Life In Japan: Teaching Peace

As I write this, my wife Masumi is in Hiroshima with the entire 6th grade of her school, over eighty students. They’re on a field trip to visit the Peace Park and the Peace Museum.

This trip is something that they do every year. And it’s common among the elementary schools here in Hyogo and other prefectures throughout Japan. When the kids are in their last year, they go to this world-famous city to learn about the horrors of war.

Not only is it a vital learning experience, but it’s quite an adventure, even if it’s only two days. Masumi’s kids took the Shinkansen — high-speed bullet train — from Kobe, and traveling at up to 320 km/hr (200 mph), it only took an hour-and-a-half to get there. By car it’s a five hour drive.

First day, they went to the Peace Park and sang a beautiful song called “Negai” — which means ‘hope’. I recorded Masumi’s piano performance of the song and she played that over a portable speaker at the park. The kids sang this beautiful, hopeful song.

Here are the lyrics.

There’s so much to see and take in. The museum is a phenomenal experience. Masumi took me to it years ago. When I left, I decided that everyone on the planet — especially Americans, who seem to think war is fun and games — should spend a couple days learning both the real truth about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and understand that even having one nuclear weapon is sheer insanity. Currently, the US has 5,428. Russia has 5,977. Plus seven other nations additionally have 1,360 among them. Apparently, the human species has a death wish embedded in its DNA. Is there a vaccine for total madness?

The “dome” is the only structure to survive the atomic bomb, which detonated about 500 feet directly overhead. The photo is what it still looks like, the drawing is a rendering by Masumi’s 6th grade students.

Japan has no nuclear weapons. According to its constitution, specifically and unambiguously stated in Article 9, Japan can only have a purely defensive military.

Unfortunately, the reality of the “defense” force here is not that squeaky clean. The U.S. right now is encouraging a more aggressive Japanese military, one that will support U.S. efforts to contain China and maintain its domination over the rest of the world. Perhaps it will come as a surprise that the U.S. currently has 56 military bases in Japan, meaning it is still an occupied country — from a war that ended almost eight decades ago!

Thus, there is internal tension here in Japan about war and peace, just as there is in the U.S. and most countries. The people if Japan — the everyday citizens — have long memories. Japan was almost totally destroyed as a result of their attempt to conquer this part of the world. Lesson learned. Even now, most regular people want no part of it.

BUT . . . there are highly nationalistic individuals who’ve stayed in power. The ruling party — the one initially installed and still favored by the U.S. warmongers — has been continuously in control of the things since the U.S. dictated the terms of surrender to Japan after World War II. The U.S. has kept them securely under its thumb, assuring that 1) Japan never entertains again the idea of becoming an independent world power, and 2) Japan dutifully serves the national interests and geopolitical ambitions of U.S. empire. World domination-obsessed American puppet masters play on the nationalistic leanings of this group, who proudly want a powerful Japan as a major player on the world stage, and promote divisiveness and hostility, making sure that Japan is never on amicable terms with any other regional entities. Though Japan officially claims to only be committed to “self-defense”, it has a formidable fighting force, including submarines, fighter jets, infantry — far more than it needs to defend the homeland.

Which makes the extra-curricular education of the trip to Hiroshima even more vital. As with America, it’s the people who must keep the government in check, applying constant pressure to the official leadership to embrace diplomacy and peace.

It’s obvious that Masumi’s students get it. They wrote this declaration for their visit.

I’m so fortunate to be married to someone as deeply committed to ending war as I am. Unfortunately, not everyone Masumi works with is so enlightened. Prompted by U.S. propagandists, the government and media — just like in the U.S. — spread fear, mainly of China and North Korea, and try to convince the everyday citizens of the need for a bigger, better-equipped military. Of course, much of the additional equipment would come from the U.S. weapons manufacturers. How convenient!

Peace is a tough sell in today’s world. All we can do is tell the truth and hope for the best.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: Teaching Peace | John Rachel

Irony Deficiency Anemia

Our government has become oblivious to the ignominious irony of its policies and actions. Therefore, it blunders on, never questioning why often much of what it does produces the very opposite of either its stated or actual intentions.

Without intended irony, it arms the rest of the world to make it safer. Anyone with a checkbook can obtain weaponry from America. The U.S. is by a huge margin the biggest supplier of military hardware to the international community. We are then shocked when these same weapons end up pointing at us, now in the hands of bin Laden, al Qaeda and other militant extremists.

