Life sometimes takes a curious turn. At exactly the moment that The Okinawa Times asked me to write this essay, I received a letter from a former patient who had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. She wrote to thank me for the medical care I had given her then. A native of Okinawa and a survivor of the Himeyuri (Lily) Corps, the woman also added some personal reflections in a calm fashion.

She wrote, “On this earth, where living creatures move, we see one horrible event after another. I fear more than anything else war that can easily be triggered by people who know nothing of war …. Yamato culture has disappeared, and with it the soul, spirit and pride of the Japanese people. I feel deeply sorry for our ancestors, who worked hard to build a country beautifully dotted with rice fields.”

Sixteen years ago, in 1987, Ui Jun left his post as an assistant in the engineering department at Tokyo University to go to Okinawa, then becoming an important new front in the anti-pollution struggle. With three of Japan's five most polluted rivers, and with the nation's worst water pollution, tropical Okinawa was simultaneously the crucible of American military bases, Japan's poorest prefecture and its most polluted. Ui's report is the summation of his sixteen years of teaching, research and working in the environmental movement on Okinawa.

A government-sponsored bill to send the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq to take part in postwar reconstruction cleared the Lower House last week. There is little doubt this legislation is a demonstration by Japan of its willing cooperation with the U.S. global strategy.

With war with Iraq having started, I am uncomfortable discussing candidly another foreign policy crisis, but North Korea is a crisis which cannot wait to be addressed.

North Korea's startling confession last October that Pyongyang had a secret nuclear arms program recalled eerily the dangerous moment in 1994 when war between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) nearly occurred. Former President Carter's talks with Kim Il Sung in June 1994 rescued us from a war that former Defense Secretary Perry said was imminent. President Carter was able to outline a way out of mutual hostility toward a more normal relationship between the United States and North Korea to end the crisis.

For six decades Okinawa has been a militarized island, first as Japan prepared to resist the U.S. in the final days of World War II, since 1945 as a military colony of the United States, and since 1972 as the fortress of American military might in an island that reverted to Japanese rule without reducing the base structure. It also boasts Japan's most vigorous and creative peace movements. No Nuclear Weapons on Okinawa! Organizing Committee (NONO!) has just written to the UN Security Council petitioning that the Council, in the spirit of eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction that it is presently pursuing, send an inspection team to Okinawa to search out and destroy any nuclear weapons that may be found. These weapons not only constitute a violation of U.S.-Japan treaties, they also pose a life and death threat both to the people of Iraq and other targets of U.S. attack, and Okinawa. Their initiative is one that could inspire peace movements throughout the world, beginning in the United States.

It was indeed a shocking confession and apology. Admitting that North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s had abducted 13 Japanese, of whom eight had died and five survived, Chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, Kim Jong Il, apologized for it. It was admitted that 10 of the 11 on the list of suspected abductions published by the Japanese government had indeed been abducted. Yokota Megumi had been abducted, and so had three dating couples. Worst of all, the fact that 8 had died showed how savage state crime can be. It was astonishing to learn that Arimoto Keiko, together with Ishioka Toru, who is said to have been living with her, died in 1988.

The September 17, 2002 agreement between Japan and North Korea opened the way to resolution of the longstanding conflict that is central to tensions on the Korean peninsula, in Japan-Korea relations, and throughout Northeast Asia. Those prospects were quickly overwhelmed by the combination of new conflicts over North Korea's nuclear program and the NK announcement concerning the abductions and deaths of Japanese citizens. Analyzing the manipulation of the abduction issue by those seeking to sabotage the negotiations, Wada suggests bases for a resumption of a path toward two power, as well as six power, reconciliation in Northeast Asia. The author is a leading specialist on the Korean War and Japan-Korean Relations. This article appeared in the May 2003 issue of Sekai.

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize – or do not want to recognize – that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire – an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.