Japan Archives - Page 9 of 23

21Feb

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Japan, USA

75 years later, Japanese Americans recall pain of internment camps

NOVANEWS Seventy-five years ago on Sunday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which authorized the imprisonment of Japanese Americans. by Melissa Fares Joyce Nakamura Okazaki was 7 years old in 1942 when her family left their Los Angeles home and reported to a World War Two internment camp for Japanese Americans in California’s remote desert. She recalls crowded rooms filled with cots and embarrassment that the toilets at Manzanar War Relocation Center had no privacy. “Like Nazi Germany, we Japanese Americans were put into concentration camps,” said Okazaki, now 82, while recognizing that detainees were not killed or tortured. “We were constantly under threat if we went near the barbed wire fences.” Seventy-five years ago on Sunday, President Franklin D. R...

12Feb

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Japan

Extremely High Radiation Breaks down Fukushima “Clean-Up Robot” at Damaged Nuclear Reactor

NOVANEWS By RT A clean-up mission using a remotely operated robot at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has had to be aborted, as officials feared they could completely lose control of the probe affected by unexpectedly high levels of radiation. The robot equipped with a high-pressure water pump and a camera designed to withstand up to 1,000 Sieverts of cumulative exposure had been pulled off the inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex earlier this week, The Japan Times reported Friday, citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The device reportedly broke down just two hour into the probe. The failure led experts to rethink estimated levels of radiation inside the damaged reactor. While last week TEPCO said it might stand at 5...

8Jan

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Japan

The Fukushima Disaster and the Future of Nuclear Power in Japan

NOVANEWS An Interview with Former Prime Minister Kan Naoto By Vincenzo Capodici and Shaun Burnie The Asia-Pacific Journal Introduction For more than two decades, the global nuclear industry has attempted to frame the debate on nuclear power within the context of climate change: nuclear power is better than any of the alternatives. So the argument went. Ambitious nuclear expansion plans inthe United States and Japan, two of the largest existing markets, and the growth of nuclear power in China appeared to show—superficially at least—that the technology had a future. At least in terms of political rhetoric and media perception, it appeared to be a winning argument. Then came March 11, 2011. Those most determined to promote nuclear power even cited the Fukushima Daiichi accident as...

27Dec

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Japan

Open Letter to the Japanese Prime Minister on Eve of Visit to Pearl Harbor

NOVANEWS by Dr:Richard Falk [Prefatory Note: The press release and open letter to the Japanese Prime Minister concern the complex issues surrounding the ethos and politics of apology. I would have liked the statement to include an acknowledgement of accountability by the U.S. Government. President Barack Obama, several months ago, took a step in that direction by his visit to Hiroshima, the first sitting American president to do so, but he deliberately avoided language that could be construed as an apology, representing the event as ‘a tragedy’ of warfare, which it was of course, but it was also a flagrant violation of the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weaponry and an act of war that defied the prohibition of customary international law on violence that cannot be ...

16Dec

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China, Japan

The World Should Remember the Nanjing Massacre (December 13 1937- January 1938)

NOVANEWS Historical Justice and Morality: The World Should Remember the Nanjing Massacre (December 13 1937- January 1938) By Zhong Sheng Global Research December 13 marks the 3rd national commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre. Through the commemoration, also known as Nanjing Ji, Chinese people hope to, together with the rest of the world, remember the estimated 300,000 Chinese massacred during a six-week period 79 years ago by the imperial Japanese Army. The annual event aims to engrave the dark days in the memory of Asia and the rest of the world for sustained peace. The world has had a deeper recognition of the Nanjing Massacre over the past few years, thanks to a series of events. Besides the National Memorial Day, the historical documents of the Nanjing Massacre have been l...

21Oct

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Japan

Contemporary Political Dynamics Of Japanese Nationalism

NOVANEWS By Nakano Koichi Global Research This essay examines why nationalism seems to be on the rise in Asia and beyond at a time when globalization is also becoming more salient, by focusing on the political dynamics that propelled both changes in Japan in the post-Cold War era. The more open and liberal type of nationalism that appeared in Japan in the 1980s to the mid-1990s was followed by an abrupt revisionist backlash beginning in the late 1990s. This illiberal, authoritarian turn in contemporary nationalism was confirmed and accelerated during the premiership of Koizumi Jun’ichiro (2001-06), when further neoliberal reforms were simultaneously implemented. I argue that the New Right transformation of Japanese politics –the combined ascendancy of economic liberalism and po...

14Sep

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Japan

Fukushima Backlash Hits Japan Prime Minister. Fukushima is NOT under Control

NOVANEWS By Robert Hunziker Counterpunch Nuclear power may never recover its cachet as a clean energy source, irrespective of safety concerns, because of the ongoing saga of meltdown 3/11/11 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Over time, the story only grows more horrific, painful, deceitful. It’s a story that will continue for generations to come. Here’s why it holds pertinence: As a result of total 100% meltdown, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) cannot locate or remove the radioactive molten core or corium from the reactors. Nobody knows where it is. It is missing. If it is missing from within the reactor structures, has it burrowed into the ground? There are no ready answers. And, the destroyed nuclear plants are way too radioactive for humans to get close enough...

6Sep

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Japan

The Link Between Uranium From the Congo and Hiroshima: A Story of Twin Tragedies

NOVANEWS By Susan Williams On August 6 -- Hiroshima Day -- I participated in a groundbreaking event at the South African Museum in Cape Town entitled The Missing Link: Peace and Security Surrounding Uranium. The event had been organised by the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa to put a spotlight on the link between Japan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): that the uranium used to build the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the province of Katanga. This was the richest uranium in the world. Its ore had an average of 65% uranium oxide compared with American or Canadian ore, which contained less than 1%. The mine is now closed, but its existence put it at the centre of the Manhattan Project in the second world war. The Congo was a Belgi...

4Jul

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Japan, USA

Okinawa Is Still Being Exploited by the US

NOVANEWS By Cindy Beringer A peace activist holds a sign that says "Get out! Marines" as vehicles pass Camp Schwab near Naga, Okinawa, Japan, May 30, 2016. (Photo: Adam Dean / The New York Times) A crowd numbering in the tens of thousands gathered June 19 in a stadium on the small island of Okinawa in Japan to demand the removal of US military forces. The other demand of the rally was to end plans by the US and Japanese governments to move a major US Marine base from the crowded center of Okinawa to the pristine Northern coast. On the same day as the Okinawa protest, similar demonstrations were planned in 41 of 47 prefectures in Japan, including a rally of 7,000 outside the parliament building in Tokyo. The protest were in response to the rape and murder of a 20-year-old Okinawa wom...

15Jun

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Japan, USA

A Moral Revolution? Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima

NOVANEWS by Dr: Richard Falk There is no doubt that President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima this May crossed some thresholds hitherto taboo. Above all the visit was properly heralded as the first time a sitting American president has dared such a pilgrimage, which has already been critically commented upon by patrioteers in America who still think that the Japanese deserved such a punishment for initiating the war or believed that only such ‘shock and awe’ could induce the Japenese to surrender without a costly invasion of the mainland. As well many in Asia believe that Obama by the visit is unwittingly letting Japan off the accountability hook for its seemingly unrepentant record of atrocities throughout Asia, especially given the perception that the current Prime Minister, Shinzo...