Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

There have been some rape cases reported in Okinawa island, Japan's southernmost island and prefecutre this month. Actually rape incidents have occurred many times in Okinawa. In 1995 3 marine soldiers raped 12 year-old girl. The Okinawa islanders gathered in the park to protest the U.S. bases. This time they will do that, too. They have done the same things many times in the past.

There are more than 100 of U.S. base facilities in Japan. The biggest ones are in Okinawa. 3 quarters of total of U.S. military facility square footage in Japan is located in Okinawa island. Okinawa is a strategic point for the U.S. so they want to stay as long as they want. Great point for the U.S. invasion of other parts of the world such as Iraq.

The below is the photo I took from the plane over the island. Two big spots are Okinawa's U.S. bases. A runway on the left side is Futenma for marines, and the other one just under the clouds is Kadena for the air force.

Futenma's marine base is planned to be moved to the other place in Okinawa, Nago-shi, the famous place for Dugong's habitat. San Francisco court ordered the U.S. military not to review the development of that area because Dugongs are endangered species.  

Okinawa had been U.S. territory between 1945 and 1972. Japanese government pays half of the military expense for the U.S. military resided in Japan. Because Okinawa has tens of thousands of marines who are kind of uneducated type of people and Okinawa had been occupied place for a long time after Japan was defeated by the U.S. Okinawas, especially women have become easy target for the American criminals.  

Why does Japan need such bases? Simple. Japan is not allowed to have full-fledged military by its constitution. 

The U.S. military is just wasting so much of our tax. They do not defend us, rather they are hurting our people, which they should protect. We have to know we should defend our nation by ourselves. We actually have our own military already. So we should amend the constitution to have a full-fledged military force so we do not have to rely on such violent and dangerous soldiers.

Of course, the U.S would continue to be our greatest ally but we have to make our foreign policy including militaristic strategy by ourselves. We should not help the U.S. invade the world and kill innocent people.

For Okinawa, not having military bases make this island safer and more attractive to tourists. Tourism is a major industry for Okinawa. See this photo. It is called Moon Beach. You can't find a beach as beautiful as this even in Hawaii or Florida.

Japan has many, many earthquakes. As you know what happened in Niigata Prefecture, major earthquake and casualties like that can be seen once or twice every year. It is like annual events of our country. This earthquake caused 10 casualties but the most serious thing in fact is nuclear plant, Kashiwazaki-kariwa built in this area caught a fire and was partially destructed. See the pictures.

The plant now stopped the operation for examination. It will take a year to recover and reoperate. But I hope it would not restart operating forever.

Can't believe the plant is on such dangerous area. In fact nowhere in Japan is suitable for the nuclear power plant. Japan is earthquake land.

Proponets of the nuclear energey claim Japan lacks natural resources, so we have no choice but to rely on nuclear energey. About 30% of power comes from nuclear energey. But the risk for the accident is so huge. In fact, we've already had tens of accidents. Several plant workers died. One town was closed for days because of the radiation leak. This time we had small radiation leak to the air and the ocean.

Japan can invent, and develop alternative energey like windpower and solar energey. We have the technology. But politicians are reluctant because they are heavily influenced by major power plant corporations and their union workers. The media is reluctant to report such issues because their major sponsors are power plant corporations. It is like NBC owned by GE.

This is not just Japan's problem. Like Three Mile and Chernobyl, the damage would be worldwide. Even after the accident, many residents living close to the plants are dying every year.

We can develop alternative and safe energey sources and we can even change our lifestyle to reduce our energey consumption.

 Tokyo Electric Power Corporation which owns the Kashiwazaki-kariwa plant announced Tokyo will face energey shortage because of the temporary shutdown. The company requests us to save energey to keep up the reduced supply.

As a citizen of Tokyo, I welcome that. If we can go through this year with less energey supply, that proves we do not need the shutdown plant and make this temporary shutdown permanent one. After that, we can make new movement to abondon the nuclear power plants nationwide and then worldwide.

 NO MORE NUCLEAR ENERGEY!. This is the way our world should go!  

It has been a huge turmoil in Japanese politics. It was caused by Minister of Defense, Mr. Kyuma. In a speech he made at a University in Chiba Prefecture, he said "US dropping of atomic bombs helped Japan end the war and prevent the Soviet Union from entering in Japan, so we have to accept that."

After the criticism arose, he apologized and retracted the remark. But still the demand for his resignation is strong.

As one Japanese citizen, some point I agree with him, I do not want to blame the US for dropping atomic bombs for some reasons although these acts should never be justified. It was clearly attack on civilians. Huge number at one time.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki in total, more than 200,000 people were killed. The Nuclear Era started by them.

But the war was in fact started by us, Japan, we started the war in China and then Japan had to face economic embargo by allied nations including the U.S. We've killed so many civilians in China and other Asian nations. After the economic sanctions was implemented, Japan attacked on Pearl Harbor.

We haven't done enough to compensate for the loss of the victims like "comfort women" who were forced to become sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers. This issue has been on debate in U.S. Congress lately. The resolution to demand Japanese government to apologize and ackknowlege this inhumane act.

Japan has not done enough to make up for the past aggression. In order to accuse U.S. for dropping atomic bombs, we, must have done what we have to do. We failed.

However, Mr. Kyuma, should have never made such remarks. That is the insult to the victims of the atomic bombs and considered justification of the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons should be all eliminated. No matter what cause the nation provoke the war, attacks on civilians should never be done.   

Can you believe this is happening in our country? Most conservative among advanced nations.

The couple is not just lesbians that you can normally see in SOHO in NY or Castro Street in San Francisco.

A woman on the left is Ms. Kanako Otsuji, former member of Osaka prefectural assembly. Now she is running in upcoming nationwide election campaign as candidate for the second largest political party, Democratic Party of Japan.

 She came out as lesbian two years ago while she was a member of the assembly.

 On this wedding she received the congratulatory message from the party leader, Ichiro Ozawa, known as conservative type of politician. Wow, what is happening in Japan?

 Well, as I wrote on this blog, our society used to be very open-minded to gays. We were very free sex nation.

But since westerners came in late 19th century, our view of sexuality has drastically changed.

We may be moving backward.