the disconnect

Fukushima, Japan, Part 2

For the last several months, I've been struggling to write what I found during my December 2012 visit to Fukushima, Japan, devastated two years ago by earthquake, tsunami and an accident at the nuclear power plant in the area. Recently, someone asked me whether I heard any stories from people affected by the triple disaster. Here are three that I believe outline the dimensions and effects of what happened in March 2011:

Mr. M was working at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, when the earthquake and tsunami damaged one of the reactors there. He felt the tremor and he and his crew stopped what they were doing and ran through smoke, dust and water to don protective gear and help out. He was exposed to radioactive particles which he brushed off his clothing and skin. He is confident that the amount of radiation he received will not cause him any harm. When he returned home, his wife and children had been evacuated from the area. Mr. M eventually located his wife and children at a school gymnasium used as an evacuation center. Concerned about his parents and unable to locate them, he left to search for them; when he returned, all of the evacuees had been moved to another location, and it took Mr. M hours to learn their whereabouts. He was eventually reunited with his wife, children and parents. They spent weeks in a refugee center, where the lights were always on and the only privacy was cardboard screens separating them from other families. Eventually, they moved into temporary housing, still a tight fit but with better privacy. The government of Japan provides about $980/month in support which does not go very far. Because Mr. M is licensed to operate heavy machinery, he was able to find occasional work in clearing debris and reconstructing roads and bridges but work is harder to find now. Two years after the earthquake and accident, he and his family remain uncertain about their future, since they cannot return to their home because of radiation levels, cannot find employment, and are required to pay back the mortgage on the house they can no longer occupy.

Mr. I is in his sixties, a fisherman all his life, based in Iwaki City. He and his family survived, but he has not been able to take his boat out for the last two years because the Japanese government has prohibited fishing there due to radiation contamination of the fish. Mr. I has had a difficult time earning a living, doing odd jobs and sometimes relying on help from other family members. He does not understand why the government was quick to rebuild roads and bridges but has not done anything for him and his fellow fishermen. He says the worst part of his situation is the uncertainty, since no one in authority will tell him when, or even whether, the ban on fishing will ever be lifted.

Mrs. T is a pastor's wife in Aizu, a city about 100 kilometers west of the site of the nuclear accident. The day of the earthquake, her husband left home to help with relief efforts on the coast. Initially, she felt her duty was to remain in Aizu and help the church community deal with the tension and uncertainty. Soon after, she found herself helping shelter people fleeing from the Fukushima area, including anti-nuclear activists, who convinced her that the fulll extent of the radiation dispersion and intensity was not being revealed by the government. Mrs. T's first concern was for her children, whom she initially took with her to a relative quite distant from Fukushima. She did return home, moved to act on behalf of those who could not or would not flee; with like-minded people she founded the Aizu Radiation Information Center, which engages in fact-finding, education and advocacy; she also helped establish a program of family vacations for those with young children to allow the children to play outdoors without protective gear and is active in seeking independent medical counsel for families of children exposed to radiation.

And here is a link to recent update. The story continues to unfold.

Fukushima, Japan, Part 1

In early December, 2012, I toured parts of Fukushima Prefecture and met with survivors of the /which devastated the area in March 2011. Although nearly two years had passed since the catastrophe, the devastation was still apparent in many places, not to mention the stories of evacuees and other survivors. Here, for example, is a panoramic photo I took of a town on the seashore:

The seemingly low wall on the horizon is the top part of a seawall reconstructed after the tsunami, a wall actually over ten feet high in this area. In the foreground, concrete foundations and garden spaces are all that remain of homes swept away by the tsunami. At the center of the seawall, and at what would have been the front entrances of the former homes, flowers mark offerings to those lost in the tragedy, as shown in this photograph:

The survivors with whom we spoke were stoic about the loss of their homes, jobs and communities, and did not seem bitter about their situations. This is remarkable for several reasons, not least of them the speed with which the government, local and national, repaired roads, bridges and public structures but left homeowners who lost their homes to struggle with outstanding mortgages on houses that no longer exist because of the earthquake and tsunami or on houses that they can no longer occupy because of high levels of radioactivity from the nuclear accident caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

 I was struck by the parallels with the plight of residents of coastal Louisiana and, more recently, those in poorer areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy. On first seeing the emergency housing provided to the evacuees, members of our group who had been to Haiti and before that to New Orleans were impressed with the quality of aid provided, but as we listened and learned about evacuees' debt burdens, lack of employment, and health problems, it became clear that they had more in common with Haitian and Louisianan survivors than we initially thought. All in all, it was sobering to see the disruption to the lives of so many families and to hear of the lack of government or business efforts to address the evacuees' difficulties.

