 for Critical Times. I'm your host Michael Sukov. We are pleased to have with us today Pete Shimazaki Doctor. Pete is a member of the Hawaii Okinawa Alliance or HOA, the Veterans for Peace Hawaii, and a board member of Hawaii Peace and Justice or HPJ, which is a local grassroots hui, nurturing peace through social and ecological justice. Today we're going to be discussing war peace and demilitarization, finding a way forward in a time of danger. Welcome to the show, Pete. Hello, Michael. Mahalo for hosting this forum and Mahalo for those who came before us in this Kanako eevee land that we could have this conversation. Thank you so much. So I want to start out by talking about your background and what led you from being in the military to being a peace advocate and a proponent of demilitarization. Can you start us off? Sure. That's a great place to start with my ancestors. I am a product of war on my father's paternal side, Ashkenazi Jews, that my father was a Marine, 27 years Marine Corps, included World War II, Battle of Okinawa, Korea and Vietnam, and goes back further. My great-grandfather was him and his business person burned up by the Nazis and Holocaust. On my mother's side, Okinawan, Wichinanchu, Shishimanchu from the Ryukyu Islands, and so I have a PTSD on both sides of family that has really informed me coming from a bi-cultural, bi-racial perspective. Yes. Okay. Well, let's get drilled down a little bit. How would you say your family background influenced you to think and feel about war? Well, having a Marine father, I was always explained that it's unfortunate, son, but war is a part of life. It's part of human nature. It cannot be changed. Thus it is. And I was in green with that coming up. And so when I was in high school, I was enticed for many different reasons to enlist in the military, including coercion and lying by military recruiters quite abusively. But it was also other factors, including wanting to be a service, being part of a family tradition, as well as getting education in a career, as well and, of course, financing education. Yes. Yes. So how was it that you went from being, you ended up being a combat medic, right? Correct. And then I don't know the timing on this exactly, and it may not be that important, but at a certain point you were discharged honorably. But then after a while, I don't know how long the period was because of the, just before the beginning of the, what we now call maybe the first Iraq war, which was called the Gulf War project. What was it? Desert storm? Desert storm. Yeah. You were subject to reactivation into the military. So how did you go from, and what happened between the time you were subject to reactivation? And you ended up becoming a community organizer and peace advocate. Well, I was using my GI bill, back to school, and to clarify, yes, my title was combat medic. Fortunately, I was able to not be sent to combat just because of the timing of my enlistment, that's all. But as you mentioned, upon my honorable discharge, I did my terms of my first and only contract service. Desert storm started brewing, and they were mentioning about the real possibility, and they started reactivating inactive reservists like myself. So I thought to myself, well, I signed up for this as my Kuliana, my responsibility. So while I'm going to school, I want to know more about this war that I might be possibly sent to. So I started my basic studies, my first policy, first history class in college, and I was very intensely researching. And I'm very happy with what I learned about the US foreign policy that was left out of high school. So you pretty much came to this information and knowledge and realization on your own, or were you influenced by teachers or people on the outside of the university or what? At this point, it was largely self-driven interest. I was researching, but it was also community resources like community radio. And where was this, by the way? This was in Southern California. And so there is a community radio program, public media, for example, where I was just trolling, so to speak, information. And from that, it just was non-stopital. So like my writings and research were about the things I was really interested in learning. Right. So because of your background and what happened to you over the course of your life, that's why you ended up having kind of an intense focus on these issues? Absolutely. As well as the experiences along the way, because at that, I have these experiences that really crystallize all the information where I was poised to go. And I'll share one of them was in a first polycycline class, where the teacher had set up kind of a class debate forum. And the debate was supporting or against the start of the Desert Storm War, because at that point, it hadn't started yet. Right. This would have been early, late 1990, early 1991. It was early 90s. It was like 1990, 1991, to be exact. Yeah. Absolutely. I guess that wasn't exact. It was one of those years. But the point here is that granted, most of the students in that class were pretty apathetic. They was more interested in partying or going to their jobs. I was poised against an older student who was for the pro-war side. And we were exchanging as the debate goes. And I was rallying fact after fact about why I was opposed to it. I won't get into or keep this week. Right. And then he really didn't have really many factual based arguments. It was just opinions. Why go to war? And he said, well, I'm not about to pay $5 for a gallon of gas. At that point, I just blew my mind. I was already stood up so fast, I knocked the chair down. And I'm like, you want me to go fight a war so you can have cheap gas? And then quickly, the professors say, okay, okay, class, let's talk the debate. It's pretty excitable. But in our same class, I should mention another factor that really informed me. And that was, one of my classmates was actually a Bosnian refugee. And it was painful hearing her daily ordeals of not knowing what was going on with her family back in Bosnia. We could just mention, just briefly, what was that all about with Bosnia? What was going on? That was the Yugoslavian Civil War. Okay. And, you know, the Serb ethnic cleansing. Right. And that was later in the 1990s, I believe. That was early 90s. Early. Okay. The Bosnian conflict. It didn't end there. So I think that we were going to later years. That's right. Yeah. But this was the beginnings of