Screaming 'idiot' in the middle of
Iraq By Adam Lebowitz
TOKYO -
"To go or not to go is the question. Our man Prime
Minister [Junichiro] Koizumi, just celebrating his 60th,
states decisions be 'based on the situation, that is
'safe' or 'unsafe'. I, being over 60 myself, am at the
same crossroads in a way. The difference is our friend
[Koizumi] will proceed if safe and will not if there is
danger, whilst I take the opposite position. Koizumi in
his wavy lionesque 'do', and me bald as an elephant, our
thinking as opposite as our hairstyles." - Hashida
Shinsuke (1942-2004), from his collected dispatches,
Screaming 'Idiot' in the Middle of Iraq.
Hashida's long frame with his floppy sun hat and
picket-fence smiling visage is surrounded by waist-high
youngsters outside Fallujah, Iraq. His lanky arms
gesticulate widely, instructing the camera where to shoot,
appearing more the tour guide on summer excursion than
adventurer and journalist. He seems in his element.
The opening quote is revealing of his
personality: Irreverent towards leadership, determined,
brave, realistic, humorous, curious, accessible. His
combat journalism came from worlds of trouble - Hanoi in
the wake of the B-52s. Cambodia (briefly a prisoner of
the Khmer Rouge), Burma, then Bosnia, Palestine, and
Afghanistan - and yet he remained at least outwardly
remarkably disembittered. Last came Baghdad, in the city
before the arrival of the United States forces, filing
reports before the majors sent their own correspondents.
He survived this, but not the "post-war" aftermath, and
returning from the Japan Self-Defense Force base in
Samawah, his car was attacked south of Baghdad; he
perished, along with his nephew Ogawa Kotaro and their
Iraqi translator on May 28.
Hashida was
scheduled to speak at the university in central Japan
where I teach on June 7 to raise money for a 10-year-old
Fallujah boy's surgery. Glass had flown into his eye
during the fighting. The humanist who wrote of
ground-level perspectives of conflict was now devoting
himself to more direct humanitarian causes. This
transition is a major theme of his book, Iraq No
Chushin de, Baka To Sakebu (Screaming 'Idiot!' in
the Middle of Iraq), written while covering the invasion
in March-April 2003, from the first salvo of "shock and
awe" to the fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein. It is
a thrilling combat narrative, but in addition he
comments insightfully and pointedly about Japan's
relations with the US and the Japanese military's more
active role in foreign affairs.
At the book's
outset, protagonist Hashi-yan, a moniker reflecting his
Western-Japanese roots, existing on the fringes of
Bangkok's Japanese ex-patriot community, is unable to
procure a visa and decides to try his luck on a
photocopied forgery. For Hashi-yan, luck is the roll of
his mental dice, modeled on a pair purchased in a
thread-bare Hanoi store whose owner saved his bicycle
following an air raid. Luck along with guile and an
obsession to see things as they happen guided his
adventures with friend, photographer Suzuki Yukio.
Entering Iraq through the northern Kurdish territories
overland via a small Syrian town only to learn the
bombing had begun ("Goddam little president"!), his taxi
finally reached the Euphrates River from where he
considered the absurdity of his circumstances, watching
the early US bombing campaign on a restaurant TV.
The taxi driver called Saddam
Hussein "We four foolish (baka) men were
full and in a state of bliss, as close to it without a
woman to flirt with. I asked the driver, 'So, what's
your name?' 'Saddam'. 'And your last name'? 'Hussein'.
We all laughed uproariously."
Soon after their
arrival they experienced their first air-raid on the
night of March 22 from the al-Mansour Hotel: "The
explosions felt like a whack on the head went down to
the stomach. The hotel shook violently and the sound of
glass breaking came from the lower floors. The next
"Wee-BOOM" shook the veranda with its shock wave. A hot
wind hit our faces and flew around the room, slamming
the door shut. To the right of the hotel columns of
fire, first one, then two and three, rose together
emitting black and white smoke. We filmed feverishly as
another wave of heat swept over us. 'Bo-bo-bo-BOOM!',
and the wind swirling in our room pushed us from behind.
With the mirror breaking in the toilet, we rushed to
open the door so it could escape."
