Voices of Third World Resistance
Editor's Note
Dr. King: The Trumpet of Conscience
Michael Simmons Interview
Pan-African Student Youth Movement
Young, Black, and in the Military
Allen Nelson: Crossing National Boundaries for Peace
Aimee Allison: Interview with a Gulf War Resister
Wounded Soldier: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
STAMP Out Racism!
Who We Are
Donate to CCCO
Military Out of Our Schools Program
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Allen Nelson: Crossing National Boundaries for Peace
"I just spoke at Edison High School, which lost more kids to the Vietnam War than any other HS in America. I asked the students: What is war? I got back every answer except killing. Instead I got aggressiveness, victory . . . These kids think they understand violence because they see it on TV, and they accept it as a behavior pattern. "
Such responses are anathema to Allan Nelson, who spent thirteen months in the jungles of Vietnam as a young Marine, and who has spent his life since working against war and preparations for war. Allan spoke with us on the eve of his fifth speaking tour of Japan, where he speaks to, and learns from, activists working to get U.S. military bases removed from Okinawa and the mainland. 
From the Marines to CCCO Staff
Allan was born in Brooklyn to a single mother, who worked hard to raise him and his three sisters. "Joining the Marines was supposed to be my only choice: then there I was in Vietnam, in the infantry." Recovering from the trauma of his Vietnam journey took many years. "Looking back, it's the women and children who suffered, who died - that still hurts the worst. . . . I decided that war and violence wasn't going to change anything, and I had better get out in the community and start doing some work." In the mid-1980s, Allan became known in his community in New Jersey as someone you could go to for advice about the military. "Kids just started passing the word -- I'd go to recruiting offices with them and ask hard questions." After a while, the Quaker community in Philadelphia asked Allan to work with Quaker youth, then asking Allan to be youth and militarism coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Allan, however, went beyond the usual presentations to high schools. "I put together a youth group, started talking to them about nonviolence - and it became clear that if we wanted to present alternatives to military service, we were talking about college. But that meant setting up a tutoring center to improve basic skills, to prepare them to get actually admitted to college."
Allan was soon on the board of CCCO in Philadelphia, and then hired to direct its Third World Outreach program, which was eliminated when CCCO-Philadelphia nearly closed its doors in 1994.
Returning to Okinawa -- This Time for Peace
As a Marine, Allan Nelson was once stationed in Okinawa, an island territory that has been part of Japan for years. "Even when I was speaking out for peace, I'd not yet thought about how people feel who live near those bases." All off this changed last year when Allan met a married couple, an American woman and an Okinawan man, who are involved with a mass movement to remove American bases from Japan (see page 11, Report About U.S. Bases in Japan). The catalyst for this movement, triggering rage born of 50 years of frustration, was the brutal 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl. "It had never dawned on me about the behavior of military men in foreign countries, and the impact of such behavior on these communities." After talking with Allan, and hearing his perspective on militarism, the couple got in touch with people back on Okinawa."They asked me to come and visit, and to help them confront the violence they still face - the violence imposed by the U.S. military." Allan was in Okinawa for a week, after which mainland Japanese asked him to come to the main island and help organize there; he spoke with The Objector the day before leaving on his fifth trip to Japan. "These are national speaking tours, covered extensively by Japanese media - everywhere I go I'm interviewed by newspapers and TV. Yet American media never hear about it."
Allan speaks with great respect an admiration for the Japanese and Okinawan activists he works with, "The group is extremely grassroots: groups that normally don't work together are coming together because of this. This generation of Japanese didn't survive the atomic bomb, but they've instead survived this half-century of American military presence."
Japanese resistance, Allan emphasizes, is born of an awareness and rejection of the country's militarist past. "This is a culture that really believed in their military," he says. "The military ran their social programs, they had a deep worship of the military - and it led them into a horrible world war, it led them to the bomb. This is their legacy, and so many now have this basic distrust of militarism." Yet while Japan is constitutionally prohibited from its own military, the ordinary Japanese citizen feels day to day the sounds and smells of American military presence. "Most Americans don't hear tanks exercising," Allan notes. "We don't live with mortars, machine gun fire . . . In Okinawa and on the mainland, they can hear this around the corner."
Speaking Out About Violence Against Women and Communities
In addition to the noise and pollution caused by these maneuvers, Okinawans and Japanese face ongoing violence against women, as well as a sex industry created and nurtured by GIs. "Americans believe overseas bases help local economies, but really the opposite is true. GIs have no money, they mostly send allotments home to their families and for recreation they are left with houses of prostitution." More key is the fact that "these men are training all day to be violent, exercises and maneuvers with bayonets and M-16s -- and then released into the community."
When Nelson spoke at a community near Mt. Fukien, where a new Marine installation is due in 1998, a woman asked a simple question: What do I do when I am raped? Rape is still a shameful crime in Japan, and domestic violence not a crime under Japanese law: these facts make it even harder for women to seek support when violated by American military personnel who are usually protected by their commands.
"I met a young Japanese woman who had been married to a sailor," Allan relates. "After he was discharged, he brought her home to the U.S. He physically abused her, he got involved with crack cocaine: finally one day she ran out into the street, found a Japanese woman in a supermarket who helped her get back to Japan. . . I talked to her at great length about the rape in Okinawa, asking why don't women's groups in America try to help her? She's twelve years old, she was raped and battered, and she's never been supported because of the shame that surrounds the crime. The Marines who did that to her were given, from the Japanese perspective, extremely light sentences."
