Japan

Hiroshima-Nagasaki: The Story They Want Us To Forget

August 5, 2021 Bruce K. Gagnon, Organizing Notes. Educate! Atomic Bombs, Hiroshima, Japan, Wars and Militarism, World War II

The world's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto (day of the dead). US President Harry Truman ordered the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Days later (August 9) Washington dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. Official figures of those killed by the atomic bombs is well over 150,000 from the two cities. More than 100,000 were injured with most likely dying. Then over the years many thousands have died from the initial radiation poisoning.

‘Suffocated’: Art Becomes Form Of Protest Against Olympics

June 19, 2021 AP, Indian Express. Resist! Arts, COVID-19, Japan, Olympics

Miwako Sakauchi stands in her studio and brushes spinning swirls on torn cardboard and drawing paper, using the five colors designated as symbols of the modern Olympiad. Titled ‘Vortex’, her paintings show the “anger, fear, sense of contradiction and state violence” over the residents evicted and the trees felled so enormous Olympic stadiums could be built, Sakauchi said. “I can’t think of it as a ‘festival of peace’ in this situation. It’s totally nonsensical.” The Japanese public mostly opposes holding the Tokyo Olympics next month during a pandemic, polls have shown, even though outward dissent such as protests has been small. One little-recognized outlet where people have expressed their frustration and fear over the Olympics has been art.

Protests Grow In South Korea Over Japan’s Fukushima Water Plan

May 4, 2021 Frank Smith, Al Jazeera. Resist! Fukushima, Japan, Oceans, Radioactive Waste

Seoul, South Korea - Lee Dong-ho, 73, has been fishing waters off South Korea’s southern coast near Japan for 40 years and his eldest son is now taking over the family business, their lifeblood. Lee farms snapper and yellowtail, mackerel and anchovy, and runs a drying and processing plant. “We are surrounded on three sides by the sea,” Lee, who lives in Dadae village on Geoje Island, told Al Jazeera. South Korea has transformed its fishing industry over the past 30 years amid criticism of overfishing. Lee represents positive change as most of his business involves marine-fish farming – as opposed to open-water catching – which now makes up more than half of South Korea domestic seafood production.

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Nearly ‘Ended The Japanese State’

March 12, 2021 Mohamed Elmaazi, Sputnik News. Educate! Fukushima, Japan, Nuclear Power, Radiation

What happened at Fukushima Japan 10 years ago, on March 11th, was one of the very worst nuclear power catastrophes in history that was caused when a 9.0 earthquake generated a 45-foot-tall tsunami that slammed into the six-reactor complex. Long story short, over the course of the next several days, three of the reactors melted down. They had been operating on March 11th and they were not able to cool them because the earthquake had destroyed the electric grid, which was the primary source of electricity to run safety and cooling systems. And the tsunami wave had destroyed the emergency backup diesel generators, as well as the seaside cooling water pumps. So, there was no ability to cool the reactors and they melted down. Fortunately, the other three reactors on site were not operating that day or that would have likely led to six meltdowns.

Fishermen Oppose ‘Catastrophic’ Release Of Fukushima Water To Ocean

October 8, 2020 Reuters. Resist! Fishing, Food and Agriculture, Fukushima, Japan, Radiation

Tokyo - Japanese fish industry representatives on Thursday urged the government not to allow the release at sea of tonnes of contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant, saying it would undo years of work to restore their reputation. Tokyo Electric has collected more than a million tonnes of contaminated water since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The water is stored in huge tanks that crowd the site and it says it will run out of storage room by 2022.

Japan’s Slow Rot And Subservience To The US Will Likely Continue

September 2, 2020 By Andre Vltchek, RT. Educate! China, Japan, Shinzo Abe, South Korea

To understand today’s Japan, visit its central part, urban and rural, and you will understand how deep the rot under Abe was. Outside cities like Suzuka or Yokkaichi in Mie Prefecture, rice fields and bamboo forests are dotted with rotting carcasses of cars. Many houses are in disrepair. The bus lines are abandoned. Main roads are lined up with unhealthy fast food joints, not unlike those in the US suburbia. Many public playgrounds for children are unmaintained or gone. A once-glorious cultural life has been decaying, even before the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge cultural centers, once the pride of the country, are mostly empty, with tall grass growing between the buildings. Blue tents of homeless people are pitched in almost all public parks of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and other major cities.

US Crimes Against Humanity At Home And Abroad

August 10, 2020 Bill Hackwell and Alicia Jrapko, Resumen English. Educate! Human Rights, Japan, Racism, Wars and Militarism

The US crimes against humanity did not begin or end with the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan. As militant civil rights leader Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) pointed out years ago, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” Since its inception, the US has been ingrained with a motor force of violent oppression against everyone and every country that stood in its way of its expansion for control of resources and its entitlement to a limitless accumulation of vast wealth for a few. The original thirteen colonies that rebelled against England were not motivated solely by being taxed without representation but more for the restrictions that King George had placed on the unbridled greed of the white settlers to expand and steal the lands of the indigenous nations and communities and to establish a system of slavery which was the main source of capitalist accumulation, especially for the southern colonies. At the time of the revolution close to 20% of the population consisted of Black slaves. Slavery actually ran contrary to British Common Law so the only way the emerging class of landowners in the colonies could flourish was to secede from the British Empire. In doing so it established a pivotal component of the original DNA of the United States; structural racism as a means to justify any level of discrimination and oppression

Can Cities Go Zero-waste?

