Japan

atomic cloud and inset photo of Lee Jong Kuen

The fate of the survivors of the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for years, but in 1956 local survivor associations, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed Nihon Hidankyo. The organisation received this year's Nobel Peace Prize, reports Peter Boyle.

people with signs, airplane tail

The union representing pilots and cabin crew at budget airline Jetstar Japan began coordinated strike action ahead of Christmas, after a breakdown in collective bargaining negotiations with management, reports Clive Tillman.

Japan protests

Amid rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific, Japan’s government is ramping up defence spending. Japanese revolutionary socialist Akira Kato discusses the background to this move with Â鶹´«Ã½â€™s Federico Fuentes.

Protest

Â鶹´«Ã½'s Peter Boyle spoke to Denise Yoon, a key organiser of the South Korean protests against the dumping of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean — which began on August 25.

Fiji protests

A large crowd of protesters gathered in Suva, Fiji on August 25 to march and voice their collective opposition to Japan’s nuclear waste water disposal strategy, reports Rowena Acraman.

Fukushima dumping Sth Korea

Scientists, environmentalists and fisherfolk from around the Pacific took part in a global media conference on August 10 as part of the campaign to stop Japan’s planned dumping of nuclear waste water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, reports Peter Boyle.

atomic bomb

The new blockbuster film Oppenheimer has raised complex questions on the nature of the society that permitted such bombs to be developed and used and the stockpiling of nuclear arsenals that can destroy the world many times over, writes Prabir Purkayastha.

The expansion of United States military bases in Okinawa, other islands in Japan, Guahan/Guam and Australia is a deadly threat to peace and to indigenous communities, warns Okinawa peace activist Shinako Oyakawa.

protesting nuclear waste dumping Fukushima

As Pacific communities protest the Japanese government’s plan to dump more than a million tonnes of radioactive waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, Australian anti-nuclear activists highlight the complicity of Australian uranium exporting companies, reports Peter Boyle.

The shock of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination should not blind us to the fact that he was an ultranationalist and militarist politician, who sought to whitewash imperial Japan’s war crimes, writes Rupen Savoulian.

A photo exhibition in Tokyo on January 23–26 celebrated the life and advocacy of Song Sin-do, who campaigned for an apology from the Japanese government for coercing her into sexual slavery during World War II, writes Melanie Barnes.

While researching Japanese working-class resistance to World War II, Kaye Broadbent discovered in a Japanese university archive Masao Sugiura’s 1964 memoir, detailing the formation and activities of the Shuppanako Kurabu (Print and Publishing Worker’s Club). Based upon Sugiura’s 1981 second edition, the English translation of Against the Storm provides an inspiring account of how Sugiura and his comrades were able to organise and sustain links between workers, despite increasing wartime repression by the Japanese military regime.