Peace Actions in Japan
Written by Ann Wright
May 17, 2008
I was in Japan for 14 days speaking to groups of
Japanese all over the country. I was to speak at the
Global Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese
Constitution, the renunciation of war. I was also
asked to travel to other parts of Japan to discuss US
military bases in Japan and sexual assault of Japanese
women and girls by US military.
Anger over US military using an artillery range in
Hokkaido
The day following my arrival in Japan, Hisae, a 30
year peace activist and the coordinator of my trip,
and I flew to the northern island of Hokkaido to meet
with peace activists about the use by US military of a
small artillery range on the island. We were met by
local peace activists and by an American woman who has
lived in Sapparo, Hokkaido, Japan for the past 35
years, who traveled by train from Sapparo to met us.
The presence of the US military, 63 years after World
War II, is a huge source of anger for the citizens of
Japan, Korea, Germany and Italy. On the northern
Japanese island of Hokkaido, the US military uses an
artillery firing range known as Yausubetsu. The
artillery range is small in comparison to ranges in
the United States and Germany, only 30 kilometers by
10 kilometers, but the source of irritation to the
Japanese farmers whose land was taken for the range
and for those who live nearby the range is large. The
peaceful rolling hills and valleys of the area are the
home of the dairy industry of Hokkaido. The Japanese
have used a cartoon of an angry dairy cow with boxing
gloves as their symbol of protest of the US military’s
use of the range.
The Japanese government pressured all the farmers in
the area to sell their land when the artillery range
was established in 1962. All but three families
eventually sold out. Mr. Kawase, refused to sell or
move, and instead has built three structures that are
used by activists year round to protest Japanese and
American use of Yausubetsu for artillery practice.
Mr. Kawase, a very spry 82 years old, build a huge
Quonset hut on his property where 100 activists can
sleep on mats, make posters and banners and listen to
speakers. In the kitchen of the building, activists
cook huge meals from the plants and vegetables of the
Hokkaido countryside and serve fresh milk and cheeses
from the angry local dairy herds.
On the roof of the building for all military aircraft
flying over and for those on the land to see, Mr.
Kawase has painted in huge Japanese script, the text
of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution:
“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on
justice and order, the Japanese people forever
renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and
the threat or use of forces as means of settling
international disputes. In order to accomplish the
aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air
forces, as well as other war potential, will never be
maintained. The right of belligerency of the state
will not be recognized.”
That is a big statement, both morally and physically.
Mr. Kawase painstakingly painted every character on
the roof himself.
The majority of Japanese citizens approve the spirit
of Article 9, but some believe that Japan should
commit Self-Defense Forces to international collective
defense efforts, such as the authorization by the UN
Security Council for an international military
operation to remove Sadaam Hussein from Kuwait. In
2007 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in marking
the 60th anniversary of the Japanese constitution,
called for a review of the document to allow Japan to
take on a larger role in global security, appealing to
the Japanese people to consider this as a means to
revive national pride.
Article 9 of the Japanese constitution is under seige
by the Bush administration. They want Japan to
provide more military support for the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars and the “war on terror.”
In torpedoing Article 9, the Japanese government
kowtowed to the force of the Bush administration and
sent a refueling ship to the Indian Ocean to provide
fuel to US warships and more recently have flown
military transport aircraft into Iraq. Those actions
have outraged millions of Japanese who do not want
their country to become involved in the wars of other
nations.
Japanese courts have become involved as Japanese
citizens have brought legal actions against their
government for “infringing on their right to live
peacefully.” The latest lawsuit was brought by 1100
Japanese citizens who argued that a continuing airlift
mission of the Air Self-Defense Force to Baghdad was
unconstitutional. The Nagoya High Court ruled on
April 17, 2008 that the mission partially violated
Article 9 of the Constitution but allowed the
continuation of the Air Force mission.
The people of Kushiro, Hokkaido remember well the
militarization of their country during World War II.
82 year old Shingichi Miyake, now head of the Kushiro
Peace Association, recounted the role his eastern city
of Kushiro played during that period. The aircraft
carrier with the airplanes that bombed Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941 left Japan from the harbor of
Kushiro. Kushiro also was the anchor port for the
“One Thousand Mile War,” a brutal campaign from
1942-43 over control from Attu to Dutch Harbor in the
Aleutian Islands. Kushiro, the largest city in the
chain of islands stretching from northern Japan into
the American Aleutian islands, was protected from
invasion from the United States by hundreds of patrol
or “picket” boats.
Ironically, despite the legacy of militarization of
the island of Hokkaido and the city of Kushiro over 60
years ago, the wetlands around the city of Kushiro are
home to the Japanese cranes, the symbol of peace for
Japan and for the world. The cranes represent the
spirit of Article 9, a denunciation by the Japanese
people of war and a desire to live in peace.
