Geography Archives: Japan

After dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, U.S. government officials lied to the media and Congress, claiming there was “no radioactive residue” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that civilians did not face “undue suffering,” that it was “a very pleasant way to die.”

President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki set the groundwork for an era of U.S. global hegemony and enriched corporations like General Electric, DuPont, Union Carbide, Bechtel and Westinghouse which made hundreds of billions of dollars developing generation after generation of “first-strike” nuclear weapons. U.S. leaders, intent on provoking wars with China and/or Russia, appear willing to use these weapons again—if we don’t stop them.

Only three weeks remain for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Madrid, which is expected to unveil a new Strategic Concept aimed at redefining “the security challenges facing the Alliance and outline the political and military tasks that NATO will carry out to address them.”

It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now afflicts approximately thirty countries)?

“Coming out” on thyroid cancer from Fukushima is an act of bravery in today’s Japan

Survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan have a “profound role” to play in catastrophes such as the coronavirus pandemic, a leading American psychohistorian renowned for his studies of people under stress told Kyodo News in a recent interview.

The New Left is generally seen globally as emerging from the aftermath of the “revelations” about Stalin in Khrushchev’s “secret speech”’ at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in early 1956, and the reaction to the Soviet invasion of Hungary later that same year.

The masses of Tokyo want to postpone or cancel the games, but the government says it’s the IOC’s decision, not the host country’s, sovereignty be damned.

As the global challenge of climate change mounts and the coronavirus pandemic magnifies economic inequalities, Karl Marx, who pointed to the contradictions and limitations of capitalism, is gaining new admirers in Japan, particularly among the young.

JAPAN has come under fire after its government announced today that it would release more than a million metric tonnes of radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean.

The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported from Washington Sunday quoting “a source” that the Biden Administration had proposed to New Delhi, Tokyo and Canberra the idea of holding an online summit meeting of the leaders of the “Quad”. 

The Modi regime believes that no matter how impoverished the people are their electoral support can always be won by promoting Hindutva and effecting a communal polarization. It is an utterly cynical view, but then, the present dispensation represents the acme of cynicism.

Japan was ready to surrender, making the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki two days later, totally unnecessary and morally indefensible, say a panel of scholars in two video discussions.

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics a young man born on the day of Hiroshima nuclear bombing was selected to be the last torch bearer on the relay, to signify that Japan had stood up from nuclear ruin. In an attempt to replicate the 1964 Olympic theme, the Abe government has constructed the idea of a Fukushima “revival,” a returned to normal. Exposing this illusion is an important cultural war.

Through their control over supply chains, multinationals based in the global north exploit workers in the global south.

n March–on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster–Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”.

The most critical problem is that three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had been damaged and the 250 tons of more than 1600 spent fuel rods were “reckoned” to have fallen to the bottom of the reactor vessel after having melted at high temperatures. The radiation level there was too high for humans to possibly come close, let alone remove the molten nuclear residue.

There are eighty of us sitting down, linking arms, blocking the gates of a US military base. Private security guards are lined up behind us, while men in uniform film us from behind barbed-wire fences. Suddenly, Japanese police officers pile out of their vans in their dozens. They grab a protester, a woman in her seventies. She goes limp and screams “US bases out of Okinawa!” as they carry her away.

Would non-use at the end of a brutal total war have created a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons as strong as resulted from the demonstrated horror of their effects against the two Japanese cities? Perhaps not.

Our story though, is much more than three short paragraphs in a textbook. It is a story about a people’s determination for sovereignty in the face of imperialism, resilience in midst of colonization, and perseverance for peace as survivors of war. Our story is urgent and it is a call for global action in the name of peace and justice. The history of Okinawa is a story of resistance but also a call to the world.