The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Initiative sponsored my trip to Hiroshima, Japan for the first-ever International Youth Summit on Nuclear Disarmament and Peace in December 2006. The purpose of the trip was to build and support an international network of students working towards peace and nuclear abolition. The 2 day Summit was held on December 7th and 8th, not only to mark our unification as students on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor but also to signal our moving away from acts of aggression and violence toward those of cooperation and political activism.
Hiroshima is a city that promotes peace in itself; the Peace Museum and Park Memorials are a constant reminder of the atrocities of August 6, 1945 and the ever present destruction of a nuclear weapon or WMD. The culture and support for peace and peaceful foreign policy in Hiroshima is unparalleled to any other city I have visited. The students at the Hiroshima City University and its corresponding research facility were aptly ready and willing to discuss many issues of peace. We discussed and made action plans for issues such as injustice, poverty, militaristic public policy and controls, such as the current referendum of Japan’s Article 9 (which prohibits development of nuclear weapons and is in danger of being overturned), international relations and of course, the need for nuclear resistance.
One student remarked on the importance of international and political awareness. “I want people’s happiness to increase, so for me the answer is more people knowing international issues. Japanese people don’t have deep knowledge of these,” he said. Many students agreed that building this network of international students was a great way to mobilize joint action plans and mutual support regarding issues of common concern. We are currently in contact and working to further synchronize our efforts toward peace through various web related contact and campus activities and events.
After discussing various topics regarding the many issues of nuclear weapons and politics, we spent time brainstorming in groups for tangible things that we as students could do. We spent the first day of action planning discussing how we define an action plan and which issues the students were most concerned about. (Many of these action plans are specific to the university, the Article 9 referendum or injustice issues in Japan but, some are currently being tried by the main group attending the Summit, Hiroshima Youth Network.)
First, we noted the importance of clarity and simplicity in drafting action plans. We wanted to clearly state exactly the problem we were addressing and also clearly convey to others why this is an important issue. The students at HCU were especially interested in poverty, environmental peace, the Article 9 referendum, and dramatizing nuclear issues for people outside of Hiroshima. It was expressed several times, that in Hiroshima, it is easy to find people willing to rally for antinuclear issues but that in the rest of Japan (except Nagasaki) people fail to see it as an everyday or looming threat and issue.
The first few action plans stressed the importance of poverty as an aspect of positive peace and human rights. Many students expressed that they think it would be a case of mistaken intention for them to act against nuclear weapons, which they do not see as an imminent threat, while they are so many poor and hungry people on the streets in Japan. (This struck me as particularly interesting, because the number and degradation of the homeless in Japan was much lesser than that I have seen and experienced in the U.S.) The students said that they have tried to address this issue before but ran into various cultural problems because a majority of those that are poverty stricken in Japan, are other Asian immigrants who come to Japan looking for work. Students wanted to work towards equaling the wage gap but noted that the difficulty of the immigrants to learn Japanese language and customs was a huge hurdle for them to find jobs and housing.
Our action plan for the poverty issue was to create a student organization on campus that hosts connection nights once a week at the university. These night meetings would be run by volunteer students willing to tutor Japanese, create a network of dependency and an open space for these immigrants to come and get answers and assistance to many adaptation issues. The Hiroshima Peace Network has since taken on this action plan as an initiative in their new semester. They are currently creating the student support for this by generating emails and sign-up lists for shifts and participation.
The students said they often have success with movements on campus this way because by getting people involved through email and meetings, they can generate action through empathy and that the internet is the most effective communication tool they have on campus. They also expressed the need to bring issues to a very personal level with the other students in order to get effective support. Here we discussed many methods of one on one communication and interest builders such as: Did you know every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal was designed by the UC system and that the students there need our help to stop this? Many students noted that having a connection with an American student peace group would lend greater credibility to their work.
Our next action plan was designed in order to use the remaining strength and imagery of the hibashka in order to aid the anti nuclear movement. One student said of her grandmother, “What is important to the hibashka, is that nuclear weapons are never used again.” We then discussed how first hand experience and emotion is a great motivator for change and since many of the survivors are now dying out, it is important to start a university run survivor tribute in order to rally greater support against nuclear weapons and the current situation in North Korea. The importance of the resistance to all weapons of depleted uranium was also discussed and it was suggested that UC Nuclear Free also join the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW).
The students are hoping to organize all documentaries and guest lectures of the hibashka at the university and send them out to various universities in order to raise awareness. The professor also mentioned his hardship of introducing hibashka issues in the U.S. stating an example from the 1980s at San Francisco State, when a hibashka speaker was turned down by organizers he proposed it o because no one was interested in a Japanese problem. We then decided that this effort to raise awareness should be international and that as a student network we should pester our universities until they were willing to show the testimonies. These testimonies will not be fully collected for at least a few more months but the research university at HCU is heading up the project.
The last issue we discussed as pertinent for action, was an effort to unite Chinese and Japanese students to address the North Korean bomb threat. Many students expressed concern about the referendum stemming from the pressure from the U.S. to make Japan able to thwart the threat from North Korea. Students thought that because there is a symbiotic relationship now between the two nations at least economically, that creating a more visible relationship would give Japan greater protection against North Korea and the referendum. This is an issue the Youth Network said they would take on in their campus meetings.
The students in Hiroshima expressed great interest in the peace movements and contributions of students from around the world. We hope to meet again at the Think Outside the Bomb (TOTB), Peace Boat and Hiroshima and Peace conferences in 2007. I can never forget seeing the shadow of lost Hiroshima citizen incinerated by the nuclear blast nor do the students and citizens of Hiroshima. It is now in our hands to support this international network and demand a more peaceful existence, foreign and public policy. The students of HCU and the Hiroshima Youth Network need our support and we theirs. I hope everyone reading this joins our call to action for a more peaceful world and helps make the Think Outside the Bomb conference happen at your university as well. We students of the Summit as well as the general peace movement on campus need your involvement, support and attendance for future peace developments like Peace Boat and Think Outside the Bomb.
For further interest, questions and information about the Summit, NAPF, TOTB or the TOTB conference in Hiroshima 2007 please contact Will Parrish – wparrish{A}napf.org -- or Nicole Rangel – nicole.y32{A}gmail.com.
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