Having
survived the bombing of Hanoi, Hashi-yan was especially
well placed to compare past and present bomb
technologies. Carpet bombing strategies had rolling
patterns that could be predicted; it was impossible on
the other hand to know where "smart bombs" were going to
fall. The incendiary elements also produced much less
smoke, but the hardened casings, including the depleted
uranium, were frighteningly penetrating. The telephone
exchange buildings were destroyed from the top down with
a single guided hit. Given these events, he could only
conclude United Nations inspections were a cover for a
more detailed surveillance of potential targets: "the
new 21st century warfare".
Unlike the first war.
there was no Iraqi air resistance. Iraq's Chinese-made
weaponry was so old and debased as to resemble museum
pieces; members of the Saddam's "elite" Republican Guard
were reduced to burning oil to obstruct the view of
incoming aircraft. Long-range missiles could be fired
but they were not guidable - "as [deputy premier Tariq]
Aziz told the Pope". Hashi-yan expected to see corpses
but perhaps was caught a little off-guard during a March
24 press tour to photograph children in bloody
swaddling: "The birth pains of the 'New Iraq'? The
foundation blocks of peace? Are they dying for nothing
(inujini: lit, a dog's death), or was this the
birth of a new war?" For him it raised the specter of a
second Palestinian-like conflict prompted by revenge and
marked by guerrilla "terrorist" attacks against the
United States.
The end of March brought
incessant bombings and as the citizens of Baghdad were
forced to cope with this disruption to their lives,
Hashi-yan himself was faced with the prospect of not
even being able to file his dispatches. Japan's majors
news outlets had packed-off to Amman, Jordan, before the
outbreak of hostilities leaving him to negotiate the use
of a satellite dish with a Turkish news team. For
Hashi-yan this was absurd since journalism, particularly
from the front-line, is an expeditionary endeavor:
"Journalists like soldiers go to work on the
battlefield. It is our on-site training. And yet they
ran away in the face of the enemy, leaving them nothing
to talk about."
Japan's legalism [and its
pacifist constitution that prohibits dispatch of combat
troops] has its children "never knowing war", but war's
coverage and analysis requires knowledge of war; a news
desk manager without the latter cannot make decisions
about the former, especially when the most dangerous
time is the erratic period of lawlessness following
battle. Hashi-yan himself learned this in 1993 in
Cambodia when he was captured by disorganized Khmer
Rouge guerillas. Ironically at that time, the Japanese
majors TBS and Kyodo, in seeking to avoid responsibility
for the deaths of staff during the war, dispatched crews
in the far riskier period that followed the fall of the
statue.
Hiding his film in the
toilet Hashi-yan even had his camera confiscated
by Ba'ath Party officials - after hiding his film in the
toilet - for photographing from his hotel balcony. The
Iraq Information Ministry Press Center registered
foreign journalists, arranged their guides and took them
on tours. When it became clear that Japan was going to
participate in the "coalition", one morning Hashi-yan
was accosted by an angry official demanding an
explanation. He responded laconically:
"Because
the Japanese government is a US underling; they really
can't do anything about it." "But why, why is that?"
"Because we are tied up in an agreement, that's
why." "Any why is that?" "Because Japan lost to
the US [in World War II]."
"In general, everyone
sees the mutual [Japan-US] security arrangement as a
military alliance. Sure, on the surface the US protects
Japan with bases in Yokota and Okinawa. But you don't
see any Japanese bases in Los Angeles or Hawaii. Less an
'alliance', more a 'subordination', or most likely an
'occupation'. That the international community considers
it an alliance is the height of idiocy (baka). I
could see the new Iraq in the same light, as a colony or
occupation."
As Baghdad's fall became
inevitable, official extortion began in earnest. News
crews, including alJazeera, were ordered to pay US$100 a
day back fees and expelled. Hashi-yan paid his $1,000
but even the journalist was rankled for having to leave
as a penalty for working without a guide. Back in
Damascus, they decided to re-apply for visas by joining
the queue of young volunteer jihadists, the fight having
become an Islamist cause:
"A man in a white suit
with a great beard came out. 'Today we are only offering
visas for mujahideen.' "And Japanese can't become
mujahideen?' "'Actually there isn't any rule about
nationality.'
"At this point I pressed a $100
dollar bill on him, rolled in my hand. Timing is
everything. Yukio-chan saw what was going on and he too
assumed a serious expression. We look at each other. Now
is not the time to show nervousness. In a leisurely
manner I hand out some cigarettes to the people around.
The dice are rolling in my head and now comes the moment
of truth. "I am over 60. My one son is married, and my
lovely wife has left me."
"I caught the eye of
the man, and he was laughing rather than sympathizing.
