From Boston and Los Angeles to Hiroshima

Appreciation for Article 9

Virginia Pratt, Boston Branch member

David Rothauser arranged for us to meet at the Japanese Consulate August 26 to promote Japan's Article 9, that declares they will not make war. Many of  us said that we wish the US had Article 9 and urged the Japanese to keep it as part of their constitution. 

David Rothauser, a WILPF member and filmmaker, has a mini grant from WILPF to promote Article 9. He teaches at Showa-Boston, a branch of Showa Women's University in Tokyo.  His film Hibakusha, Our Life to Live telling the stories of Japanese, Korean and American survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki premiered at the UN where Secretary General Ban Ki-moon requested copies for the Disarmament Education Department. In 2015 his new film, Article 9 Comes to America, was featured at the United Nations NPT Conference.

PHOTO: Boston Branch members Jean Miller, Marie-Louise Jackson Miller, Nancy Wrenn, Virginia Pratt, David Rothauser and Libby Gerlach meet with Aniya Masaru, assistant to the consul general in Boston. Joe Kabartas from Veterans for Peace was also part of the delegation.

Building peace – insights from Japan

Cathy Deppe, Los Angeles Branch member

What is needed for the peaceful people of the world to build a lasting structure of peace – a firm bulwark against  the nationalist wars of governments everywhere?  I gained new insights from recent participation in the annual peace conferences commemorating  the 70th  anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

The Japanese peace movement is in a life and death struggle to maintain one critical structure of peace – one that has rooted Japan in a war-free environment since 1945.  Imposed by the United States after Japan’s surrender,  Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is a  renunciation of war that has kept Japan free of involvement in war for decades.   No Japanese citizen has been sent to fight, kill, or die in any of the US. backed wars since then:   Korea,  Vietnam, Cambodia,  Afghanistan, or Iraq.

With the onset of a US cold war belligerency towards China, the current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shaken hands with President Obama and is pressuring the Japanese Diet (parliament) to remove  Article 9.  There is also pressure to pass several “war bills”, as they are known to the movement,  that will remove other post-war restrictions on the military.  The Japanese majority opposes these moves as both unconstitutional and dangerous.  The presence of peace protestors rallying and marching in the park during  the official  government commemorations on August 6 and the faint smattering of applause from the 40,000 gathered to hear Abe’s official address are unmistakable signs of that opposition.  

 As only a few of the hundreds of international peace delegates were given official seats at the commemoration,  I stood beneath the trees in Peace Memorial Park,   hearing that faint applause amid the pounding of protest drums and the  roar of cicadas joining in a determination to be heard.  

I first learned of Article 9 in a visit to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University. On the wall hangs a beautifully knit tapestry banner of Article 9, which reads:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a 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.

(Article 9, the Constitution of Japan, Chapter II.  Renunciation of War).

For Americans to participate in observances around the August 6 and August 9 1945 horrific atomic bombings of civilian populations is a necessary act of repentance and reconciliation, whether in peace actions at home or in Japan.  That the Japanese people feel remorse for the actions of their government in Hawaii,  China and Korea binds us  in the call for peace.  

Every nation should have an Article 9. We can spread the peace! The international adoption of constitutional amendments which renounce war is both necessary and possible, for victors as well as vanquished.   

In May, 2015,  over 1,000 Japanese delegates traveled to New York for the United Nations  Review Conference of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty. now signed by over 189 parties.  The Japanese peace movement delivered more than  6 million signatures from all over Japan , calling for an international convention for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons. The petition asks all governments to enter negotiations without delay for a convention banning nuclear weapons. The cries of the world’s people demand peace: No nukes, No war, No hate. To support these demands, sign the online petition.