 

Sex and Violence

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with a woman from the Philippines, herself a former sex worker, who had founded an organization to help women in the sex trade in what was once the U.S. naval base in Subic Bay. My conversation with her reminded me of a comment I read (perhaps by Anthony Swofford in Jarhead) about the connection between pornography and the military. I wondered at the time what that connection is, and listening to Alma Bulawan of BUKLOD, I felt closer to the answer. Since our conversation, I have been pondering the connection between militarism and pornography, prostitution and rape.

In pornography, women (and men) are stripped of their personhood and humanity and become toys and fantasy objects. In prostitution, the same thing happens more directly. In the military, in order to desensitize recruits to their supposed enemy's humanity and personhood, soldiers and sailors are similar presented with "enemies" stripped of their humanity and individual personhood. (One military officer and psychologist wrote an excellent book on this aspect of training: On Killing by Dave Grossman.) In all of the places where American troops are stationed, either combatant or combat ready, the local people are also the "enemy" and they all are given derogatory nicknames by our military, for example, "haji," which takes a religious title of honor in Islamic cultures and reduces it to a term of caricature and contempt. This parallels the reduction of women to toys or objects in pornography and prostitution.

When we consider rape, such as the rapes almost regularly committed by American military personnel in Asia, the violence and sexual exploitation intersect. In speaking about the 1995 Okinawa schoolgirl gang rape, then US Pacific Forces Commander Admiral Richard Macke said on the record: "I think it was absolutely stupid, I've said it several times. For the price they paid to rent the car, they could have had a girl." Macke was accused of insensitivity and retired at a lower grade as a result of the outcry over his comment, but he was expressing the perspective of someone who sees the local people as not quite human. That is the connection between pornography and the military, and sadly, the explosion of pornography over the last generation and the spread of its sensibility, if one can call it that, into mainstream society demands awareness and action.

The first step, especially for men, is to become mindful of our own complicity in the intersecting webs supporting prostitution, pornography and militarism. Next steps include informing our friends and colleagues; supporting the Women for Genuine Security Network which has affiliates in all the places in East Asia where U.S. forces are stationed, as well as in Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; and working more broadly to end sex trafficking around the world.

 

LIBYA: The News You May Not Have Heard

About ten days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, there were a few interesting follow-up articles and occasional broadcast stories about the aftermath of the attack. These were not stories about calls for revenge or what the Libyan and U.S. governments are doing to track down the people responsible for the deaths, the news reported was much more hopeful. A New York Times story reported that crowds of unarmed Libyans marched on militia compounds and the Ansar al-Sharia headquarters in Benghazi and disarmed the militias. For most part unarmed, they persisted, in some cases burning guns and ammunition, in others removing them.

Needless to say, this news did not get the intensive coverage the original incident did, and did not receive the impassioned commentaries from pundits which characterized much of the reaction to the deaths of the American officials. There was also almost no mention anywhere of a Gallup poll released a few days after the attack which found that 95 percent of Libyans believed, before the attack on the consulate, that the militias should be required to surrender their weapons to the authorities. 

Part of the reason must certainly be our continuing struggle to assimilate the flood of information with which we all struggle to cope. Another is the way coverage of nonviolent events vanishes from the news, but a bigger part of the problem is our focus on violence and violent solutions to problems, indoctrinated through the news media, films, television shows and video and computer games. Yet a third is a general expectation, fostered by the same sources, that all the news from the Muslim world is bad news. The reality is very different and perhaps the best way to learn that is to read and listen to Muslim voices of tolerance, the very voices that seldom pass through the filters our media organizations impose.   

