Press Action

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Views from Two Ground Zeros

By Jun Hoshikawa

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Posted 10/12 |

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To Jun...During the March 13, 2002 White House press conference, President Bush stated that all options were on the table. This comment, by President Bush, came just days after the Pentagon’s Revised Nuclear Posture Review was leaked to the Los Angles Times. In it, the Pentagon named seven countries that were potential targets of a U.S. NUCLEAR strike. Jun, you are too polite and too forgiving. The USA is STILL holding the Nuclear Sword over the entire planet. It is time for the USA to pay reparations, close ALL foreign military bases, and join the rest of the world community. PEACE, rosemarie

Posted by rosemarie jackowski from on 10/12 at 01:23 PM

Great to see Jun posting at pressaction (well, yes, I was the one who turned him onto the site, I boast shamelessly). Hope to see more of his reportage here. Without knowing all the details I suspect Rosemary is right on the mark with her comments. I am constantly trying to radicalize folks here to the extreme depth of depravity of the US government, something most people don’t want to admit into their consciousness. I was just talking with someone yesterday about how there is a parellel between one of the smallest islands in Hawaii’ which the US military finally abadonded (which will take one hundred years to clean up, they are taking their time) and Okinawa, where researchers like Ui Jun have shown that the US military presence there has left social, political and environmental scars that will take decades to heal.

Posted by Rhino Rick from on 10/12 at 05:23 PM

Nice article Jun.

I will limit myself to comment on three points raised:

You said, “I think Japan did a similarly good job of clearing our collective psyche of vengeance born out of the two Ground Zeros. Again, to an extent.” Maybe the collective psyche has been cleared of vengeance but what about the collective psyche of the victims of Japanese imperialism? With all due respect, Japan has never come fully clean on atoning for crimes against its neighbors. The ill will felt to the nation of Japan by Koreans and Chinese is, I submit, still very palpable.

I wonder about the statement: “They were meant to be the first and the last such Ground Zeros.” I find it hard to accept that a location was meant to be” a Ground Zero.

It was written: “Article 9 of the post-war Japanese Constitution was our declaration of interdependence born out of these views.” The Japanese constitution, with its Article 9, was imposed on the Japanese and cannot be construed as a Japanese-inspired declaration. At any rate the present Koizumi administration is doing its darnedest to dismantle the remaining restraints of Article 9 and it has all but been undermined already.

Posted by kim from on 10/14 at 03:47 PM

Kim raises good points. The Seagraves in their book Gold Warriors go into great detail about the connections between US and Japanese imperialism, and the mass criminality on both sides in the plunder of Asia (carried out by Japan but with US complicity to a certain extent, as ironic as that sounds).

In general, I find it is very easy to criticize US imperialism to Japanese while on the other hand, when speaking with a very well intentioned Asahi Shimbun reporter the other night, she got very prickly when I mentioned the hypocrisy of Japan’s obsession with the North Korea adduction issue in comparison to Japan’s mass slaughter of Koreans in WWII. “Those are separate issues.”

How convenient!

To Jun, not only the A bombs but the LeMay fire bombings targeted at numerous Japanese cities and civilian targets have to rate as even more heinous than the A bombs in terms of numbers of dead. But this is even less well known by most Americans or even Japanese (Japanese school textbooks avoid both Japanese and US war crimes, for obvious reasons).

Posted by Rhino Rick from on 10/15 at 06:35 PM

Anyone not familiar w the LeMay firebombings referred to by Rhino should get them under their belt...to throw out the next time people try to make a pt about the A-Bomb in a pro-US framework. For CELEBREX...I’d say...as much as I like Waits...your comment about intent...I hope...doesn’t suggest that there hasn’t been a clear historical record of viscious intent on the part of US players...worldwide.

Posted by Richard Oxman from on 11/08 at 12:48 AM