また、地形が変わるほどの激しい艦砲射撃が行われたため、この戦闘を沖縄県では鉄の雨や鉄の暴風(英:Typhoon of Steel)などと呼ぶ。[5]沖縄戦での全戦没者は20~24万人とされる。沖縄県生活福祉部援護課の1976年3月発表によると、日本側の死者・行方不明者は18万8136人で、沖縄県出身者が12万2228人、そのうち9万4000人が民間人である。
Douglas Lummis on Smedley Butler, and Butler's "War is a Racket"
speech
Here is an article about Smedley Butler (1881-1940), written by Douglas
Lummis, a political scientist living in Okinawa.
The Great Smedley Butler
by Douglas Lummis
Shukan ST, 22 March, 2002
Smedley Butler
Among the many U.S military bases on Okinawa, there is one called CampButler. It was named after one of the most famous and colorful officers in U.S. Marine Corps history, Smedley D. Butler.
Smedley Butler joined the Marines in 1898 at the age of 16, in time to participate in the war in Cuba. (That was when the U.S. obtained its base at Guantanamo Bay.) From Cuba he was sent to the Philippines to help suppress the independence movement there.
In 1900 Butler was part of the multinational force sent by the Great Powers into China during the Boxer Rebellion. He was wounded twice, but recovered well enough to participate in the sacking of Beijing.
From there Butler's story is a history of the U.S. Marines in the first three decades of the 20th century. After China he was in Honduras, then Panama, then the Philippines again. In 1912 he helped rig elections to form a U.S.-friendly government in Nicaragua. In 1914 he entered Mexico as a spy to draw up plans for U.S. military intervention in the Mexican Revolution. (Later that year U.S. Marines ans sailors did land in Mexico and seize Vera Cruz, but with little effect on the revolution.)
The following year Butler was in Haiti, where he helped set up a U.S.-friendly puppet government and forced the adoption of a new constitution that had been written by U.S. government officials. And so on. Butler was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor for heroism in combat.
Probably many of the Marines at Camp Butler and other Marine bases in Japan know these Smedley Butler stories. But I wonder how many know how he spent the last years of his life. After his retirement in 1931, at the rank of major general, Butler became a popular public speaker. And he began to think about what he had been doing. He decided that for most of his career he had been a "racketeer for capitalism."
In in 1935 he wrote, "I helped make Mexico . . . safe for American oil interest in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China, in 1927, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
"Looking back on it," he continued, "I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
Butler did not become a pacifist, but he argued that the U.S.; military should be used for defense only, and should be withdrawn from all foreign countries.
When the Marine Corps gave his name to a base in Okinawa, what that ignorance or was it an intentional insult?
References:
Maverick Marine: General Smedley Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History by Hans Schmidt (The University Press of Kentucky, 1987); War is a Racket" by Smedley D Butler (Round Table Press,1935).
C. Douglas Lummis, a political scientist and a former US Marine stationed on Okinawa, is the author of Radical Democracy and other books in Japanese and English. A Japan Focus associate, he formerly taught at Tsuda College.
Here is Butler's speech re-created by an actor.
War Is A Racket
War Is A Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:
"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.
Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.
CHAPTER FIVE To Hell With War!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.
Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.
If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won't.
So . . . "
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.
And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.
The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.
The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.
Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.
(以下、吉田健正氏による解説)
以上は、故スメドレー・D・バトラー米国海兵隊退役少将の小冊子の翻訳である。原名はWar Is A Racket(『戦争はラケットだ』)。ラケットとは、「いかがわしい商売」「恐喝」「ペテン」のことで、「ラケティア」は「ゆすり屋」や「不正な金もうけをする人」を意味する。
本(五二ページのポケット版)はバトラーが一九三三年にコネティカット州の在郷軍人会で講演し、後に雑誌に掲載された文章が基になっている。その後、『リーダーズ・ダイジェスト』誌が付録として発行したが、これには有名なラジオ・アナウンサーだったロウェル・トーマスが、「彼の反対者さえ、公的問題におけるバトラー将軍の立場は、数知れない海兵隊キャンペーンにおいて彼の役割を浮き立たせたあの燃えるような誠実さと忠実な愛国主義に動機づけられていることを認める」という序文を書いた。
同書は、二〇〇三年に「米国でもっとも勲章を受けた兵士による反戦論の古典」という副題をつけて再版され、また多くのインターネットサイトでも紹介されているように、今なお読み継がれている。二〇〇三年版には、米国アングラ文化のリーダーと目されるアダム・パーフレイ(The
End of Passion, The End of Belief, The End of the World〔『情熱の終焉、信念の終焉、世界の終焉』〕やApocalypse
Culture〔『終末論文化』〕の著者)が「戦争の英雄がいかにして企業悪事に警告を発したか」という十数ページの紹介文を書いているほか、スメドリーの文章を二本、そして戦争の悲惨さを示す写真を十数枚掲載している。
The Nobel Peace Prize Has Become A Cruel Joke
Narco-State Terrorist Wins Nobel Peace Prize
by Stephen Lendman Notable peace activists needn’t apply. Despicable war criminals time and again become Nobel Peace Prize honorees.
This year was no exception, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the latest recipient for negotiating dubious peace with FARC-EP freedom fighters.
James Petras earlier called them “the longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world…founded in 1964…legitimate resistance” against ruthless Colombian repression.
He described years of Uribe/Santos state terror against “over 2 million mostly rural poor…forcibly uprooted and driven from their homes and land and displaced across frontiers into neighboring countries, or to urban slums.”
Regime military forces aided by paramilitary death squads “kill(ed) and terrorize(d) entire population centers…”
Santos became Colombia’s 32nd president in August 2010, earlier serving from July 2006 – May 2009, as President Alvaro Uribe’s defense minister.
Both men were involved in narco-terrorism, responsible for murdering thousands of trade unionists, campesinos, human rights workers, journalists, and others opposing ruthless regime policies, along with maintaining close ties to US imperialism.
Former UN Human Rights Rapporteur, Margaret Sekaggya called Colombia under Uribe/Santos a sinkhole of “illegal surveillance…arbitrary arrests and detentions…judicial harassment,” extrajudicial assassinations, and other ruthless practices against anyone resisting regime ruthlessness.
In announcing its award, the Nobel Committee praised Santos, a major human rights violating serial killer, citing “his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, (taking) at least 220,000 (lives) and displacing (around) six million people.”
Most Colombian voters rejected ceasefire terms Santos and FARC-EP leader Rodrigo Londono agreed to by referendum. Longstanding state-terrorism remains a weapon to be used by Santos or his eventual successors any time at their discretion.
Peace may turn out more illusory than real. Regardless what lies ahead, rewarding Santos’ involvement in years of state terror is more evidence of deplorable Nobel hypocrisy.
War criminals aren’t peace champions, yet repeatedly win Nobel honors – Committee members making a mockery of their highest award, again this year like so many previous ones.