Pearls and Irritations

In 2024 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots collective of Hibakusha and Hibakusha Nisei (first and second generation surviving the atomic bombs).

Since forming in 1956, they have urged governments globally to free the earth from weapons of mass destruction, while lobbying for trees, fish, cats, birds and all of life. The significance of this Peace Prize centres on the fact that the Hibakusha were oppressed and censored under the American Occupation (1945-1952). Now 80 years on, Hibakusha truths call out like a Shinto temple bell. But beneath these vibrations, they endured forced silence and enforced censorship under the American Occupation.

Archived photographs shot just after the Pikidon (flash-boom of 1945) when America dropped uranium and plutonium bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are as dystopian as photos of pulverised Gaza today. In Japan, undefended life was vaporised and infected by radiation in that flash. In Gaza, bone is sieved out of rubble — everyday.

For nearly a year, I have tracked Netanyahu’s systematic cruelty as a scholar of genocide and a torture-trauma psychologist. Make no mistake, what Netanyahu embarks on in Gaza fits the definition of genocide like a glove.

However, he cannot be charged and tried within an International Criminal Court (or International Tribunal for Genocide) without evidence that his regime has ‘intentionally’ targeted people of a national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and/or racial group.

This week as I reviewed America’s intentional sequence of censorship in Japan (covertly censor, bomb to oblivion, occupy, overtly censor), I began tracking Netanyahu’s covert censorship sequence (allege ‘our right to protect ourselves’ as the intent, bomb, censor independent investigations into alleged intent to destroy, then repeat sequence). It is likely that material and events being covertly concealed by Netanyahu’s government harbours the evidence of his genocidal intent, which is to cleanse Gaza of Palestinian people and their rituals (ritualcide) and institutions before occupying Gaza.

In the case of Japan, the American Occupation and censorship campaign was political (not genocidal), but censorship ran long enough for the world to forget their crimes, and for the next war to occupy their minds. And because genetic fallout was censored, images of mutated two-headed fish did not matter to outside nations. The recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize must silently know that no one was held accountable for the Crimes Against Humanity they have embodied ever since, and they must know that American evidence is still being held in ‘secret classified’ files – somewhere.

For this article, I highlight ‘strategic occupation and intentional censorship’ used by commanders of war. In the case of Gaza now, censorship pulls the wool over the eyes of Israel’s alliance countries who keep falling under the spell of Netanyahu’s rank and file, and sometimes send weapons to advance the concealed cause.

Consider further the Hibakusha and their sentencing to silence under the American Occupation.

Following the plunge of the uranium bomb on Hiroshima (6 August 1945), the plutonium bomb on Nagasaki (9 August 1945), and successive bombs with conventional weapons on Okayama, Imabari, Fukuyama, and Amagasaki – the USA officiated the Occupation Censorship (with alliances). Underlying the censorship protocols, discussion and images of the atomic bomb by victims, non-victims, artists and writers inside and outside Japan were banned. (See: The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan by Monica Braw, 1991).

When considering the Hibakusha literature, biographies, and paintings omitted from exhibitions – it was in America’s best interest to censor what they intentionally had done when they dropped those bombs – they censored evidence of their war crimes.

In 1950, Muruki Ira and Maruki Toshi were mandated (under the censorship law) to change the title of their exhibit from “Atomic Bomb” to “August 6, 1945” (Minear, 1990.) In 1975, 30 years after the bombing (after the 1947 research initiative), Japan and American scientists formed a joint research institute in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to study radiation fallout on human genetics and chromosomal damage and generational mutations (Radiation Effects Research Foundation, RERF). The foundation was never designed to provide medical assistance for victims.

Thirty years of ‘classified’ research (censored) contains the depths of radiation destruction, including genetic mutations of humans and other species.

Censorship is about deception, secrecy, and distortion, and getting away with war crimes. Such calculated deception is relevant for making the case of genocide (with intent) against the Palestinian people in Gaza that is in operation now. Again, I claim that Netanyahu’s “intent’ is embedded in that which his government censors. What photos do the Israeli government hide; what allegations escape independent investigations?

If Netanyahu’s genocidal intent to extinguish Palestinian people in Gaza (through mass murder, starvation, destruction of medical infrastructure, contaminated water, and all the other usual ways genocidal regimes have operated throughout time) is contained in censored material and photos, where is this probable ‘classified material’ located? So far, allied nations have failed to do ‘reliable and genocide telling’ independent investigations, independent journalists are banned, and it seems fashionable to be Israel’s friend, forever. If only a savvy nation pretended to be a friend while covertly funding a research team to map and categorise each ‘unsubstantiated’ allegation used by Netanyahu to justify bombing schools, mosques, hospitals, and residences – time-place map of evidential intent. If only.

Censorship has gone global in some places regarding the war in Gaza. Imagine an artist submitting a painting for an exhibition about the war in Gaza with a title, October 7^th. It would likely be considered. But for those who know their occupation history, if the title were 1967, it would be banned in certain places. Censorship controls the narrative.

World leaders know, I assume, that the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has been signed by most United Nations’ member states except Israel (and Pakistan, India and South Sudan). That said, treaties get broken. But now the vulnerability of Palestinians in Gaza skyrockets as nations turn their focus to Lebanon, where the killings are political not genocidal. All of a sudden, the advance into Lebanon deflects attention away from ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Nations are absorbed by an escalation of a political war in Lebanon and how it affects them. Deflected away from Netanyahu’s intent, again.

In honour of Nobel Peace Prize just awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a reflective passage from Hibakusha novelist, Yoko OTA (1903-1963) is heartfelt,

“…a cosmic phantasm has taken the form of war and is on the prowl. With truly fearsome power, with truly fearsome sadism.”

This is from her book, City of Corpses.

In the 1950s, under American Occupation, Ota tried to publish her book with this title. She was interrogated by American soldiers – her nation’s truth silenced. Now, again, phantasm and sadism are on the prowl, as is censorship.

Japan has a Zen saying, “The truth sits under the lie.” This quote speaks to Netanyahu’s genocidal intent in Gaza: “The intent sits under the banned”.

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