Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

I went to Egypt last week. 14 hour flight from Tokyo.

I really had fun visiting pyramids and old ruins.

An Egyptian guide I met talked so much about the war in their neighboring country, Iraq.

He repeatedly said to our tour group that the US started the war because they wanted oil, not to provide democracy. He was so emotional about that. I've seen very few American tourists visiting there. I understood why.

I recommend Americans not visit there nowadays although the pyramids and ruins were magnificient.   

Yesterday I went to the meeting to hear the testimonies of Nanking Masscre survivors. Two people showed up and talked about their experience in ther villages near the former Chinese capitol, Nanking, December 1937. They are very old people. One of them is 85 year-old man, and the other is 77 year-old woman. They were child at the time the masscre occured.

Japanese army came into their villages. The stories they told the audience (mostly Japanese) were horrible. Their parents were killed in front of them.

The old man's villagers were gathered on the ground and shot by machine-guns. 23 of them were all together killed and later stabbed by the swords. The old man was saved but sexually abused by the soldiers.

The old lady's mother was shot to death in front of her and she was also shot in her hand. Her life had changed greatly since then. She had to be married to someone for her life at the age of 12 or 13.

After the meeting I walked past the Parliament Building. The meeting was held near the parliament. It was very peaceful place. See the picture in the Photo Gallery. The contrast between the stories of the survivors and the landscape of the capitol was so big.

The reality was they are co-related. That place made a decision to dispatch troops to China at that time and caused them such painful memories. Yet the goverment has not compensated the victims. Some of the politicians expressed apologies but always after that, some of the cabinet members said something to turn down. Current prime minister visited war crimials' shrine. Their stance is so inconsistent.

Some so called right wingers are trying to rewrite the history. They believe nothing bad was done by Japanese army. They think or want to think the atrocities were made up by Chinese.

This nation is on the crisis. Now is such an important time to strengthen relationship with neighboring Asian nations but top politicians who have to place importance on national interests are deteriorating that. Unless Japan reviews and compensates the past atrocities, we will have no future.  

Democrat Congressman J. Murtha, who is Vietnam veteran and voted for invasion of Iraq spoke out on PBS and said the US troops should withdraw from Iraq in 6 months. He claimed the war was wrong.

He looked so desperate and passionate about this issue.

One Japanese video journalist named Jimbo Tetsuo, who got Master's degree of Journalism at Columbia University said that America always has the power to swing back even when things go wrong too far. Mr. Murtha proved that.

In contrary, our society is less powerful to swing back because we don't have so many people who have courage to do the right thing no matter how opposition is strong. Unlike America, Japanese are group oriented and do not respect other's individualism.

Please swing back, America. You can do that.

More than half of Japanese citizens disagree with amendment of article 9 of the constitution, which prohibites State's possesion of arms. Even among youngsters who never exprienced or know the stories about the war there exists strong opposition.

Even after 60 years, people's opinion about the Pacifist constitution is not greatly changed. No one wants the war. But some politicians want to change it.

Well, my opinion is since I am realist I agree with constitutional amendment.  But not now, in the future. One of the reason many people oppose the amendment is they fear that if the constitution is amended, our troops would be easily sent to anywhere by stupid politics. Recently Japan sent troops to Iraq to follow the order of Bush. Our country lacks civilian control functions in the politics. That means our country's democracy is not functioning well.

We have yet to review the mistakes we made in the past. Older generations never reflected how they were wrong in the past. We've been suffering the traumas of the past and have yet overcome it. One example is denying of Masscre of Nanking. We always regret the consequences of the war, not the cause of the war we provoked. We rarely talk about Manchuria and Pearl Harbor.

We have to study the cause of the past mistakes.

That is what we have to do to get ready for the amendment.

Some oppose it simply because they are passionate pacifist. They say they want to make their country completely non military state like CostaRica. But that is totally impossible taking current situation Japan is in into account.

We have the troops so called "Self-Defense Force" and foreign mercenaries mainly stationed in Okinawa island already. That means we need military force to protect our national interests. Also it is not good for our country to heavily rely on US military presence. US is our most reliable ally but the foreign troops who always prioritize their own national interest ahead of others after all.