By Jack Hirschman
Watada’s ordeal after his declaration led to a court-martial trial which was declared a mistrial earlier this year. Judge Settle’s injunction squelches the attempt on the part of the U.S. Army to circumvent the law of double-jeopardy which prohibits the trying of a citizen twice for the same “crime.”
After artist Betty Kano encircled the speakers’ podium with a traditional drum-call, Chinatown Community Rev. Norman Fong introduced Japanese American poet Peter Yamamoto; Grassroots environmentalist speaker David Chiu; the current poet laureate of the city, Jack Hirschman (see poem at right); past laureate Janice Mirikitani; and Jeff Paterson, who was the first GI to resist the Gulf War, and now works with Courage to Resist. Speakers were translated into Chinese by Angela Chu, who paraphrased the poems as well. The rally designed as a press conference was organized by Ying Lee, one of the fighting activists of the Asian community.
Conscientious objectors are known in wartime, but conscientious rejectors—especially among the officer class—is relatively new, and Ehren Watada’s example is being seen as an heroic breakthrough in anti-war activities.
| Yong’il Bay Thirty years ago that spot was like a mother to me. Just like my best friend’s mother. Twenty years ago it was my own mother. Absurd, but I used to shout to her “Mother,” when I felt helpless: “Mother!” Today factories have killed my mother. Now, there is no mother to greet you, sun and moon. And since I am motherless, I am without dreams, no matter how long I sleep. For millennia now, sand has been announcing the end of the world. Who has understood? Those grains of sand were once mother of every man and beast. — By Ko Un
Korea’s literary spokesperson, Ko Un, was nominated for a Nobel several times. The poem was translated from Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé, Young-moo Kim, and Gary Gach |
FOR EHREN WATADA This warring government having lost its people and having exposed its lies and its twists and turns of the knife in the back of all decency, has only the guns left to keep the people in line in Iraq and here as well, the guns that make people afraid because they can make people dead, and so when an officer like Ehren Watada from one of the two newest states to be legalized as part of the United States realizes that the war declared by his country is an illegal one, and he refuses to be deployed to Iraq, and is illegally court-martialed, he has opened a crack in the cage we all are fearfully imprisoned in, and the sun of truth has streamed in radiantly, and hopefully others today or tomorrow will be touched by the same luminous courage as Ehren Watada’s, and the dominum effect lead to the highest-ranking officer: Peace. — Jack
Hirschman
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A powerfully
written book on the women in the Chicano Movement and in theater is now
available. Through a special offer, a copy of Teatro Chicana, signed by
co-editor Laura Garcia, is available for only $30.