'Do you think I have anything left? Nothing at all. I
only want to give my life for Allah.'"
"The
white-suited man spoke something in Arabic to the other
men around him in the room. Everyone broke into
laughter. He gave the skinny chap sitting at the desk an
order, who presented a visa form. 'Fill this out and
come tomorrow.'
"Tomorrow's Friday, the Islamic
holiday. We want to leave now because bombs are falling
in Baghdad at this very moment. The white-suited man
gave a small smile. The bribe now seemed rather rude."
Writing, "I want to go to Baghdad, because I
must fight against American soldier," he procured this
special visa, free. He returns to a city pounded
non-stop at night by C-130 transport planes. The airport
is pummeled the night of April 4-5 and "the southern sky
is dyed red". After his return he reports on April
7: "A group of soldiers in front of the hotel told us
a row of houses had been hit along the Tigris. Hiding my
camera in my bag, we grabbed a cab. Black smoke rose
from a mountain of rubble. There was the distinctive
smell of burning bodies. It is a smell you that can't be
transmitted on video. It was much stronger than a
crematorium.
"A young mother holding a badly
burned baby rushed and raised her voice heatedly towards
our camera. The baby in her arms had its small mouth
open and was breathing as if asleep. Its peach-like skin
was reddened. The other side of the rubble was a giant
crater, and at the bottom an upturned car. Must have
been a pinpoint attack. It is impossible for adults even
to escape this kind of attack, much less children or
infants. They can only roll over quietly and stop the
bombs with their bodies. Five or six rough coffins lay
in front of the rubble, most likely small for the
children and larger for the adults.
"I can only
wonder what responsibility the US would feel for this in
a war started only to privatize American-style an oil
industry nationalized by Saddam Hussein. I also wonder
if the people in Japan would take notice of the
hypocrisy this kind of post-war democracy entails."
At this point the Hashi-yan's tone became more
weary and his view more bleak. Widespread looting ensued
on April 8 as total authority broke down and rag-tag
foreign mujahideen were no match for the technologically
advanced invaders. As he muses on the possibility of
robot soldiers within the next decade: "Human mentality
hardly changes or progresses throughout history. We are
animals who don't learn from history but our science and
technology surely does progress. The dice rolled in my
head and came up snake-eyes."
Hashi-yan's
longest day comes to be April 9, the day the Saddam
statue is pulled down. As looters' trucks whiz through
the street, Hashi-yan and Suzuki decided to take their
chances and go out across the Tigris without their
interpreter. Their goal: to be the first journalists to
photograph US forces. Armed only with a bed sheet
scrawled with "TV JAPAN", they finally succeed in
flagging down a ride:
"Another miracle. My
mental dice rolled up as a battered red Corolla with a
tubby driver came our way. There was a pile of bread in
the seat next to him. He couldn't speak English but
communicated the word 'hospital' as his destination. He
willingly took us in and didn't seem aware of any
danger.
"And so we three foolish (baka)
old men hit the highway, the only car on the road.
Several seconds after entering the bridge we could see a
tank coming from the opposite direction. Couldn't tell
if it was Iraqi or US but it was getting closer. The
bridge was about 300 meters long and the soldiers were
looking at us through their goggles. They were American,
we made out. Without a doubt. We told our driver so, and
he seemed to understand.
"I pointed my camera at
them and called out, 'We made contact'. Meanwhile, the
tank begins to move into our lane. We continued to
proceed until the tank takes a position partially on our
side. They were not going to let us pass. Being on the
middle of the bridge a U-turn for us was impossible."
The red Corolla vs the US
tank "Suddenly, the tank pointed the barrel of
its cannon directly at us. 'I don't like the looks of
this,' I said. There had been suicide bombings in Basra
and they were looking at us the same way.
"'Back, back!' we shouted but the car's reverse
gear was broken. It was a 1970s model. The driver's face
began to change color. He turned the handle in
desperation to try to make a U-turn. I stuck a white
flag out the window and began waving it for all it was
worth. The car can't make the turn because the bridge is
too narrow. We go back and forth, and the barrel is
still pointed straight at us. I'm still waving the flag
like a maniac and the gears make a screaming sound while
white smoke comes out of the bonnet. The radiator is
putting out steam, out towards that cannon barrel which
remains unmoving. Finally we make the turn and make our
escape.