 

Reading Beneath the Lines

Watching the edited, delayed coverage of the London Olympic Games, I was struck during the opening ceremonies by the myths which lie beneath the spectacle. Glastonbury Tor, a reference to the legends of King Arthur, alerted me to take a close look at Olympic subtexts that reveal a fascination with male power and military dominance. After all, King Arthur was a warrior monarch, when all is said and done. Then there were the twin oddities of Queen Elizabeth as a “Bond girl” and a regiment of paratrooper nannies defeating various baddies. The episodes framed the Olympics as a display of military prowess and a metaphor for dominance.

U.S. coverage of the various Olympic events emphasized dominance in describing the various competitions and results. When Michael Phelps won silver in the men's 200 meter butterfly race, the NBC commentary focused on the fact that he had not won the gold. In contrast, Canadian coverage celebrated Canadian athletes who won bronze medals and even those who finished in the top ten of their events.

The television coverage glorified young bodies, male and female, tuned to perfect condition and appearance—not much mention of the grueling training and diet regimes the athletes live by, from childhood in many cases. As with the opening ceremonies, fantasy and icons step in front of reality. Similarly, our media do not much mention the destruction of those glorious young bodies in war, whether caused by drones, IEDs, firefights or artillery.

The myths we tell ourselves are often, as the above examples illustrate, myths of power and violence, from the superhero and super-spy movies that fill cinemas every summer to the very metaphors we use. At the conclusion of her excellent book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, Rachel Maddow refers to “the Gordian knot of executive power”, which “needs a sword something fierce.” I hope she is being ironic, but it is telling that a book about the unreasoned, unjustified use of military power concludes with an image drawn from a story about Alexander the Great, one of the first effective military imperialists, using his sword to solve a problem.

We all need to examine our assumptions and conceptual frameworks, and then to identify where we acquiesce in the myths of redemptive violence, male dominance, individualism, and on and on. This is the work of a lifetime, but there is no reason each of us cannot also identify these myths when we perceive them influencing not only our decisions but those of our friends, neighbors and political representatives. How else will we change the world than through conversion and inspiration? 

 

Aurora, Irag, Anywhere

Originally posted on the Pax Christi USA Bread for the Journey blog on July 28, 2012, here.

In the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado, mass murder, gun control has become a hot topic once more. Few, if any, comments point out that the violence in Aurora is related to the violence we inflict on people in other countries overseas and on our poorest and most oppressed citizens.

This is not simply a figure of speech or literary device: The suspected killer in the Aurora shootings used, among other weapons, an AR-15, which was developed for the U.S. military and a version of which became the M-16 rifle. The Glock handgun he also used was initially developed for the Austrian military and has become a standard sidearm for NATO; it has also become a popular firearm used by, among others, the FBI, the New York City Police and the Baltimore Police.

Add the explosive booby traps the suspected killer installed in his apartment; at least one explosive ordinance expert observed that the complexity and sophistication of the devices was comparable to what U.S. and NATO forces encounter in Iraq and Afghanistan. So here we have, at a superhero action movie screening, the melding of our idolization of violence in all its forms and our contemporary preference for military solutions to any difficulties we encounter.

The political tug of war over the Pentagon budget comes into play here as well, of course, and that has been reported and commented on in the mainstream media as a competition between national security and domestic needs, but has any pundit anywhere discussed the militarization of domestic police forces thanks to grants from the Department of Homeland Security? Or its root in the fear which drives so many Americans to purchase and carry firearms?

That sense of insecurity and fear could be the loose end from which to unravel our Gordian knot of militarism. We who espouse nonviolence and justice must actively teach nonviolence and live as nonviolently and fearlessly as we can. It is not easy to live nonviolently in America today but it can be done, witness Catholic Worker communities across the nation. If we truly begin to live nonviolently, we will begin to form communities of peace, not only with friends who share our commitment to peace and justice, but with people who are different from our friends and us. We can reach out even to the people we feel most threatened by, although that would not be the first but the final steps in living out and teaching nonviolence.

