By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 15 2003 (IPS)

Sumiko Haneda was but a child when Japan was bombed heavily by U.S. forces and later surrendered in 1945, but those horrors were enough to make her speak out Saturday against an impending attack against Iraq that would kill civilians.

Sumiko Haneda was but a child when Japan was bombed heavily by U.S. forces and later surrendered in 1945, but those horrors were enough to make her speak out Saturday against an impending attack against Iraq that would kill civilians.

”It was a horrible time,” Haneda, now a documentary filmmaker in her sixties, told what organisers estimated were some 10,000 Japanese gathered here for an anti-war rally, one that highlighted how many Japanese are drawing on the country’s own experience of war to oppose the planned war against Iraq.

”I was always cold and hungry and my family was so poor we had hardly anything to wear. Thousands of lives were lost in a week when Tokyo was razed to the ground in 1945,” she added. ”If the U.S. attacks Iraq, the same thing will happen and we, Japanese, must stop the carnage,” she told the packed rally, one of several held in different cities around the world.

Haneda was one among politicians, activists, artists, and citizens who joined hands at the rally that started at Hibiya Park and snaked through Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district, snarling traffic in the Japanese capital.

Although the circumstances of the planned attack on Iraq and the attacks on Japan in the 1940s were different, speakers said, the concerns about the price that civilians will pay for the decisions made the politicians that lead them are similar.

Inada Nada, a 76-year-old essayist, added: ”I came today to remind you all that nobody should die for the sake of another country’s victory.”

”Japanese citizens will never allow this to happen because we know that war solves nothing and only results in hardship for the ordinary people,” he explained.

Inada says that the Japanese government is under pressure to support the United States as a close ally, but that does not represent the views of the country’s civilians.

”The Japanese remember the United States dropped the atom bomb on their country and killed thousands of people. The lesson of September 11 is not about revenge but must be a time of reflection on what happened in other countries as a result of U.S. attacks,” said Nada.

More than 200,000 people were killed in one day when the United States dropped the world’s first atom bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.

During the ‘Tokyo Bombings’ as they are known in Japan, the U.S. military dropped hundreds of bombs on the city in a week-long campaign in the early months of 1945. An estimated 100,000 people were killed in one day as a result of this bombing.

Saturday’s demonstration, called the ‘Grand Rally and Parade’, is one of more than a hundred major rallies held in Japan this year against a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

”This rally is particularly important as it is held on the eve of a possible decision to go to war,” said Hiroshi Ikeda, a director of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the organisers of the Saturday protests.

Zenroren, as the confederation is called in Japanese, was joined by a hundred other grassroots organisations, including peace, women’s and human rights groups, that are campaigning against U.S. President George W Bush’s call for a war against Iraq.

A highlight of the rally was the public support by 28 important Japanese co-convenors, which included journalists, writers and actors mixing among the varied crowds of protesters. People clapped and cheered as some of the well-known personalities took the floor at Hibiya Park.

”The war against Iraq must never be allowed to happen because it is a crime against humanity,” added Haneda.

Hideo Nakajima, 17, a high school student, arrived for the rally on Saturday morning with a group of friends from Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.

”I am gathering material for the high school newspaper that is against the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. will gain respect from the Japanese youth if it pushes a peaceful solution,” he said.

Protesters carried anti-war banners and wore protest hats or masks. Children carried flowers. They all braved a cloudy winter afternoon, sitting in heavy coats and listening to speeches.

”This is the first time I have participated in a peace demonstration,” said Yuko Noguchi, a homemaker at the rally with her daughter, Mika. ”I am strongly against the war and want President Bush to respect our determination to not let him attack Iraq.”

Noguchi and her friend Hitomi Nakamura, 35, explain that Japan holds a special position in the world as a pacifist country – and this must make its anti-war voice stronger.

”We are against any kind of financial support from Japan for the war (on Iraq). We came all the way to show our government and the world that the Japanese public will never allow innocent Iraqi civilians to die for the sake of a war,” said Nakamura.

A poll by Japan’s Kyodo news agency in late February indicated that more than 78 percent of respondents are opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq. More than 40 percent said they did not want a war against Iraq, because it will only lead to more terrorism fears and further depress the economy.

Attempts by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to enact new anti-terrorist legislation to support U.S. forces in the event of a war has not helped his plummeting popularity. His popularity ratings stood at around 33 percent in February, falling from a high of 90 percent when he came into power in April 2000.

In an interview, Nada says that the prospect of a war against Iraq has meantime boosted Japan’s flagging anti-war movement – and rekindled some awareness of peace issues among younger people.

