Three veteran grass-roots campaigners from the pacifist movement shared a half-century of experiences with college students recently against a backdrop of protests over the Abe administration's policy of lifting constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Forces.
During a symposium at Keio University in Tokyo, Shinobu Yoshioka, Taketomo Takahashi and Yukio Yamaguchi recounted their involvement in the anti-Vietnam War campaign and other activist movements since the 1960s.
"While Japan was getting excited over the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, war was raging in a corner of Asia and the U.S. started bombing North Vietnam in 1965," said Yoshioka, a popular nonfiction writer. "As junior and senior high school students at the time, we felt frustrated because we did not have any means to express our views."