr.Abe Shinzo.  He spoke next, but his speech was not to the point, lukewarm, non-responsive.

     Let me summarize here a very valuable radio-activity related medical research which was broadcast by Japan's NHK for 75 minutes in the evening of 6 August, the Hiroshima Day.
     The small damages of the chromosome by the radioactivity remained latent, so to speak, and suddenly leukemia develops from them about a decade after the injuries.  Many hibakusha (explosion-affected people)passed away in this manner.  The rate of leukemia was about 20 times more than the ordinary people.  The nearer the patient to the point of explosion, the higher was the rate.  The incidence declined after about 20 years of the explosion.
     I would think that thus far the knowledge was more or less wide-spread.  What seems to be new is the following, which belongs to a new area of research.  Briefly the above is not the end of the story.  And sadly it is not the end of the hibakusha's suffering, either.
     It has been found out that, after about 40 years more, and this is after 68 years after the two Bombs, some of the hibakusha developed MDS (Myelodysplastic Syndromes).  This is a disease in which the white cells get affected by cancer.  This is known as the Second Leukemia, but the research tells us that its arrival was totally unexpected.  It has occurred to them after 2,000. The hibakusha patient says that there is no end, or it is as if there is a nuclear bomb in the body.       The first peak of leukemia was over many years ago.  This is the second peak, but for this there is no cure.
     This is the kind of story that we still have to hear.  Will it impress on us the futility of the nuclear weapons, and the theory of nuclear deterrence, which tries to justify the expansion of the nuclear arsenal?  If so, the Nuclear-free Northeast Asia will come very much in sight. Hiroshima and Nagasaki will occupy a pivotal point in this development.  Is it not the tale of two bombed cities?  
   

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Hiroshima Day 2013 and a US Copter Crash in Okinawa

     Today, 6 August, is the Hiroshima Day.  It is observed by millions all over the country.  At the ceremony in Hiroshima this morning, the Mayor told a large gathering, said to be 50,000, that we will make effort to bring the nuclear weapons to zero by 2020.  His message will be supported by thousands who, almost in every corner of the world, are acting in that direction.
     In the past one year, out of the surviving hibakusha(radioactivity-affected people), 5,859 persons have been confirmed to be dead, bringing the total number of the dead to 286,816.  This is because of the single bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The latest figure for Nagasaki will be made clear on the Nagasaki Day, 9 August.
     Just on the eve of this day, a US helicopter crashed and burned up on the Okinawa Island yesterday evening.  It is a Kadena-based four-seater, which is much smaller than the dreadful Osprey transport planes/half helicopters now being deployed in Okinawa.  It crashed into a US base itself.  Otherwise it could have triggered a tremendous damage on the civilian life in Okinawa.
     About the Osprey, this writer has written on its multiple capability before.  It is the US plan to station 24 of them at the bases in Okinawa.  They want to use those bases for the training, so that the planes are ready to go anywhere, for any distance, at any time.  12 of them are there already, two arrived newly on 3 August, and the other ten were supposed to be joining the others in a day or two, but that has been put off because of the crash yesterday.  Throughout the process, there was no conferring, no discussion, with the Japanese side.  They were all by means of a one-sided notice from them to us.  Who said that we were equal partners?  An American strategist has called Japan a "protectorate" in his book, but is not this a much worse situation?