Other issues raised by Japanese activists include military toxics affecting the country's water supply and public health, and the many military plane accidents that never make it into the U.S. media. Nelson points to the recent incident in Italy, where an Army plane flying without a map of the region flew low enough to slice the wires of an Alpine cable car, killing 24 people and injuring far more. "That Italian community has been complaining for a very long time about these overflights - and so have the Japanese people." Yet neither the causes of Japanese protests or even the protests themselves are ever carried on American media. "In Japan, wherever I go I'm followed by local media, national newspapers and magazines," but the only American outlet to even pursue an interview was the military's house organ, Stars and Stripes. "At that point I had been in the newspaper every day for a week and a half, but I knew Stars and Stripes would ignore my central message: Take your troops home!"
The Japanese public are even distrustful of their own military, the Security Forces. "It's just like here - all the poor kids, the ones who don't make it to university." They maintain a keen awareness of the American military buildup, and have watched it continue long after the end of the Cold War. "Re-member, they see our ships: they were close to the Korean and Vietnam wars, they see us leaving, heading out to the Gulf." Japanese citizens have initiated a lawsuit against their own government for contributing to the Persian Gulf War in 1991. "It violates their constitution, which prohibits involvement in war."
Okinawans have initiated lawsuits against the U.S. bases, asserting that the land itself belongs to Okinawan families, and is occupied by Marines on a lease that was never renewed. "Of all the bases, the one on Okinawa is the one where the renewal was never signed - but the Japanese government acquiesced, and has allowed this to continue. Why aren't these lawsuits covered in the U.S. press?"
Facing down Militarism -- Uncovering Racial Injustice
Nelson emphasizes that the issue important to U.S. media are not the ones Japanese people care most about. "People aren't really mad at us about cars, or other trade issues. They just want to raise their kids, and they're trying to come to terms with their culture, and its transformation since World War II." Nelson points to controversy about the teaching in schools of Japan's own militarist past - including the Korean "comfort women" and Japanese atrocities against the Chinese. "There are those in Japan don't want this history taught to children, while others want it taught so there can be some connection, some reconciliation with Chinese people. It's hard - we have a hard enough time with these issues here in the U.S."
"We can't do it here, not on race, not on the Vietnam War. . . That's why so many of my brothers are living in the woods or in homeless shelters. We need to come clean about what we did in Vietnam. That was racist too, and it's all part of the puzzle."
Allan stresses that the message of Japanese activists is one of overcoming racial and ethnic barriers: "People do want to reach out to other people who are living like this, who are angry about military buildup, military spending. This is our planet, they say, we don't want the arms industry to come between us. Japanese women ask me, do American women worry about their kids? When are they going to say, We won't let the government take our lands and our children? Americans need to understand: we don't have to live this way."
Building Bridges With a New Generation
After his first visit to Japan, Allan began a project to "open up these avenues of communication" between Americans and Japanese. He did it in the most direct way he knew: by going directly to young people in both countries.
"On Okinawa I had a special relationship with a vocational-technical school, the Gishigawa School. . . Now I have visited schools all over America, where you get there at 7:30 a.m. and they're removing a body, the violence is that bad. Okinawa is very poor but these kids at Gishigawa were amazing, I fell in love with them instantly." The students at Gishigawa come from families and parents employed by the U.S. bases, many of whom are single parents. "I decided this is the school I would always come back to." Allen also saw the similarities between the students at Gishigawa and those in his community back home, in Camden, New Jersey. "Camden is the poorest city in America. . . . I realized I had to bring these kids together." In 1997, Allan brought three young African-American
students from Camden to Okinawa, and three Okinawan students to Camden. "In Okinawa it was a revelation to them - these were the first black people they'd met who weren't military personnel."
When the Okinawan students came to New Jersey, their eyes were opened as well. "They walked through the streets of Camden, and they were offered drugs . . . it was a new look at American life. They'd kind of thought America is like Disney-land." After some time, they became very good friends with the Camden students.
"We took the Okinawan students to the three schools these African-American students went to, and these schools were very excited. It was a wonderful program, they really put out their best foot forward. . . . It was quite wonderful to see these children. Even with language barrier, they worked hard to communicate with sign, drawings, pointing." The barriers to communication are not linguistic, he asserts: they're erected by those who benefit from militarism.
A Radical Alternative to JROTC
One aspect of inner-city schools the Okinawan students did not see, but
which motivates Allan in this work, is the growing presence of the U.S. military. "The fact that our kids are walking around in uniforms is so abhorrent to me . . . JROTC is pre-boot camp, they'll sign up the minute a war hits." Peace groups alone have not succeeded in curbing the militarization of U.S. schools: Allan says it's time to put international pressure on.
"I want other countries to know how we're treating our children," he says. "We say we want peace, we say we're tired of violence in our streets and schools - then we spend more money to train a soldier, a tank driver, than to educate young people for a peaceful role in our society." When Allan gives school presentation, JROTC students, he said, are always afraid of him. "They want to know, are you angry at me? I say No, I admire that you want to protect your country. My issues are from those who pull you from clear thinking. As a former Marine, I know: good soldier training means good brainwashing." At the same time, Allan's acutely aware of how trapped some young people feel. "I've had kids say if I don't go into the military I'll be selling crack cocaine. What sort of society puts forth these choices?"
Allan has a much more fundamental, and radical idea of how to build young people's character and open them up to the possibilities of life - while educating for peace. " I think instead of spending money on JROTC, we should be sending young people overseas. Have a travel fund, so more kids can experience what the ones I brought to Okinawa learned. You don't kill what you respect; you don't drop bombs on people you've learned are real, living human beings."
It is in this work Nelson sees a way out, a way to create intuitive bonds that cross racial boundaries. "The children of this planet have a chance if we give them one," he says. "I'm not sure adults can do it, but if we start bringing together these groups of kids . . . I never met a Vietnamese child when I was little. How would that have changed my experience? What if we brought together Americans with Iraqi children, now? It makes so much sense to build a new generation of children: they'll find we have more in common than we ever did." |