Without intended irony, it incentivizes corporations to export America's jobs, reasoning that the healthier these corporations are, the sounder will be the economy of the country, evidence of spreading poverty and grotesque income inequality be damned. TPP and TTIP are the latest virulent initiatives toward transferring national sovereignty to multinational corporations, strengthening America by draining it of its self-determination and economic vitality. These so-called trade agreements are NAFTA on steroids. We just hope there's an open seat at future Third World economic
conferences and those countries don't despise us for plundering their natural resources all these years.

Without intended irony, the President declares himself the "environmental president" while promoting the greatest surge in domestic oil and gas production in our history, including the use of fracking and opening up vast stretches of pristine land and fragile offshore sites to ruinous exploration and drilling. The U.S. still refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty, only marginally participates in world conferences on the environment, and most certainly fails to provide much-needed leadership on issues like climate change and the rapid and dramatic decline in the health of the oceans. The only environment we have protected is a business environment which worships plunder for profit.

Without intended irony, America holds itself up as the beacon of democracy in the world while supporting ruthless despots and grotesque tyranny throughout the world, likewise tolerating the corruption of the electoral system in America itself. Welcome to a world where money buys politicians and the voice of the common citizen is silenced both by oligarchical monopoly of the national conversation and voter disenfranchisement.

Without intended irony, the U.S. promotes democracy in the Ukraine by encouraging the overthrow of an elected government and replacing it in a coup with neo-nazi thugs and plutocrats, who then rig the next election which they of course claim validates their rule, then training and supplying the neo-Nazi National Guard with weapons. As we should suspect, this is part of a bigger plan
which has nothing to do with spreading democracy, and in fact reignites
old antagonisms with Russia and puts us all at risk for World War III.
Nice work, eh?

Without intended irony, the U.S. affirms its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons by spending more now on upgrading our existing stockpiles and R&D on new more destructive nuclear devices, than we did at the height of the Cold War.  With over 4,800 nuclear warheads in its current arsenal __ enough to destroy life on Earth many times over __ we negotiate agreements with our allies to expedite the efficient use and deployment of our bulging arsenals of collective mass suicide.

Without intended irony Obama promised to foster transparency in his administration, yet has increased secrecy, prosecuted whistle blowers at a record rate, has fanatically clamped down on leaks, drastically curtailed freedom of the press by attempting to force journalists to reveal their sources, classified more government documents and communications than any president in our history, has overseen massive and intrusive surveillance by the NSA and other national security agencies of innocent Americans, foreign nationals and even heads of state of America's allies, and continues to
expand the capacity of government agencies to unconstitutionally monitor and record every interaction by U.S. citizens.

Without intended irony, it honors its "responsibility to protect" by attacking other nations, killing a lot of innocent people, creating fear and animosity in the rest of the world, and as a result it fails
its responsibility to protect the people it is most responsible for, American citizens. With our cavalier use of military force, we are more feared, resented, despised than ever. Serious blowback is inevitable. How ironic, eh?

Without intended irony, we scold other countries, like Russia and China, for being bullies, while we ignore resolutions and concerted efforts of the United Nations, refuse to join the ICC or acknowledge its legal authority over us, reserve the right to use our military at any time and place of our choosing, skirt the Geneva conventions by using torture, harass and bomb countries we are not at war with using drones and special ops troops, and talk about needed cooperation among members of the international community while economically strangling with sanctions any country which does not bend to our unilateral dictates.

Yes, we fail to see the irony in all of this. We choose to turn a blind eye to the deceptions and self-sabotaging contradictions. This has indeed made our country sick, an anemic and feckless nation of sheeple, vis-a-vis the noble ideals we once held and now unconvincingly espouse. We struggle with buckling knees in an increasingly futile attempt to prop up the political house of cards we've built of self-deception and delusions.

No house of cards can rise forever. The longer we pile rationalizations and faulty logic on imperialistic hubris and sociopathic fantasies, the closer we come to its ultimate collapse.

It's no longer a question of 'if' but 'when'.

It will collapse.

Let's hope it doesn't take the foundations of our once great nation with it and we are still left with something upon which to rebuild.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]