U.S. Military sells Manga in Japan to promote the Security Alliance

TOKYO: The US military is using manga to teach a new generation in Japan about the importance of the countries' half-century security alliance.

A new comic book series features an American boy called Usa-kun - a word play on USA and ''usagi'', Japanese for rabbit - who wears a hooded jacket with bunny ears and befriends a Japanese girl, Anzu Arai.

In the first issue of Our Alliance - A Lasting Partnership, to be published online today, the boy tells Anzu that he has come to defend her home, as they are ''important friends''.

The United States is publishing the Japanese-language comic as the countries mark the 50th anniversary of the security treaty, and two days before the 65th anniversary of the US dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

 Over the past year, Japan's new centre-left government strained ties by publicly toying with the idea of moving a controversial US airbase off the southern island of Okinawa.

In the four-part comic series, the two characters ''explore and learn about the US military in Japan and its role in the US-Japan alliance''. The manga format was ''a very common way of communicating'', said Major Neal Fisher, of the US Forces' public affairs office in Japan.

''A lot of people love manga … Manga is a very light-hearted way to carry information'' on where the US bases are, what they do and how they co-operate with the Japanese forces, he said.

The US, having led the occupation of Japan after World War II, has 47,000 troops stationed around the country.

The comic will be published on www.usfj.mil/manga.

Agence France-Presse
http://www.smh.com.au/world/latest-us-signals-are-in-manga-20100803-115h6.html

Shoichi Kina Speaks about U.S. Military Expansion in the Documentary ANPO

The film ANPO is a sequel to Wings of Defeat, which includes rare interviews with surviving kamikazi pilots. It portrays the movement against U.S. bases through the eyes of artists and musicians:

ANPO opens as a squadron of F-16 fighter jets thunder directly over local traffic to land on Kadena, the largest U.S. airbase in Asia. Ten miles south, the urban homes that crowd Futenma Marine Corps Air Station shake from the numbing drone of C-130 cargo planes whose novice pilots repeatedly practice “touch-and-go” take-offs and landings. The U.S. base at Futenma is one of 30 bases in Okinawa, an island that makes up only 1% of Japan’s land mass while shouldering the burden of 75% of the U.S. military installations in Japan. That presence includes over 28,000 American troops, rivaling  the number deployed to the active war zone of Afghanistan. America’s military presence was negotiated in 1951 under the terms of the lopsided U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, known in Japan as “ANPO.”  Under its provisions, American soldiers who rape Japanese women and girls are often protected from local prosecution. Prime farming lands have been confiscated from farmers to extend air force jet runways. Civilians are killed in hit-and-run accidents by drunken US servicemen with few held to account. In one particularly egregious case, a woman collecting shell casings to sell was shot in the back and killed by a US soldier who served no time for her death.

Protests by Japanese enraged by the onerous terms of the security treaty have generally been ignored by Japan’s ruling party. Yet for a brief window of time during the summer of 1960, shopkeepers, children and housewives joined a coalition of artists, farmers, students, laborers, and intellectuals in a series of massive demonstrations to block the renewal of the treaty. Tens of thousands of protestors marched on the Japanese parliament to demand an end to the unequal partnership with Washington. Among the protesters was a small cadre of Japan’s most talented artists. They used the creativity of their paintings, film, photography, manga, and music to give a powerful voice to the protests and to document the many ways in which the American military presence has intruded upon Japanese life and sovereignty.

Please spread the word about this film and post this clip on your websites!

Charles Douglas Lummis on U.S. Military Expansion @Osaka (Tues, Dec 22) @ Kyoto (Wed, Dec 23)

Charles Douglas Lummis at a book signing event

Charles Douglas Lummis, a San Francisco born, resident of Okinawa who contributed extensively to the anti-Vietnam movement in Japan has been invited to speak in Kyoto and Osaka this week about U.S. military expansion. He is prolific author, most well-known for his book Radical Democracy and for his outspokenness about his experience in the U.S. Military as noted in his self-introduction at the Oakland Table:

I entered U.C. Berkeley in 1954 on a Navy ROTC contract, and accordingly, when I graduated in 1958 I entered the U.S. Marines for three years, the third of which I spent in a military base on Okinawa. (Much of my life since then has been spent trying to figure out how I could have let such a thing happen.)

In a recent article entitled Yes We Can (But We Won't): Obama, Hatoyama, and Okinawa, Lummis writes about the resilience of Henoko and Futenma residents in opposing U.S. military bases.

Tuesday, December 23rd, Osaka: The Relocation of Futenma & Okinawa's Burden

Two Kansai organizations, the Citizens Group Against the Imposition of Bases in Okinawa and Osaka Action to Prevent the Construction of Bases in Henoko have invited Lummis to share his thoughts on the burdens that Okinawans face because of U.S. military colonization.

The event will take place at the Hirao Okinawan Kaikan which is in the heart of the vibrant Okinawan community in the Taisho ward in Osaka. This Okinawan community was born after the further amplification of Japanese colonization during the Taisho Era (1912-1925) brought economic crisis to the Ryukyu islands. This period is otherwise known as the "sotetsu jigoku," or "Cycad Hell" because the cycad was the only food that many Okinawans could find to eat at the time.

Mass starvation forced many Okinawans to migrate to Osaka in search of work in factories, although they were often turned away from employers, many of whom displayed signs on their windows stating "Ryukyuans and Koreans need not apply!" Facing ethnic discrimination and difficulties finding work, Japanese assimilation policies wreaked havoc on Okinawan culture and language. However, after ownership of the Ryukyus was transferred to Japan in the 1970s, a grassroots movement in the Taisho ward gained strength and started a housing movement to address Okinawan homelessness while the community began revitalizing its culture making the Taisho district a hub for lovers of the Okinawan festival dance Eisa.

This event on such an important issue in a region so rich in cultural survival is one not to be missed.

To get to the Hirao Okinawa Kaikan, get off the train at JR or Subway Taishou (大正) Station and then take the bus at platform 4 or 5 to Hirao (平尾)
A map in Japanese can be found on this page.

Event start: 7pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Entrance fee: 1000yen

For more information about the Osaka event contact the Okinawa Bunko.
Telephone: (06)6552-6709

Wednesday, December 23rd, Kyoto: U.S. Military Realignment and Okinawa

The Kyoto Organization Against the Strengthening of the Imperial System has also invited Lummis to speak in Kyoto on Wednesday, December 23rd at the Kyoto Buraku Liberation Center which is located five minutes walk on foot to the north of Kuramaguchi Station.

Event start: 1pm (Doors open at 12:30pm)
Entrance Fee: 500yen