it. And it just really impressed upon me that here we had a humanitarian crisis. The girl was tearful that she didn't know was going on with her family. And I felt as a military veteran like, hey, if there's ever a need for the military, this is when we should go in. I was ready to fire it up for that. But then the what was happening instead was this huge push and cheerleading by the media to Russian war over Kuwait and Iraq. Right. Right. You know, it wasn't a democracy. It was, you know, monarchy with gold seat toilets. And, you know, and it just came clear to me. I was like, wow, if your export is pineapples or something, you're irrelevant. But if your export is oil, you know, suddenly your top priority. And so I personally felt the hypocrisy of warmongers and how folks within the military were being used for these political agendas. Yeah. Now, I want to skip ahead because our time is kind of going by. We'll get back to some of this. Could you just briefly say a little bit about and I mean briefly here what it was about your experiences in Okinawa and then your move to Honolulu, go to grad school and, you know, your time as a high school social sciences teacher at Farrington. How did all this kind of contribute to changing your thinking or your consciousness about the work you've ended up doing? Absolutely. So as I mentioned, you know, learning what I've been denied to know, I also moved to Okinawa and deeply got into my maternal culture and understanding. And so it was an experience of, you know, having been so to speak within the military base fences, you know, the bar, bar fences as a soldier, but also as a civilian and the outside community living on the other side. And so was seeing both sides, particularly the civilian side and all the suffering, the Okinawan people were being put through this imposing militarization of their lands. And this was having to do with the aftermath of World War II? Well, that's how it started, but World War II ended like how many, 75? 1945, yeah. So as you know, Okinawa has also continued to be used through the Korean conflict, you know, in Vietnam, so it was perpetual. By the United States? Well, yes, by the United States military, however equally guilty to this situation was the Japanese government who to this day maintains not just the alliance with the United States, so it's the nation of Japan that also invites or welcomes the US military there. But it's also the case that the Japanese government imposes most of those military bases and concentrates them into tiny Okinawa because most of the Japanese military bases in their backyards. And the reason for this continued discrimination of pushing it on Okinawa lands is one, you know, colonization. UQ was colonized by Okinawa and those dynamics continues day. It's, you know, like Hawaii, we're still treated on legally as a colonial possession. Right. And just to point out Okinawa, like Oahu is also an island, although it's a much bigger island. It's close to the mainland of Japan, but it is surrounded by water, correct or not? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's essential to, they say the gateway to Asia, but also in closing is Japan's denial of Uchi-nachi as an indigenous people in our, you know, in our history as an independent nation kingdom. Okinawa. Okinawa is a Japanese name. It was formerly Uchu or the UQ Kingdom. Okay. Yeah. Right. So I want to just, again, for the interest of time, we can weave some of this other stuff about your experience in, but I, you know, again, the theme of how you went from being a military combat medic to the work you're doing now, we'll mention some of the other work that you've done or been doing. Now, I want to focus to the issues of security. Now, this came up in our discussion prior to coming on the air. What does security mean to you? What is it? And once we know what it is, how do we achieve it? Well, let's start with how it's commonly defined as national security. Yes. Well, national as a nationalism, it's interest of the state. So it's inherently politically defined, you know, it's a posture of power versus genuine human security, different. That's where the needs of the people are priority and not the state. Yes. Genuine human, human conspiracy is like safe, clean drinking water, you know, jobs that aren't, you know, poised up, presses, not having to go to the front line just because you want to cause education, you know, these are other issues of militarism. And I would add, I don't know, you think being secure from the threat of the planet being destroyed either accidentally or on purpose? Absolutely. You know, the U.S. military is one of the biggest contaminator polluters of the planet, not exclusively. And so it's ironic and hypocritical to say it's securing us just like the Red Hill fuel leak situation. Yes. Is there insisting this false narrative that it's for an interest and protection when in fact it's threatening not just our lives, but also our economy, so many levels that water is our security. Yes. And I would throw in, we may not have time to discuss this in detail, but the conflict in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine with significant support, military and other kinds of support from the United States and the NATO countries, which is seems to be putting us much closer, the closest we've come to a nuclear war since 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, where there was a standoff between the U.S. and what was then the Soviet Union around Soviet missiles being on the island of Cuba. But let's not go there now, once you have something to say about that. Yeah. Well, briefly, because it is important and relevant, it's interesting how quickly there's billions to send for arms to Ukraine, yet there's never enough money for education, health care, housing, you know, these basic again human needs. And I think what's important to underscore here, Michael, is that it's estimated by the UN, the billions needed to alleviate world hunger would be just three percent of the U.S. military budget. Yes. You know, and so if you think about a lot of this global suffering, as they say, a hungry man is an angry man, could create more stability through the world economically and otherwise. Right. We have this system where the militarism, where military, not just in the United States either, takes so much of our resources away from our people. You know, we provide the blood, but the sweat and the