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No smooth sailing for president in Asia

22 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday's reading from the Book of Revelation, speaking of Jesus, promises that "every eye will see him." But when it came time for President Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed "town hall meeting" during a visit to China this week, Chinese authorities carefully limited who could participate in or view it. The rest of his Asian trip was an equally mixed bag, analysts said. Chinese authorities largely hijacked the supposed give-and-take with Chinese students at the Shanghai gathering by stuffing the auditorium with young Communist Party aspirants. Access to a broadcast of the event was strictly limited. Obama did manage to offer a veiled critique of China's rigid controls and restrictions on the Internet and free speech but without mentioning, let alone condemning, China's government. Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao presented two days of talks as substantive, even though they didn't appear to make much progress on issues like Iran, monetary policy, or human rights. Obama did, nonetheless, give an interview to Southern Weekly, one of China's most popular newspapers, sometimes known for poking the authorities by breaking news on delicate subjects. Obama's stop in Japan earlier in the trip went better. Tokyo welcomed him as much as a celebrity as a world leader, with cries of "Obama-san!" from the people who gathered in the rain to watch his motorcade pass. And the critical chatter from right-wing bloggers back at home over Obama's deep bow to Emperor Akhito did not seem to detract from the trip. Obama's aides said he was unfazed by the criticism. The president ended his trip with a stop Wednesday in South Korea, a longtime ally that has been cooperating with the United States on vital issues like North Korea. Source: An article by Helene Cooper and Martin Fackler for the New York Times

barack obama emperor akhito japan southern weekly shanghai town hall meeting hu jintao south korea asia china tokyo
Japanese whalers hunted for way to scuttle protesters

09 Jan 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The psalmist speaks approvingly of the majestic voice of the Lord which was “over vast waters.” Japanese whaling officials, whose boats scour the vast oceans every winter hunting whales, expressed a decidedly more negative opinion of an anti-whaling organization in confidential discussions with U.S. diplomats over what “actions” could be taken against the organization, according to the documents released by Wikileaks on Monday. The U.S. representative to the International Whaling Commission, Monica Medina, discussed revoking the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's tax-exempt status during a meeting with senior officials from the Fisheries Agency of Japan in November 2009. The society's yearly protest campaign, during which its boats chase Japan's whaling fleet, trying to disrupt the hunt, has drawn high-profile donors and volunteers and spawned the popular Animal Planet series "Whale Wars." Action against Sea Shepherd would be a "major element" in achieving success at international negotiations on the number of whales killed each year, the cables cite the director general of Japan's fisheries agency, Katsuhiro Machida, as saying. Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, said Japan has previously pressured foreign governments to take action against the group, such as revoking the registration of its ships. He said the organization had last been audited about two years ago, before the exchanges detailed in the cables. "We have had our tax status since 1981, and we have done nothing different since then to cause the IRS to change that," he said. Japan kills hundreds of whales a year under a loophole in the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allows "lethal research." Source: Articles by Jay Alabaster for the Associated Press and Agence France Presse

japan whale hunting whaling international whaling commission monica medina sea shepherd conservation society katsuhiro machida fisheries agency paul watson
Crisis deepens for shaken Japan

20 Mar 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield,” says the psalmist this Sunday. Millions of desperate Japanese still await assistance in the wake of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that rocked the island nation last Friday. Damaged nuclear reactors have complicated the already grave state of affairs. Much of the tsunami’s havoc was wrought in rural and even inaccessible areas, and much of that has barely been touched. “About 20 percent of the damaged area here has been searched,” Ken-Ichi Sato, who heads emergency operations in a hard-hit region, said Wednesday. “Parts we can’t reach because we can’t get into the area, and parts haven’t been searched because there’s so much debris to clear away.” Japan’s National Police Agency placed the disaster’s toll late Wednesday at more than 4,300 dead and more than 8,000 missing, figures that are likely to rise sharply as more complete reports are compiled. Meanwhile, the closure of highways and lack of goods have slowed government efforts to deliver supplies. Entire swaths of northern Japan remain without electricity, water, or cell phone service. Officials now worry that freezing weather could create a humanitarian crisis for survivors, many of whom have been left without homes. Even those whose homes were spared have found themselves living in a state of privation that this modern and wealthy nation has not known since World War II. At the same time, Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified on Wednesday after authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. There are concerns about other reactor units at the site as well after a series of explosions and other problems in the earthquake’s wake that have resulted in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. International alarm about the nuclear crisis is growing, as several nations urged their citizens in Japan to head to safer areas in the south or leave the country. The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday gave a bleak appraisal of the threat posed by the nuclear crisis, saying that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than ordered by the Japanese government. Sources: Articles by Hiroko Tabuchi, Keith Bradsher, Michael Wines, David E. Sanger, Matthew L. Wald, and Martin Fackler for the New York Times and Mark Magnier, Barbara Demick, and Laura King for the Los Angeles Times

nuclear power earthquake tsunami japan radiation fukushima daiichi
Future of nuclear power clouded by Japanese crisis