Pax Christi USA and JustFaith Ministries have recently published a 12 week module on Just Peacemaking, a good place to begin but only one of many. Let's vow not only to live nonviolently but to teach others how to live nonviolently, or at least to invite them to join us to learn how to live out our faith.

 

Present and Future of American Bases on Okinawa

Note: This is the third of three posts about my trip to Okinawa in connection with the 3rd Asia Inter-Religious Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution. Thanks to Filo Hirota for the use of her photos.

For the final day of exposure to Okinawa, our group visited a hilltop park from where we had a panoramic overview of Futenma, a U.S. Marine Corps air base built in 1945. The city of Ginowan, population roughly 100,000, totally surrounds Futenma (see photo above). While we were looking at the base from a lookout tower at the top of a low hill, a C-130 took off and skimmed over us quite close as it climbed slowly for altitude. The scene dramatically encapsulated for me the tensions surrounding U.S. military bases in Northeast Asia.

The current plan is to relocate Futenma's facilities to another part of Okinawa by building a runway over coral reefs and dugong habitat. That location, Henoko, was our next stop. There is already a small base there, but plans call for landfill (and habitat destruction) to construct a 2.5 kilometer runway system, a deep water port facility and an expanded munitions depot. Local fishermen maintain a presence at the site and campaign to stop construction through legal action, sit-ins, and other activities.

During my years as a diplomat, the presence of American military bases in or near populated areas of Korea, Japan and the Philippines was a constant source of tension. Americans seem not to comprehend why this is so, but a look at the photograph of Futenma reveals one of the problems. If a Japanese military air base were set in the middle of an American city of 100,000 people--Flint, Michigan, for example--would not the noise and vibration of flight operations cause grumbling and resentment? Then there would be the inconvenience of military traffic in and out, worry about crashes of planes or helicopters loaded with fuel and munitions. Many people would have long, roundabout commutes to work, school and shopping; some business would complain about the delays caused by the need to route traffic around the base.

Finally, consider the stress of having young men and women whose culture differs in visible ways from our own looking for recreation in town. Americans would perceive Japanese troops as aloof, distant and perhaps arrogant; they would be puzzled and perhaps offended by language and behavior that is innocent in Japan but might seem offensive to Americans. Youth and testosterone would guarantee risk-taking of a kind unacceptable to people living in a city. After all, most U.S. military bases in the U.S. are located away from densely populated areas. Is it time for our leaders to start moving our troops back to our own soil?  

War and Forgiveness

Note: Last week, I participated in the 3rd Asia Inter-Religious Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution. For two days before the conference, most of the 220 participants also experienced an exposure tour highlighting Okinawa's past, present and future. This is the second of three posts.

In the U.S., we learn that Okinawa was where the Japanese military fought long and hard, contesting every inch of ground. We know it was a bloody battle that lasted months and one in which both sides suffered tremendous casualties. What I just learned during my visit to Okinawa was the toll in Okinawan civilian lives, which was greater than the losses of the Japanese military force. The civilians who died included infants, small children, older children, adults in the prime of life, and the aged.

There is, for example, a museum and memorial to female high school students pressed into service as a nursing corps for the Japanese military. The girls worked in kerosene-lit caves that were used as field hospitals during the prolonged fighting. They sometimes had to physically restrain wounded soldiers because there were not enough anesthesia medications for all the wounded who needed surgery. In the end, almost all of these young women died, many of them choosing suicide because they were sure the invading Americans would rape and torture them.

 Many civilians were killed by “forced mass suicides” ordered by Japanese military officers. In the case of ethnic minorities, thousands were executed because the Japanese military feared they would become informers and spies for the American forces. The island is dotted with memorial stones to the over 100,000 civilians who died there in 1945. In museums, memorials and firsthand testimony by survivors of the battle of Okinawa, I learned over and over of atrocities, cruelty, and extreme suffering. Photos, grave sites, memorials, relics of the fighting, even areas where unexploded shells are still lodged and bullet-pocked walls preserved to show the ferocity of the fighting, are everywhere.