labor to provide those taxes. And yet, it's just taken away from us and used in ways that we've never approved them. Yeah. Yeah. And just to touch again on your personal experience, what you, I believe you called your by evolution on the issue of security. Maybe you want to say what you meant by that. But basically, how do you see that we could move from a national state, local security paradigm based on war conflict and militarization, to one based on demilitarization, deescalating conflict, all the other factors that would be alternatives? And how did your real life experience with these issues change your consciousness about them over time? Good question and short. Yeah. You know, so starting with that question or that's the premise that war is a part of life. You can't help it. Right. I took that as my central thesis in college. And I did an intense multidisciplinary study across different sciences. And I guess the question is it in fact, you know, war is a part, inevitable part of human nature. And the role I got from the social sciences and even biological sciences is no, it's not. There's too many exceptions. That is not a universal paradigm. And so again, as I mentioned, the enormous resources that are poured into the militarism is could be channeled to human needs, which will provide more security from there. Yeah. You know, like, how are we achieving peace through arming Ukraine and then bombing each other? Just keep, you know, escalating and like other wars, they just spread out of control. Absolutely. Versus like the example of, let's say Latvia, not to mention civil rights movement or Gandhi is India, where nonviolent civil disobedience actually achieve goals that militarism can't because if war solved our problems, we wouldn't have any more wars, would we? Right. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, just to mention in this context, there have been reports recently that the US government through the Department of Homeland Security is actually providing millions of dollars to produce anti-radiation medication. And it's very interesting that this is happening at a time when the rhetoric between the United States and Russia is escalating around the issue of nuclear war. I don't know if you have a comment on that. I have two quick ones. One, it enrages me that there's already blood contamination going on. In Okinawa, they found levels of PFAS in the bloodstream higher than those to their Japanese counterparts, you know, as an illustration of what happened to military families here in Hawaii recently when the Navy poisoned their water, right? So that's already an issue from military bases, you know, from Camp Lejeune to it's a statement of how the US is ready to sacrifice people, you know, instead of preventing this from happening, they're preparing for it's happening instead. Right. You know, as Einstein, as I said, you can't simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. And they've demonstrated that they're willing to sacrifice our resources and people for this political economic agenda. And were you referring to ICANN, the international organization that is working to eliminate nuclear weapons? I didn't quite get what you said. No, I didn't necessarily imply that because for me, I know nuclear war is a concern, but to me conventional warfare is just as much a concern. I think about World War One and how the devastation, not to mention in the 90s, we had a genocide through machetes, right? So I, to me, war is the problem, whether it's nuclear or other. I see. I see. And you know, just we're gonna have to wrap up, but I want to ask you kind of a quick two part question. So how are all these issues we've been discussing in terms of your background and what's important to you relevant to what's going on in the world today? That's the first part. And then what's the role of education? You've been a teacher. What's the role of education and bringing about the kinds of citizens that are able to understand and critically evaluate these kinds of issues? In the interest of time, I'm going to address your second question, Mark. Okay, sure. Education, of course, is critical. You don't know if you don't know, right? But I would add that it's more than education. Education is not enough. It also requires caring. Okay. And I'd also expand education, not as something that's limited to the classroom, but education more as wisdom and a greater understanding that could be not just in the classroom, but from like working with the land, you know, and other forms of interaction with other people on the planet, which can inform us to greater choose. Then but again, without action, without caring, it's pretty much meaningless, so you need both. And for your first question, I don't know if I heard it correctly, but for me, that's where I'm at, is how do you take knowledge information and more importantly, what do you do with it? You just put it on a shelf with all these degrees and a wall, or put into practice, not talking about it, but doing something about it. Right, right. And we might mention in closing your work with Oahu Water Protectors, as well as with the Red Hill situation. And unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today, but I want to thank you so much, Pete. We've been speaking with Pete Shimizaki Doctor, a board member of Hawaii Peace and Justice. You can reach APJ on their website, and hopefully our engineer will show that website right now. It's the address is HawaiiPeaceAndJustice.org. And you can learn much more about HPJ and their work on HPJ's Facebook page. And also, we want to show the Okinawan HOA organization. But it's one of the somewhat community organization efforts I'm involved with in terms of diaspora, Chinachi, to protect our motherland. And what does HOA stand for? Hawaii Okinawa Alliance, or just Hawaii Means Friend or Alliance. Okay. And we want to show that on the screen too. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Pete. We'd love to have you back sometime. Mahalo. Mahalo. This has been Thinking Things Through, Critical Thinking for Critical Times on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Michael Sukoff. Please do join us again two weeks from today. And if the engineer would please put my email address on the screen, I would love feedback about the show, any suggestions, criticisms. And again, please do join us again two weeks from today at this same time wherever you may be. Mahalo.