On June 26, 1999, the Asahi, a major Japanese newspaper, published a very short story by Okinawa's most critically acclaimed writer of recent years, Medoruma Shun. The brevity of this piece belies its impact on readers. Unsettling in both form and content, the story depicts the constraints of everyday life in Okinawa, a small island on which nearly 75 percent of Japan's United States military bases sit on less than one percent of Japanese soil. It is here where, owing to the terms of the United States-Japan Security Treaty, Okinawans have since the end of the Pacific War lived with violent crimes and deadly accidents endemic to the vast U.S. military presence. In this story, the infamous 1995 rape by three U.S. military servicemen of a 12-year old Okinawan schoolgirl serves as a backdrop. It is a fictional expression of the powerlessness many Okinawans feel, long oppressed by the governments of Japan and the United States, and of the extreme action one individual takes in response to this lack of power.

In his article, “The Zen of Hitler Jugend” (Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 14, Issue 2, Number 2; January 18, 2016), Brian Victoria presents two Japanese reports and some photos that deal with a visit by a delegation of the Hitler Youth to Eiheiji in November 1940. One of the most important Japanese monasteries, Eiheiji was established in 1244 by Zen Master Dōgen, who was the founder of the Sōtō sect. These newly discovered reports, which were originally published in the Eiheiji periodical Sansho in December 1940 and August 1942, undoubtedly provide interesting source material and are thus worthy of being republished. However, I would like to add some further information about the delegation's visit to Japan and compare the Japanese reports found by Victoria with a report published by the head of the delegation upon his return to Germany. In doing so, I hope to shed light on some striking differences between the perception of the visit to Eiheiji by the monks of the monastery on the one hand and the German delegation on the other.

In May 2016 freelance journalist Horikawa Keiko received a special award from the Japan National Press Club for her book, “Genbaku Kuyoto,” which is about victims of the Hiroshima atomic bombing whose remains have been identified but not claimed. Of the five books she has published, not counting one she co-authored, four are about capital punishment. As she explains during the following press conference for “Genbaku Kuyoto,” she feels capital punishment and the bombing of Hiroshima are thematically related. Though she worked for years as a TV journalist in Hiroshima and covered stories about the bombing many times, it wasn't until she researched Japan's death penalty that she made a connection and realized how little she knew about what happened on August 6, 1945.

One of the goals of her research was to find out how the number of official dead was determined. To her, the number is important, because each life has meaning. To lose track of that number is to lose the meaning of that event. The only way she can bring them back to life is to show how a few of them lived. MT

The “Okinawa problem” to which the APJ has paid so much attention over recent years continues to evolve, and the contradiction between the national governments of Japan and the United States on the one hand and the prefectural government and people of Okinawa on the other to intensify. The following paper was drafted by Hideki Yoshikawa and issued on May 19 in the name of the US Working Group section of the “All Okinawa Council.” The “All-Okinawa Council” is an Okinawan mass organization set up in July 2014 representing local communities, civil society groups, local assemblies, and business establishments, to press for reduction of the burden of the US military presence. It has constituted a major plank in support of Governor Onaga's insistence that no new base be built in Okinawa for the Marine Corps.

On April 13, 2016, about one hundred elderly people assembled in front of a stone memorial plaque in a park in Tokyo's Toshima ward. Although their number has gradually diminished, they have been meeting on this day every year for more than two decades. Their purpose is to remember the victims of a massive firebombing raid that reduced three quarters of Toshima to ashes on the night of April 13-14, 1945. Most of them are now in their late eighties or early nineties, but they have vowed to continue to hold this meeting, the Nezuyama Small Memorial Service, for as long as they are able.