Greetings
This past May the Japanese Government and the Diet approved the
law related to the Guideline (War Manual).
This law has powers to mobilize not only the Self-Defense Force
but also a self-government body and civilian to any war made by the U.S.,
if only the Government considers it as 'the situation on the outskirts'.
Japan is now again becoming a war country, deserting the peace principle
of the Constitution.
It has been fifty-four years since the war of Japan which the whole nation
was dragged into ended up with Japan's defeat on August 15 in 1945, after
going through the great damage by the large air raid in Tokyo on March 10
and by the Atomic bomb in August in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; thirty-first
hundred thousand lives were sacrificed within the country because of the
war.
What is worse, this was an aggressive war started by Japan that was attempting
further to dominate China after colonizing and ruling Taiwan and Korea; the war
lasted for fifteen years.
A people of Japan was not only victim of the war which caused serious damage
to the nation but also an attacker who drove a twenty million amount of people
in Asia to the death.
The Constitution of Japan which grew out of reflecting on this war states that
we resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through
the action of government, and Article 9 of the constitution declares renunciation
of war.
However fifty-four years went by after the war and the majority of people are now
composed of the generation that never experienced the hardships of war.
It seems that we have forgotten how cruel the war is and what a serious crime
against mankind and civilization it is.
Just then in this May the world citizen's peace assembly was held in the Hague
in Holland and called the assembly of every country to make a decision of banning
the war action, modeling after the Article 9 of the constitution of Japan, for the
peace in the twenty-first century.
The recent law of war approved in Japan is contrary to this world movement for
peace and we must say it goes against the history.
Our Sensoten which high school students also participate in celebrates its twentieth
anniversary this year.
Being apprehensive that they are the first to be called out if a war breaks out now,
the young people are devoting themselves to making exhibitions to hand down the
lesson of the war to the next generation.
Please come to our Sensoten and catch a joint message of young people and the
war generation.
Chairperson of the executive committee of Heiwa-no-tameno-Sensoten
Sadao Suzuki