”The younger generation has not experienced war and is more interested in economic satisfaction. But Bush’s call for war, the depressed economy, and the media exposure on the plight of their counterparts in Iraq, has reactivated the pacifism that I believe is deep down in the hearts of the Japanese,” he explained. (END/2003)

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 15 2003 (IPS)

Sumiko Haneda was but a child when Japan was bombed heavily by U.S. forces and later surrendered in 1945, but those horrors were enough to make her speak out Saturday against an impending attack against Iraq that would kill civilians.

”It was a horrible time,” Haneda, now a documentary filmmaker in her sixties, told what organisers estimated were some 10,000 Japanese gathered here for an anti-war rally, one that highlighted how many Japanese are drawing on the country’s own experience of war to oppose the planned war against Iraq.

”I was always cold and hungry and my family was so poor we had hardly anything to wear. Thousands of lives were lost in a week when Tokyo was razed to the ground in 1945,” she added. ”If the U.S. attacks Iraq, the same thing will happen and we, Japanese, must stop the carnage,” she told the packed rally, one of several held in different cities around the world.

Haneda was one among politicians, activists, artists, and citizens who joined hands at the rally that started at Hibiya Park and snaked through Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district, snarling traffic in the Japanese capital.

Although the circumstances of the planned attack on Iraq and the attacks on Japan in the 1940s were different, speakers said, the concerns about the price that civilians will pay for the decisions made the politicians that lead them are similar.

Inada Nada, a 76-year-old essayist, added: ”I came today to remind you all that nobody should die for the sake of another country’s victory.”

”Japanese citizens will never allow this to happen because we know that war solves nothing and only results in hardship for the ordinary people,” he explained.

Inada says that the Japanese government is under pressure to support the United States as a close ally, but that does not represent the views of the country’s civilians.

”The Japanese remember the United States dropped the atom bomb on their country and killed thousands of people. The lesson of September 11 is not about revenge but must be a time of reflection on what happened in other countries as a result of U.S. attacks,” said Nada.

More than 200,000 people were killed in one day when the United States dropped the world’s first atom bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.

During the ‘Tokyo Bombings’ as they are known in Japan, the U.S. military dropped hundreds of bombs on the city in a week-long campaign in the early months of 1945. An estimated 100,000 people were killed in one day as a result of this bombing.

Saturday’s demonstration, called the ‘Grand Rally and Parade’, is one of more than a hundred major rallies held in Japan this year against a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

”This rally is particularly important as it is held on the eve of a possible decision to go to war,” said Hiroshi Ikeda, a director of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the organisers of the Saturday protests.

Zenroren, as the confederation is called in Japanese, was joined by a hundred other grassroots organisations, including peace, women’s and human rights groups, that are campaigning against U.S. President George W Bush’s call for a war against Iraq.

A highlight of the rally was the public support by 28 important Japanese co-convenors, which included journalists, writers and actors mixing among the varied crowds of protesters. People clapped and cheered as some of the well-known personalities took the floor at Hibiya Park.

”The war against Iraq must never be allowed to happen because it is a crime against humanity,” added Haneda.

Hideo Nakajima, 17, a high school student, arrived for the rally on Saturday morning with a group of friends from Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.

”I am gathering material for the high school newspaper that is against the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. will gain respect from the Japanese youth if it pushes a peaceful solution,” he said.

Protesters carried anti-war banners and wore protest hats or masks. Children carried flowers. They all braved a cloudy winter afternoon, sitting in heavy coats and listening to speeches.

”This is the first time I have participated in a peace demonstration,” said Yuko Noguchi, a homemaker at the rally with her daughter, Mika. ”I am strongly against the war and want President Bush to respect our determination to not let him attack Iraq.”

Noguchi and her friend Hitomi Nakamura, 35, explain that Japan holds a special position in the world as a pacifist country – and this must make its anti-war voice stronger.

”We are against any kind of financial support from Japan for the war (on Iraq). We came all the way to show our government and the world that the Japanese public will never allow innocent Iraqi civilians to die for the sake of a war,” said Nakamura.

A poll by Japan’s Kyodo news agency in late February indicated that more than 78 percent of respondents are opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq. More than 40 percent said they did not want a war against Iraq, because it will only lead to more terrorism fears and further depress the economy.

Attempts by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to enact new anti-terrorist legislation to support U.S. forces in the event of a war has not helped his plummeting popularity. His popularity ratings stood at around 33 percent in February, falling from a high of 90 percent when he came into power in April 2000.

In an interview, Nada says that the prospect of a war against Iraq has meantime boosted Japan’s flagging anti-war movement – and rekindled some awareness of peace issues among younger people.

”The younger generation has not experienced war and is more interested in economic satisfaction. But Bush’s call for war, the depressed economy, and the media exposure on the plight of their counterparts in Iraq, has reactivated the pacifism that I believe is deep down in the hearts of the Japanese,” he explained.

Excerpt: