photo by Toshifumi Aonuma
Tarak Kauff sends another dispatch from Okinawa. (Sent on April 26th)
Another day at the Camp Schwab gate. The Japanese police are getting smarter, using more police, and more efficiently to clear the space so the trucks can get in. Instead of five hours or even three, now they manage to get the road clear in about an hour. I'm thinking a new strategy will need to be devised by the protestors. New ideas are being talked about. It's like a chess game. It's also very hot. Bruce and Dud got carted away and one of the Japanese VFP women, Maki, who was there also was carted off. I have pictures but those will have to wait until Sunday night when I arrive back and Ellen can help me download them – a skill I don't yet have. Here's four of us yesterday walking down the road to block the trucks before they get close.
Doug Lummis, Bruce, Dud and a few others are doing some blocking. We and others managed to hold the trucks up for maybe an additional hour all told before the Japanese police got to us and before the trucks got to the main protest area. We all had to be careful not to get arrested for a number of strategic reasons, but especially because the organizers did not want any more arrests.
Today, as we were waiting for the trucks, the organizers asked me to speak. A Buddhist monk translated. I can't remember everything I said but I tried to speak from my heart and pointed out that the police, who were standing right there and could listen were not our enemy, but that they were being used by the U.S. and Japanese government and the U.S. military to enforce the will of the oligarchs who profit from the destruction of the natural environment, militarism and wars. I also said how much we admire and are inspired by the sustained resistance to not only this base but the 73 years long U.S. occupation of their island. I'm actually too lazy and tired now to write up a better synopsis of what I said, but the crowd seemed to approve enthusiastically of every statement. I ended fighting back tears as I thought of our buddy, Mike Hanes, and I also sincerely apologized to these wonderful people for all the suffering the military I was once a part of had caused them. I promised that Veterans For Peace would always stand in solidarity with them and that we would return again and again to join them in the struggle.