"But. I don't know what the driver is
thinking but we fly down the opposite lane as the car
makes a terrible rattling sound. I can see the tank is
also making its way down this lane as we roll onto the
shoulder on the right side of the road. Then, fire is
flying from the barrel of the tank's machine gun.
"I don't believe this is happening. Da-da-a-n.
Da-da-a-n. The machine gun is firing level with us and I
can see cartridges flying off it. It is pointing down
the other lane, fortunately, and the air is ripped apart
by bullets flying down the left lane. The red Corolla
stays clear.
"Ta-a-n, ta-ta-a-n, ta-a-n,
ta-ta-a-n. The sound echoes through the dry air.
Yukio-chan is shouting, 'Whoa!' and I yell back, 'OK,
it's OK!'. I don't know who heard me but it was scary."
For Hashi-yan and Suzuki, the moment the Saddam
statue falls provokes astonishment, satisfying their
driving desire to catch good coverage, but marked by
ambivalence:
"The third vehicle from the front
in the military convoy is a crane that puts a rope
around the neck of the Saddam statue in the square. A
soldier puts the Stars and Stripes over the face. It's
the beginning of the 'Long Live the Imperium' ceremony.
Suddenly, my disgust fades away at this moment in
history.
"The lines of a famous TV cartoon
character echo through my head: You bet that's the way
it is. Who needs the money or fame? We witnessed a
moment in history. That's the pride of journalism, and
it's certainly enough for my friend and I to get the
300-yen special at Kuroda's lunch counter.
"The
crane pulls at the rope around the statue's neck and
pulls it down. Crash. The world saw its image, but we
saw it live."
Hey, it's only life, it's only
work "And then that was the end. We walked back
to our hotel since we didn't have a car. Our legs felt
heavy but our hearts light. That's our life and that's
our work and we put our all into it, but now it was,
'Hey, it's only life, it's only work.'"
Meanwhile, a heavily armed yet skeletal foreign
force of culturally unprepared youngsters has walked
into an active, heavily populated city:
"We came
to within half a kilo to our place. Some US soldiers
gathered in the rotary in front of the hotel. The sun
was still in the sky. Soldiers, it turns out, also kill
time. But we were still too excited simply to go into
the hotel and fall asleep. The spirit was burning though
the body was almost done. Yukio-chan went up to one.
"'Give me beer.' "The soldier looked at him
and answered seriously, 'We are forbidden to carry
alcohol.' "'Where did you come
from?' "'Okinawa'. "'You don't say? And how's life
there?' ''I like the fried noodles'. "'Really? The
fried noodles, you say'. "'What do you like?' "'I
like the snake liquor. You know, you look like Kevin
Costner'. "A black soldier listening from behind
broke out laughing. "'If he is Kevin Costner, then I
am Denzel Washington.'
"As we were having our
laugh an American tank came up and stopped on one of the
major roads pointing its barrel west. Due west 500
meters away was our hotel. It gave me a bad feeling. My
mental dice rolled and thought that it would be a good
idea to get into the hotel as quickly as possible. I
went up and asked a short soldier with a red face
standing on the road. 'That's my hotel. If I went inside
now would that be ok?'
"'It's ok.' Was it really
ok? His small blue eyes looked uneasy. He was armed to
the teeth but just a regular American boy of medium
build, flown straight to this desert battlefield right
out of some hick high school in Arizona or Kentucky. He
seemed deeply unsure of what was going to happen next.
"'Is it really, really ok?' "'I think so.'
"I couldn't press him any more, and so I began
to slowly make my way in. I still had a really bad
feeling for some reason and my feet stopped 200 meters
before the entrance.
"'Yukio-chan, we shouldn't
go in yet.' And at that moment somewhere to our left
that was a huge explosion. Red flames shot into the air
and shards of metal were flying into walls. 'It's not
over.' We bent over and walked away from the hotel.
'It's still going on now?' 'But it can't be.'
"It's always like that. But the next moment
after a close shave you realize you are alive and refuse
death's existence once again. It must be our instinct
that makes us humans so arrogant. Several seconds passed
and we were back with the soldiers. The soldiers had
also flattened themselves against a wall."
Saved once because he was Japanese The
explosion was no more than 50 meters away in a laden
truck seen a few moments earlier. In the resulting
crossfire Hashi-yan was able to escape in a private home
as a man called out "Hey, Japanese!", fortunately saved
by nationality.
On his last day in Baghdad,
Hashi-yan noticed the only building not hit was the Oil
Ministry: "Well, it turns out the reason was the oil."