August 10, 2020 By Olivia Sullivan, The Revelator. Create! Environment, Japan, Plastic, Zero waste

In 2003 the small Japanese town of Kamikatsu set an ambitious zero-waste declaration, aiming to be 100% waste-free by 2020. The goal was to produce no trash, meaning everything from food packaging to unwanted clothing to yesterday’s newspaper should be reused, repurposed into new goods, or recycled. Now that 2020 has arrived, we can see the result: In the 17 years since establishing its goal, Kamikatsu transitioned from openly incinerating all its trash to reusing and recycling 80% of its waste. While the town made incredible progress, it ultimately fell short of its 100% goal. Its main issue? Unrecyclable plastic packaging and mixed materials still end up in the trash. As one resident explained to the AFP news agency last year, “Our lifestyle depends mainly on plastic. Consumers can reduce plastic waste to a certain extent, but we’ll still have waste if producers keep making plastic products.” The truth is, some materials simply aren’t recyclable, and only 9% of all the plastic ever created has been recycled.

Atomic Bomb Survivors Transformed Our Understanding Of Radiation’s Impacts

July 31, 2020 Dennis Normile, Science Magazine. Educate! Atomic Bombs, health, Japan, Radiation

Hiroshima, Japan - Kunihiko Iida wants the world to know that the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago next month are still claiming lives and causing suffering. Iida was 3 years old in August 1945. His father had died in battle; he was living with his mother and her parents in a house 900 meters from Hiroshima’s hypocenter, the spot right beneath the detonation. The blast crumpled the house. The family fled the city, but Iida’s mother and older sister soon died from their injuries, a fact the little boy didn’t grasp.

The Fukushima Nuclear Waste Decision Is A Human Rights Issue

July 10, 2020 By Baskut Tuncak, Kyodo News. Educate! Fukushima, Human Rights, Japan, Nuclear Waste

Tokyo - In a matter of weeks, the government of Japan will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world how much it values protecting human rights and the environment and to meet its international obligations. In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, myself and other U.N. special rapporteurs consistently raised concerns about the approaches taken by the government of Japan. We have been concerned that raising of "acceptable limits" of radiation exposure to urge resettlement violated the government's human rights obligations to children. We have been concerned of the possible exploitation of migrants and the poor for radioactive decontamination work. Our most recent concern is how the government used the COVID-19 crisis to dramatically accelerate its timeline for deciding whether to dump radioactive wastewater accumulating at Fukushima Daiichi in the ocean.

Uncertainty Haunts The Future Of Non-Proliferation Treaty And Disarmament

March 21, 2020 Tariq Rauf, Nuclearabolition.info Educate! Japan, Nuclear Weapons, Treaty

Up until now, Hiroshima and Nagasaki mercifully remain the only instances in which nuclear weapons have been used in war; however, it has been the hope that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serves as a constant reminder why preventing the further use and proliferation of such weapons – and why nuclear disarmament leading eventually to a nuclear-weapon-free world – is of utmost importance for the survival of humankind and planet Earth.

Abe’s Mission Unaccomplished: Pushing To Revise Japan’s Pacifist Charter

November 16, 2019 Linda Sieg, Reuters.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Japan, Militarization

TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe surged back to power seven years ago, pledging to bolster Japan’s defenses in response to a growing threat from China and aiming to amend the pacifist constitution. Now on track to become Japan’s longest serving premier, Abe has kept his first promise. The second remains elusive. That means Japan, which U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized over what he called an “unfair” security alliance, still faces limits on acting as a full-fledged American ally.

Embargoes And Other Acts Of War

July 19, 2019 David Rovics, Dissident Voice. Educate! Japan, Oil and Gas, US Empire, Wars and Militarism

Right now, in the United States, huge detention camps are being constructed for the increasingly criminalized refugee and migrant population, a campaign of government-sponsored domestic terror run by a supposedly temporary, “acting” head of the department created by the ever-Orwellian 9/11-era Bush administration, Homeland Security. Abroad, an oil embargo is being enforced by the US and British Navies against Iranian ships worldwide, strangling the Iranian economy, immiserating millions, with many unpredictable, destabilizing effects on the horizon. These policies are being spearheaded by another sort of “acting” head, the infamously empire-loving sadist, John Bolton.

Norway Now Kills More Whales Than Japan And Iceland Combined

July 1, 2019 By Amey Owen, Mintpressnews.com Organize! Iceland, Japan, Norway

Norway is now the world’s leading whaling nation, killing more whales in the past two years than Japan and Iceland combined. A new report released today calls on the international community to respond to Norway’s systematic efforts to weaken management rules and improve market conditions for its whalers. Frozen in Time: How Modern Norway Clings to Its Whaling Past, produced by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI)...

The Curious Case Of The Tankers

June 16, 2019 Nat South, The Saker Blog. Educate! Iran, Japan, Tankers, Wars and Militarism

I have taken the opportunity to look at the recent incident involving two outbound tankers in the Gulf of Oman. I have got some questions or two, (or three) about certain parts of the incident, from a civilian mariner’s perspective mostly. There are various conflating aspects to the event, and questions need to be asked, yet journalists do not seemingly wish to ask the awkward but necessary questions these days. The US military released a video claiming to show an Iranian naval boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the hull of the ‘Kokuka Courageous’ in an apparent attempt to recover evidence of its participation. I will comment more about the video later on, but we have already the ludicrous situation where the information provided by the US contradicts the statement made by the Japanese ship management company, who did not believe the ship was damaged by a mine, but by flying objects.

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