Junko Arantzazu Kajita

This is what Euskal Herria really needs in order to regain it sovereignty, to be known around the world without the negative press and misinformation that Madrid and Paris dish out in order to perpetuate their occupation of the Basque nation. This note comes to us via EITb:

Japanese anthropologist lectures on Basque studies in Osaka

Junko Arantzazu Kajita works at the University of Osaka. These days she is gathering material for her courses and researching into Basque culture in Donostia-San Sebastian.

The Japanese anthropologist Junko Arantzazu Kajita is an expert on Basque issues and is back in the Basque Country to delve into Basque culture. She visited the country for the first time 20 years ago, and has since repeated the visit quite often. "I love the Basque Country," she told ETB.

Rural areas and landscape attracted Junko's attention as she found many similarities between the Basque Country and Japan. In her thesis she compared Basque farmhouses and Japanese "ie" houses.

She lectures at the University of Osaka on Basque studies. Over 160 students enrol for the course every year, but Junko only has room for 30.

She is also learning Basque on her own and dedicates one hour a day to that task, although she says it is quite difficult as she lacks a teacher.

A few years ago Junko was converted to Catholicism and chose her second name Arantzazu, Basque town she loved with her first visit there.

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Nagasaki in Gernika

This note was published at The Japan Times:

Nagasaki opens A-bomb exhibit in Guernica, Spain

GUERNICA, Spain (Kyodo) An exhibition showcasing the tragic consequences of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan in World War II has opened at the Guernika Peace Museum Foundation.

Sakue Shimohira, a 72-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing in 1945, made a plea during the opening ceremony last week for the world to abolish nuclear weapons.

"Please make Nagasaki the last site of an atomic bombing so that no more atomic bomb sufferers will be produced," she said.

The national peace hall in Nagasaki decided to hold the event in Guernica in the belief it is "suitable to convey the horror of the atomic bombing" in 2007, the 70th anniversary of the aerial bombing of Guernica, which inspired Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the same name.

The Basque city was bombed by Nazi Germany's aircraft on behalf of Gen. Francisco Franco for several hours during a crowded market day.

Introduced as a "peace ambassador," Shimohira talked about her experience in front of about 80 people.

A 43-year-old coffee shop manager said he was stunned by her speech.

"Thinking about victims, I feel overwhelmed," he said. "I also feel indignation toward those people who killed this many people. I would like to tell my two children what I heard."

The note is a follow up to the one we reproduced back in May.

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Gernika

This article you're about to read was published at Sawf News:

Basque museum to showcase Hiroshima, Nagasaki exhibition

Posted on martes, 26 de junio de 2007 (EST)

Japan's ambassador to Spain is to open an exhibition on the aftermath of the August 1945 atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a museum in Spain's Basque region, organisers told AFP on Tuesday.

MADRID (AFP) - Motohide Yoshikawa will attend the opening the temporary exhibition for its launch at the Guernica Peace Museum in the Basque region on Wednesday.

"Hiroshima-Nagasaki: Effects of the Atomic Bomb" was jointly organised by the museum and UNESCO, the United Nation's cultural and educational body. The exhibition will run until September 9.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibition, which includes testimony from survivors, is the brainchild of the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall.

The organisers said the exhibition said the idea was to "remind future generations of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and offer) a homage to the need for eternal peace and truth."

In 1945, in the dying days of World War II, US air force bombers dropped atomic bombs that devastated the southern Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The bombings, on August 6 and 9 respectively, killed more than 200,000 people and injured untold thousands more.

Guernica's hosting of the exhibition, which comprises some 40 graphic images of the aftermath of the attacks, is loaded with political significance.

The Basque city itself suffered devastating bombing at the hands of German planes in an attack on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Artist Pablo Picasso created an iconic painting representing the horror of the attack, which is on display in Madrid at the Reina Sofia museum.

It is the third time the works have traveled outside Japan having been shown in Chicago in 2005 and Las Vegas last year.

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Nagasaki and Gernika

This note was published at The Japan Times:

Guernica to get national peace hall annual show

NAGASAKI (Kyodo) The national peace hall in Nagasaki said Tuesday it will hold this year's antinuclear exhibition at the Gernika Peace Museum Foundation in Guernica, Spain, from June 27 to Sept. 9.

The Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims will exhibit about 40 photographs showing the devastation in Nagasaki and Hiroshima following the 1945 atomic bombings and 10 items, including ruined school clothing and a piece of glass taken from a victim's body.

Guernica is commemorating the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's bombing of the northern Spanish city in 1937.

Sharing a similar past, Nagasaki and Guernica have developed friendly ties. Guernica Mayor Miguel Angel Aranaz paid a courtesy call in January on Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito, who was murdered in April.

"I would like to call for the eradication of nuclear arms by joining hands with people in Guernica who experienced a tragedy just like us," said Sakue Shimohira, the head of an organization of families of Nagasaki victims.

Actually, the bombing took place in the Basque Country, not in northern Spain.

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