NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

While in Japan last month I didn't get to hear much Chamorro. When i nobia-hu Elizabeth Kelley Bowman visited we would speak Chamorro to each other and I did bring some Chamorro LPs with me that I would listen to in my apartment, but for my last week in Japan I got particularly homesick for the Chamorro language. Thankfully the group Famagu'on Tano' yan I Tasi was there to help me with my minahalang. They are a Japan based Chamorro dance group, comprised of primarily education majors at Teikyo University under the guidance of Dr. Kyoko Nakayama. I visited the group in Tokyo in my final days, conducted some interviews, gave a talk and was treated to a BBQ. On a crowded Sunday afternoon, in an ocean of people speaking Japanese, it was so nice to have a group singing and chanting in Chamorro. Given the occasion one song they sang over and over was "Nihi ta fanhanao ta fanpiknik." I've included the lyrics below. Nihi ta fanhånao ta fanpiknik, Guih

When I was in Fukushima I saw a map of the areas around the nuclear power plant which were affected by radiation. There were different colors bleeding out, being darkest and reddest close to the plant, but becoming lighter and orange and yellow as it moved further northwest, until it became just white like the rest of the prefectures in the Tohoku region of Japan. It was interesting seeing the discourse change as conversation with people moved from one area to the other around that map. In Fukushima, where the radiation levels were considered safe enough that no one was evacuated, but dangerous enough that all the dirt in the city is being dug up and stuffed into trash bags, no one was evacuated. I visited Iitate Village, featured in the New York Times article below, where people were warned and evacuated a month after the earthquake and meltdown, and may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during that delay. In Iitate people are allowed to return, but cannot stay over

In October I'll be traveling to Okinawa yet again for a conference dealing with decolonization and the movement there towards independence. The movement started off with a core group, but has grown over the years and occasionally grabbed national headlines in Japan. I have spoken at several events organized by activists pushing for decolonization over the years, stretching back to 2012. For people who know of Okinawa as just a military base or the islands south of Japan, this may seem strange to you, to be confronted with the fact that there are people in Okinawa seeking independence from Japan. But for those who are familiar with Okinawa's history and contemporary status, this really shouldn't surprise you. Guam and Okinawa share similar paths over the past century and a half. Both have been colonized, both have been destroyed in war and both are critically important to the US military and have become hosts to an obscene amount of US military bases given their sizes. But

On my trip to Tohoku, the Popoki Peace project visited several towns that were affected by the tsunami. In each there were markers of the tragedy, stories of survival and also worries about what the future might bring. Along the roads, each town would have a markers identifying the point at which you were entering the tsunami inundation area and exiting it. Because of this, even if towns and roads are rebuilt, you can still imagine how far the waters and the destruction reached as you drive up the coast. Each town also had markers on street corners, on the side of buildings, power poles and street lights indicating how far away that point was far high ground where someone might be safe from a future tsunami. Each town has markers not only of the destruction, but also of their survival and their endurance. They are usually remnants of life before.   A building that did not fall. A particular survivor with a powerful tale to tell. In Rikuzentakata, there was a

Yesterday I spent the day at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It was a very surreal experience. On the surface it appears like many other shrines or places or worship or reflection in Japan, but it was an incredibly militaristic space. It featured museums dedicated to a whitewashed military history of Japan, thousands of letters from soldiers writing home about how happy they were to die for Japan, and statues for the courage of war widows. The shrine is meant to serve the more than two million souls who have died as soldiers for Japan over the past century, so the militaristic and warmongering tone makes sense, but given what I know of Japanese history it was still shocking to see the way things were twisted in order to create a sense of sinlessness and honor in the midst of a very blatantly imperial period of their history. The shrine reminded me that if you win your wars, you can always explain and justify the deaths involved as heroic, as necessary, as part of a teleology of g

I may have only been in Japan for a little less than a month, but it seems to me that Japan enjoys a heavy emphasis on instructions, signs and communicating properly. Perhaps because I can't read most of these signs as they are in Japanese and so because of that they are more visible and noticeable to me, whereas for others they simply fade into the background like visual cicadas. When walking by a construction site, signs are everywhere warning people to be safe, to not enter and even to apologize profusely for the inconvenience. Everywhere you go helpful and usually colorful mascots offer everything from advice, advertising and even just cheery, "hang in there!" messages. I'm used to walking into stores where I exchange less than ten words with a clerk, but here each employee is their own tenderu techa and every purchase offers their their own rosary or two about what I am buying, the money I am giving them and the importance of having a good day as I leave. Even

During this past research trip to the Tohoku Region of Japan with the Popoki Peace Project there was one visual constant as we traveled the most significantly affected disaster areas. In Chamorro, odda', in English, dirt. On March 11, 2011 a huge earthquake struck Japan and caused a meltdown in the Fukushima nuclear power plant, causing radiation to blanket areas even one hundred miles away. Although the areas of compulsory evacuation were much smaller than the areas that were significantly affected, you could still see signs, even four years later of how the radiation have infected the land and threatened populations.  Some areas the Japanese government says it will try to move people back to within the next few months, others a few years, other areas may take decades or centuries before they are "safe" for human habitation again. The earthquake also led to a huge tsunami which battered hundreds of miles of coast and destroyed the coastal areas of several cities and