The citizens of Hokkaido join citizens from other
parts of the world who are protesting the continuing
presence and expansion of US military. The citizens
of Vicenza, Italy for two years have protested the
expansion of the US Army base into the only remaining
green area in the city. Protest central in Vicenza is
tent erected at the end of the abandoned airfield
which will become the expanded home of the US Army.
Like in Hokkaido, citizens of Vicenza use the tent as
a visible presence symbol of protest and objection to
continued US military presence 60 years after World
War II.
The US military argues that “forward deployed bases”
are critical for projection of US power, a warning to
others that the US can be on their doorstep in minutes
or hours. We, as citizens of the United States, must
decide if it is the military we wanted projected, or
whether it is in the best interest of our national
security that some aspects of our country be
“projected.”
I think the continued aggressive projection of
military power by the United States is undermining our
national security rather than strengthening it
Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War
After the end of World War II, the Japanese
constitution, written by the United States for the
defeated Japanese, rejected war as a solution for
conflict. Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an
international peace based on justice and order, the
Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign
right of the nation and the threat or use of force as
means of settling international disputes. In order to
accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land,
sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential,
will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of
the state will not be recognized.”
Now 61 years later, the Bush administration is
undermining the spirit and intent of Article 9 of the
Japanese constitution by urging the Japanese
government to allow the Japanese Self-Defense forces
to provide air and sea logistics assistance to Bush’s
war on Iraq. Former Assistant Secretary of State
Richard Armitage in 2004 complained that “Article 9 is
an impediment to the US-Japanese alliance,” an
alliance the Bush administration wants to use to
spread the financial and military operational burden
of the war on Iraq.
Over the objections of many Japanese citizens, the
Japanese government has provided limited numbers of
refueling ships for resupplying American warships and
logistic transport aircraft that fly supplies into
Baghdad. A recent decision by the High Court of
Nagoya found that Japanese Air Self-Self Defense Force
missions into Iraq were unconstitutional as they
violated Article 9.
80 percent of the Japanese people want their
government to retain their constitutional rejection of
war and they are organizing to protect Article 9. In
every city and village in Japan there is an Article 9
committee that meets frequently to educate the public
on the need to retain Article 9 as it has played an
important role in establishing trust relationships
between Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. According
to the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed
Conflict, Article 9 is of critical importance for the
prevention of conflict and is the “foundation for
collective security for the entire Asia-Pacific
region.”
On May 3, Japanese Constitution Day, tens of thousands
of Japanese in Tokyo gathered for a rally and march to
protect Article 9. I was honored to speak at that
rally in Hibaye Park and auditorium. On May 4 over
8,000 Japanese attending the Global Article Nine
Conference to Abolish War listened to speakers from
all over the world, including Americans Cora Weiss of
the Hague Appeal for Peace, US Army conscientious
objector Aidan Delgado and myself, a former US Army
colonel and a diplomat who resigned in opposition to
the Iraq war, who urged the Japanese people to
continue to reject participation in war. 1976 Nobel
Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire called for
nations of the world to look toward the Japanese
constitution as a model for preventing armed conflict.
On May 6, I joined Dr. Jitendra Sharma, President of
the International Association of Democratic Lawyers
and Beate Sirota Gordon, who as a 22 year old woman on
General MacArthur’s staff, wrote the equal rights for
women article into the Japanese constitution, in
speaking to over 10,000 Japanese citizens in an arena
in Osaka, Japan about the importance to the world of
article 9.
Japanese citizens remembering World War II, as
Americans citizens today, know the slippery slope of
offensive military actions for political and/or
economic objectives. The Bush administration’s
decision to invade and occupy, without the
authorization of the collective international
community through the United Nations Security Council,
the oil-rich, Arab, Muslim country of Iraq reminds the
Japanese of their invasion of resource-rich countries
of Asia 70 years ago. Those actions resulted in a
moral, ethical and legal crisis for Japan, as similar
actions over the past five years by the United States
have brought our country to national crisis.
Many Japanese government officials were tried for war
crimes for their actions during World War II.
Holding officials of the American government
accountable for their illegal actions in Iraq, for
torture, and for illegal imprisonment of thousands of
innocent men, women and children is the next step in
American and international determination to end
illegal wars of choice and making those responsible
who do chose to use bullets rather than words.
For more information on the Global Article 9
Conference to Abolish War, see
www.whynot9.jp/index_en.html
More on travels in Japan to follow: Okinawa-US Bases
and Sexual Assault and Rape of Japanese Women and
Girls