Japan Speaking Tour #4 - Yokosuka Resistance Alive
By Pat Elder
September 26, 2024
English Translation of the flyer here: Veterans for Peace 2024 Japan Tour.
August 11 Yokosuka Rally – A former military researcher reports on the current situation in Gaza. Also we will receive a report on PFAS contamination. There will also be a “current situation report” on Yokosuka.
Ann Wright, a retired US military officer, resigned from the US diplomatic service in opposition to the Iraq War
Matt Hoh, US military veteran and emeritus senior fellow at the Institute for International Policy Studies
Pat Elder, US chemical contamination expert
Ken’ichi Narikawa, Former Japan Self-Defense Forces Officer. Co-Representative, VFP, Japan.
Call for a Nuclear-Free Citizens Declaration Movement / Yokosuka Peace Fleet
3F Sankyo Building 1-9 Honmachi, Yokosuka City
Monthly demonstrations Last Sunday of the month – Verny Park – 16:00.
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Antiwar sentiments still run deep in Yokosuka. American soldiers on R&R would come here from Vietnam and decide not to return. They found lots of friends in Yokosuka and many are still here.
One Japanese pacifist told me Joan Baez told resisters hiding in Yokosuka to be strong and not return to Vietnam to kill.
Joan Baez appeared on nationwide Japanese TV in nearby Tokyo on Jan. 27, 1967. It was a big deal. She sang songs like “What Have They Done to the Rain,” about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She sang “Saigon Bride” and she explained war tax resistance. They have pictures of her in the old antiwar offices just a few blocks from where the American ships from Vietnam would anchor in Yokosuka, the military headquarters.
Live in Japan, Joan Baez, 1967 Saigon Bride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m20Glis_wWE
Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
A tide which never saw the seas
It flows through jungles, round the trees
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead.
How many dead men will it take
To build a dike that will not break?
How many children must we kill
Before we make the waves stand still?
Though miracles come high today
We have the wherewithal to pay
It takes them off the streets you know
To places they would never go alone
It gives them useful trades
The lucky boys are even paid.
Men die to build their Pharaoh's tombs
And still and still the teeming wombs
How many men to conquer Mars
How many dead to reach the stars?
Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead
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In October 1967 the USS Intrepid docked for R&R at Yokosuka, Japan, a few months after Joan Baez sang in Tokyo, when antiwar sentiments were at a fever pitch. Four sailors from the USS Intrepid - Richard Bailey, 19, Jacksonville, FL, John Barilla, 20, Catonsville, MD, Michael Linder, 19, Mount Pocono, PA and Craig Anderson, 20, San Jose, CA - sought help from a Japanese peace group, Citizens League for Peace in Japan, while deserting the US Navy.
The four deserters showed up during a filmed interview on Japanese television denouncing the Vietnam War, stating they were deserting the US Navy.
Things have changed now. The press is mindful of US Forces Japan and US Forces Japan is mindful of the press. (The PFAS contamination, however, allows us to “break on thorough to the other side” as Jim Morrisson put it in 1967.) The Japanese government is in favor of the use of nuclear weapons in American so-called deterrent policy, and is helping the U.S. with its supply-chain problems in keeping up with demand for American weapons in Gaza and Ukraine. Japanese resistance is flickering, although there are signs of resurgence in Tokyo, Yokosuka, and other cities, and, of course, Okinawa, where we are today.
Regardez ce qu'ils ont fait à ma chanson.
彼らが私の曲に何をしたか見てください!
Look what they’ve done to my song!
The Downs Law Group helps to make this work possible. Their support allows us to research and write about military contamination around the world. They’ve helped us buy hundreds of PFAS kits and they’ve helped pay for flights and hotels. The firm is working to provide legal representation to individuals in the U.S. and abroad with a high likelihood of exposure to a host of contaminants.
The Downs Law Group employs attorneys accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs to assist those who have served in obtaining VA Compensation and Pension Benefits they are rightly owed.