To Prime Minister: Junichiro Koizumi.
To Director General of the Defense Agency: Shigeru Ishiba.
To Commander of the Ground Self -Defense Force Samawa garrison

We Demand Immediate Withdrawal

of the Self-Defense Forces

　　　　　　　　　　　Stop War!  Members’ Families and Ex-members
　　　　　　　　　　　 　　　　　　　　of Self-Defense Forces Liaison Committee

We send to you the following appeal based on Article 16 of the Constitution of Japan and Petition Law.

We are families of Self-Defense Forces members and ex-SDF members who have stood up, wishing peace and opposing way to war. Military members and their families are voicing against the ongoing occupation of Iraq, in America and all over the world.  In Japan, however, the feeling of each SDF members and of each of families’ of them as a human is oppressed.  We voice, knowing desperately no other ways but to do so, in order to make whatever change of the situation in Japan.

Japanese government・Koizumi administration, has forced on you the dispatch to battlefield, disregarding “voices of no dispatch” of the majority of Japanese people.  We think you are told by the government the dispatch is for the sake of “humanitarian purposes”, and have gone to Samawa with sense of mission.  Water supply and medical support would be, at least, humanitarian supports.  When the whole structure is looked at, however, that is only for deceiving conscience of SDF members and of the people.  Because transport planes C-130 of Air Self-Defense Force are conveying armed US occupation troops, and all arms common units are equipped are just of the occupation army to assist US forces.

Whatever sophism might be fabricated, what SDF there is is to obediently assist U.S. forces, without a word of complaint about indiscriminate massacre, slaughter of hundreds of children by US forces going on in Fallujah.

Quite naturally, people of Iraq, are considering SDF as a part of occupation armies.  Stone-throwings against SDF, repeated mortars aimed at Samawa garrison, detention of five Japanese; those are nothing but intentions of Iraqi people to demand withdrawal of SDF.  Surveys by CNN and others show that more than half of Iraqis are positive to attacks to US army; a local paper of Samawa shows those in support of stationing of SDF have dropped to below 50 percent.  If SDF continues to stay in Iraq still on in such a situation, it is sure not only SDF will be targeted but civilians participating NGO etc. will be victimized.

Each of five Japanese detained recently took to action with hope of each to truly care people of Iraq, “activity to support children who fell victims in Iraq war”, “a former SDF member journalist who went into Iraq with the wish to tell people the truths in Iraq”, “to study about depleted uranium bullets used in this war”.  Is it not thanks to those honest activities that Iraqi people put trust in Japan?  What hinders their efforts is the dispatch of SDF by Koizumi administration.

As ones sharing experiences of having been in SDF, we fully acknowledge that you dared to join the dispatch “for Iraqi people’s sake”. That is, however, only the thought in each of you.  The purposes of Japanese government are, together with US, to deprive people of Iraq of oil, and to make SDF into an army capable of real combat; and making stepping-stones of your lives, to make sending troops to battlefields easier now on, and to make Japan into a war nation.

    Dear comrades, do listen to our voices, think over the dispatch to Iraq as a human, and have your thought on this.  We are determined to let you and any friends in SDF, neither bearers of aggressive wars nor   victims of them.  That you never are victimized only guarantees Japan maintains to be a peace nation.

We wish you come back safe and sound as early as possible from the bottom of our hearts.  Raise voices of “immediate withdrawal” from both inside and outside of SDF.

The trends have been toward withdrawal in nations sending occupation-forces, in Spain and others.  Reconstruction of Iraq should be undertaken by Iraqi people, not by US

We NOW strongly demand of you the immediate withdrawal of SDF from Iraq.

15　　May　, 2004

　　　　　　　　　　　　Stop War!  Members’ Families and Ex-members
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　of Self-Defense Forces Liaison Committee

 　　　　　　　　Telephone：０８０−５４９０−４８７４

　　　　　　　　URL：http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~no-hahei