 Most astoundingly, even the survivors I encountered showed only compassion and forgiveness toward the combatants on both sides. One elderly gentleman told how, as a 14 year old boy, he was given two grenades, one to kill U.S. soldiers and one for himself. Both were duds. Not knowing what to do, he and his older brother watched a neighbor kill his family with a rock. The two boys returned to their family and did the same, then walked toward the battle to die themselves. On the way, they encountered a Japanese soldier who told them to flee and save themselves. At that moment, said the Okinawan, he realized what he had done and how he had been duped into committing murder. As he matured, he came to understand that God forgave him. He feels that he has survived to teach forgiveness by telling his story.

Persistent Nonviolence in Okinawa

Note: Last week, I participated in the 3rd Asia Inter-Religious Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution. For two days before the conference, most of the 220 participants also experienced an exposure tour highlighting Okinawa's past, present and future. This is the first of three posts, photo courtesy of Filo Hirota.

My first full day in Okinawa was intense. Since I am here for an interfaith peace conference, whose organizing committee arranged the exposure tour as a prelude to the conference, its focus was on war, peace and the military bases which occupy significant portions of the island. Our first stop was a Japanese military base, to visit a patch of land in the middle of it that has been reclaimed from the military by its owner.

The owner, Mr. Takaesu Asao (see photo), is a native Okinawan who inherited this land from his 

parents and then spent more than 15 years in court obtaining recognition of his right to own and use the land. It seems that both the U.S. and Japanese militaries rent the land on which they site bases from the legal owners. Mr. Takaesu and his wife have turned their small plot into a Peace Garden, although the Japan Self Defense Force refuses to allow him to pipe in water. He has hosted visitors from around the world, and has planted several trees whose wood he hopes to harvest and make into samisen, a three stringed instrument that evolved in Okinawa and is familiar throughout Japan. He told us that he wants to make musical instruments because music is one form of communication that crosses all borders. He also showed us a tree he calls the “Shalom Salaam Tree” because it was planted by two visitors, an Israeli and a Palestinian. He plans on making two samisen from the wood of this tree, one for each of them.

Mr. Takaesu impressed us all with his gentle hospitality, his belief in nonviolence, his determination to obtain the land which is rightfully his and his successful struggle to take back his land from his own government. Despite the difficulties he has encountered and continues to encounter, Mr. Takaesu was cheerful and full of hope, as evidenced by his plans for the wood of black oak trees that are little more than saplings now.  

 

The Bullshit Begins

The 2012 Presidential campaign has commenced, and amid all the sound and fury about this candidate and that candidate, I notice that most are shading the truth more than a little. For example, leading up to the straw poll in Iowa, and since then, Republican hopefuls all sound the theme that President Obama caused our current economic problems, from the deficit to the recession. Whatever the efficacy of his leadership and actions, which are fair targets for potential opponents, responsibility for causing the deficit and the recession.

We, the people, ought to be calling out anyone who offers a historically inaccurate statement about contemporary affairs on their opportunism, deceit and/or ignorance. The deficit began under, and was caused by, the policies and decisions of the Bush administration; ditto the recession. Charging Obama with responsibility for causing the deficit and the recession is a bizarre rewrite of fact, but it does distract news outlets from the real story, that no one now holding federal office has been very interested in solving the U.S.'s very real and interlocking problems.

To take one example, investing some resources in infrastructure, or new technologies, will create jobs and wealth. Slashing social programs, or calling Social Security an entitlement (it used to be referred to by all as a social safety net), will do neither. So, is there a remedy?

Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz proposed that we boycott incumbents who are not working to end the recession and reduce the deficit, something you and I can do, but will the truly large corporate donors to political campaigns sign on? Still, it's a step worth taking even if, like me, your normal campaign contribution averages ten dollars and perhaps an hour or two of volunteer time.

A step we can all take, however, is to call out people running for office whenever they speak an untruth—like claiming it is possible to balance the budget without raising revenues and without cutting the military budget. I admit that I have only done this a few times over the years, but this time around, I intend to ask candidates who come to my community why they are ignoring the facts and I intend writing them when I read about an incorrect statement in the news. If you need a list of political fictions in wide circulation, try factcheck.org.