Japan

Ten days before Donald Trump's inauguration, the former mayor of Hiroshima sent the president-elect a letter calling on the incoming U.S. administration to lead on nuclear non-use in Northeast Asia.

"Keenly aware that your decisions on matters related to nuclear weapons will affect everybody in the world and especially those of us living in Hiroshima, we, Hiroshima citizens and hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), expect these decisions to be wise and peaceable," Tadatoshi Akiba, Hiroshima's former mayor, wrote.

The White House announced May 10 that President Obama will travel to Hiroshima, Japan, reports The New York Times.

This will be the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited the city where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb at the end of World War II.

The U.S. Air Force plans to build six new helipads in the jungle as part of a deal to give close to one-half of the training center acreage back to Japan. Yet right in the middle of these proposed helipad sites lies Takae, a village of about 150 residents. They are the people who will suffer the increased air traffic that is sure to result if the helipads are built. They will also have to abide the possibility of a crash — there have been at least 43 aircraft accidents since 1972, and in 1959 a plane carrying two missiles crashed into a school, killing 17 people and injuring 210.

Now that the air force has a new toy, the MV-22 Osprey helicopter, there have been a lot of trainee pilots going out on practice runs. Unfortunately, the Osprey has established an abysmal safety record compared to earlier models. Its “safety” features are not, in fact, safe for potential bystanders.

Takae residents also believe that the U.S. military would like to use their village as part of its training exercises, an idea that doesn’t seem so farfetched after considering what happened during the Vietnam War. At that time, the U.S. military built a “dummy” village in the jungle and forcefully conscripted Takae residents, one as young as six years old, to wear black clothing and carry on as though they were living in a Vietcong stronghold. The conscripted residents were even required to stage mock attacks from the village.

OVER THE LAST 14 months, I visited Nagasaki six times to prepare for and then participate in the Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, along with 60 Christian leaders from Japan, the U.S., China, and South and North Korea.

Following the forum, I attended the International Symposium for Peacemaking in Northeast Asia, held at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. These events gave me much opportunity to think about nuclear weapons and peacemaking, alone and together with a peaceable community of believers.

The devastating power unleashed on Nagasaki and Hiroshima 70 years ago shocked the human community. I have friends whose families suffered when atomic bombs fell on those two Japanese cities. But Japan was not simply a victim. The Pacific War started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And if the Japanese military had then had an atomic bomb, I am quite certain they would have used it.

Today, many are working to abolish nuclear weapons as inhumane and unacceptable.  I am convinced that nuclear weapons cannot be justified. But the question “Why should we abolish nuclear weapons?” leads to additional questions: How do we think about wars, about killing and violence, in general? While seeking to abolish nuclear weapons, should we keep on making, selling, and using other kinds of weapons?

TORU HASHIMOTO, the mayor of Osaka and co-leader of the Japanese Restoration Party, has been known for his provocative statements. In May, while speaking with reporters on Japanese wartime behavior, he endorsed rape and sexual enslavement, saying, “When soldiers are risking their lives by running through storms of bullets, and you want to give these emotionally charged soldiers a rest somewhere, it’s clear that you need a comfort-women system.” These comments drew international condemnation, but they also revealed the all-too-familiar interlocking of sexism, militarism, and sexual violence. Far too often, the idea of a greater “noble cause” is used to justify the sacrifice of women to a military sexual slavery system.

During World War II, historians estimate that 100,000 to 200,000 Korean women and girls, ages 11 to 30, along with women and girls from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan, were kidnapped or falsely promised jobs and taken to various locations to serve as “comfort women”—the euphemism for sexual slaves. They “served” an average of 30 to 40 soldiers a day and suffered through beatings, venereal disease, forced abortions, mental anguish, and often death. At the end of the war, these women and girls were killed, forced into suicide, or abandoned. Of the few who were able to return to their homeland, many suffered social alienation, humiliation, poverty, STDs, and endless mental anguish.

The Japanese government had largely denied the existence of Japanese military sexual slavery until 20 years ago, when it offered a statement of apology. The apology was seen as empty by many people, as Japanese politicians and revisionist historians not only reneged on the apology but sought to omit the tragedy from the telling of Japanese history. In response, surviving Korean “comfort women” or halmulni (a term of endearment and respect meaning grandmother) have gathered every Wednesday since 1992 in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul as a reminder that they demand to be seen, heard, and offered a genuine apology.