27 Mar 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus tells the Samaritan woman he is the "gift of God” who shows God’s great care for God’s people. In the aftermath of the post-earthquake disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, a number of countries are questioning whether nuclear power is a gift and if human beings are really capable of caring for it. Several nations have begun to reexamine their nuclear policies, though no consensus exists on how to move forward. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for the European Union to have common safety standards for nuclear power plants, but ahead of a meeting of European leaders in Brussels Thursday energy ministers could not even agree on how and when to conduct stress tests on European nuclear plants. For its part Germany plans to abandon nuclear energy for good. The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but now it is being accelerated in the wake of the Japanese disaster. Germany’s phase-out may provide a road map that countries such as the United States, which uses a similar amount of nuclear power, could follow, but not countries like France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power and has no intention of shifting. In Italy the prospect of losing upcoming local elections has forced the conservative government to slow its push to reintroduce nuclear power. Rome is calling for a one-year moratorium on nuclear power, but antinuclear activists say it's a ploy to buy time. Switzerland said it was halting plans for new reactors, while other countries, including the U.S., announced reviews of plants. Still others, however, said they would forge ahead with nuclear energy plans. Jesus calls on his followers to “do the will of the one who sent me,” and the ongoing crisis in Japan raises ethical as well as environmental and health issues about energy use and the future of nuclear power, said Catholic ethicists. The accident could be a "huge wake-up call" that would "give impetus to jump starting massive research" in other energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, said William French, director of the Center for Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Sources: Articles by Mario Trujillo for PRNewswire-USNewswire, Sylvia Poggioli for National Public Radio, the Associated Press, and Catholic News Service

angela merkel nuclear power plants fukushima daiichi switzerland european union japan germany energy italy nuclear power nuclear reactors
Photo of dying veteran casting vote touches hearts

28 Oct 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday’s first reading and psalm make clear that while exile left its mark on God’s people, divine restoration had an even greater effect. The story of a Japanese-American man, exiled to an internment camp during World War II and restored to freedom by volunteering to join the U.S. Army from behind barbed wire, captured hearts on the internet when a photo was published of the veteran, now 93 and terminally ill, casting likely his last vote from a hospice bed.The photo shows Frank Tanabe lying in a hospital bed at home as his daughter Barbara Tanabe helps him fill out his absentee ballot. Doctors diagnosed Tanabe with an inoperable cancer tumor in his liver two months ago. He's been in hospice care for the past three weeks at his daughter's home, where his condition has been deteriorating, and he's been speaking little lately.He's been determined to vote regardless, eagerly asking when the ballot would be arriving in the mail, his daughter said. She kept telling him, "Don't worry, it's coming." He filled it out immediately when it landed in the mailbox last Wednesday. His daughter read aloud the names of the candidates to her dad. He either nodded "yes" to the names or shook his head "no."Tanabe volunteered to join the Army at the Tule Lake internment camp in California. He was pulled out of college at the University of Washington and taken to the camp when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered 110,000 Japanese-Americans detained and isolated after the start of the war with Japan.The Army assigned Tanabe to the Military Intelligence Service, a classified unit whose members were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal last year along with soldiers who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team—highly decorated segregated units of mostly Japanese-Americans."I'd like to accept on behalf of all hyphenated Americans, including American-Americans," Tanabe told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser at the time. "We all served together in defense of our country."Postscript: After we went to press, news came in that Tanabe passed away peacefully Wednesday, a week after voting, at the Honolulu home of his daughter, Barbara. She put the American flag up outside the home to mark the day for him and their family. "He really liked it when I put out the flag," she said.Homily hint: Stories such as this one can be used to remind us all to be vigilant so that basic human rights are not sacrificed for the purposes of national security, which is intended to defend them. Source: An article by the Associated Press

voting japanese-americans internment frank tanabe world war ii