Japan Press Weekly

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2016 November 23 - 29 [POLITICS]

US veteran of Iraq War testifies about reality of war

A former U.S. soldier returning from the Iraq War on November 23 spoke about his own experience in the war at a gathering hosted by an antiwar women’s group in Saitama City.

Forty-year-old veteran Mike Haynes is a member of the U.S. peace group Veterans for Peace. He is visiting Japan to raise an alarm over the Japanese Self-Defense Forces’ participation in PKO missions in South Sudan.

He said he went to the battlefield because he had believed in the “fight against terrorism”. However, what he actually did there, he testified, was that he raided the houses of innocent civilians based on false information and, if there were any, carted adult males off to detention camps. “It might be me myself who is a terrorist” was what he started to think. He agonized so much that he could not talk about what he had witnessed in the war for ten years after returning to the United States.

Haynes expressed his strong concern over the Japanese government’s reinterpretation of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. Regarding the fact that Japan now permits the use of weapons and has already sent its troops to South Sudan, he warned, “A single bullet of death will destroy Japan’s pacifist reputation which the people of Japan have protected for 71 years since the end of the Pacific War. You should be proud of and value Article 9 of the Constitution.”

After the gathering, together with participating women, he marched in demonstration toward one of the main train stations of the city, shouting out opposition to war and to the SDF dispatch to a conflict zone.

A high school student who listened to his testimony said, “Japan is heading for war. Listening to him, I came to understand how cruel war is and that that’s no longer other people’s story to tell.”