His voice has become analytical and not merely
descriptive because this is a comment not about the
conditions on the front, but on the war itself.
"The cause is the realm of politics unseen from
the battlefront. The cause of war is the conflict
between countries, such as a clash of political
interests on the international stage, a competition
between economies and resources. In other words, just as
two different elements hydrogen and oxygen join to make
water, they remain but in essence completely different.
The debate over war and peace in Japan has come to
confuse these two diverse elements.
"Every
August oaths against war are sworn at the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki ceremonies. In reality these are oaths against
[war and violence], quite foolish since anyone would be
against being somewhere American soldiers and Islamic
militants are fighting it out. It would be much more
serious business to counter it, but this is very
contentious politically. he political statements
concerning Japan starting war in the past and not being
able to stop by are not being made.
"Now 60
years have passed and as the dictatorship of the Liberal
Democratic Party continues, so does Japan's political
immaturity. In a repeat of a former period we endorse
war and wave our little Hi-no-Maru flags as we send the
soldiers off, 'we' being the politicians, media, and the
populace whose silence endorses the idea of WMD as a
cause for war. Sooner or later we are going to have to
move beyond this stage of confusion."
Hashi-yan
and Yukio-chan left through the Jordan border and their
adventure ended dramatically and absurdly as they
crossed the sands with duty-free beer and chocolate
screaming, "The world is an idiot!" to the red, receding
sun. The book closes with "The Last Words of a Combat
Photographer" from Baghdad on New Year's Day, 2004,
concluding with an ironic exhortation to Japan's
Self-Defense Force soldiers:
"I am not here to
condemn this war nor the government's charade of
righteousness. One cannot turn back the hands of time
and the bald pate does not sprout forth anew. You, the
SDF, are not the organization of peace but of war. So
let us commit ourselves once and for all: To participate
in 'humanitarian' and 'reconstruction' work we will 'at
anytime, at any moment, to any person' engage in
murderous action. Aren't you the ones taking
responsibility for this idiot (baka) government
and its foolish Foreign Ministry? Aren't you the ones
leaving 'righteousness' in the wake of your own deaths?
"With his aching back killing him, General
'Boner' Hashida awaits your arrival with all his heart."
Not long after returning to Japan with her
husband's ashes and his hat with bullet-tears through
the upper crown, Hashida Sawako appeared on an evening
news program. Against footage taken by the journalist
and his cousin during their final days in Iraq - eating
in a cafe, clowning with their guide and driver - she
confided Hashida always took care not to intrude on the
lives of people around him. Reading his book, it is
clear that he enjoyed being with people and people found
it easy to be with him. Mrs Hashida went to Iraq also to
find 10-year-old Mohammed Haisam Saleha and bring him to
Shizuoka, Japan, and thanks to the citizen's group
Numazu Rotaract Club, money was raised by the local
community to fund eye surgery at a local hospital. He
arrived at our campus late last month in Hashi-yan's
stead.
Still, his wife noted, Hashida enjoyed
his work immensely. Even in a battle zone he found
reason to flash that smile when associating with people
who refused conflict as a parameter of self-definition
and always seemed ready to emphasize the positive
aspects of an area once the bullets stopped flying, such
as singing karaoke in a desert roadhouse somewhere in
Western Iraq. He could only reach such conclusions, I
believe, through his independence, and it is hard to
envision an embedded CNN or Fox News reporter - the PR
of the US Army in his view - engaging in the same
activities. Perhaps Japan was still considered a neutral
country; if so, then that time has passed, as Ogawa
Kotaro discovered when interviewing a former prisoner of
Abu Gharib.
I only came to know of Hashida's
work two months ago as he appeared on TV news offering
magnanimous praise to two young returning journalists
recently taken hostage, who were under intense criticism
for troubling the Foreign Ministry with their release.
Honest reporting of conditions was for him the non
plus ultra of wartime journalism and everyone in the
Japanese media respected his standards. He was not a
pacifist per se and had respect for the soldier, but was
critical of political decision-making; the
administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was
especially fickle in following the US to a war in which
Japan's international standing was not an issue. He also
saw the debate about sending the Self-Defense Forces to
an "unsafe" area as senseless because it was a combat
organization. He would have probably thought it then
especially fitting that the act of saving a young boy's
sight was the final act of an essentially non-military
individual.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
camera where to shoot,
appearing more the tour guide on summer excursion than
adventurer and journalist. He seems in his element.
