A sorry thing

[Guest guest]

From the Greenpeace Weblog:

http://weblog.greenpeace.org/oceandefenders/

 

5 January 2006

A sorry thing

by Yuko, onboard the Esperanza

 

" Shaking with the cold I got back to my cabin and had

a look in the mirror. The salt water had dried white

and was stuck to my skin. My face was numb. My hair

was like I hadn’t combed it for a month with so much

salt in it, it if felt like a pan scrubber. The

fingers of both hands were so numb I couldn’t move

them.

 

How do you end up being in this kind of state, other

than some being in some kind of disaster? Try riding a

rigid-hulled inflatable on the Southern Ocean for four

hours, being battered by rough seas and trying to hold

a position in front of a Catcher Boat (easier said

than done, by the way) to protect a whale from being

harpooned; yes, that’ll do it for you. You don’t

actually feel the cold or be aware of how tough the

whole experience is when you are caught up in the

middle of an action. Alain, the driver, kept asking

the rest of us, myself, Caterina, and Joe, ‘Are you

OK?’ every 30 minutes or so, I would always reply

‘OK’, but looking back, there was a lot that wasn’t OK

at all.

 

Just as I slowly became conscious of the cold later,

so too all the things that I couldn’t think about in

the ‘heat’ of the action started coming back to me

after returning to the ship and drinking a hot cup of

tea. As the feeling slowly returned to my hands a

number of thoughts started going through my head.

Actually things that I hadn’t just been thinking about

in the inflatables but since we left port in Cape

Town, indeed even in Tokyo or further back in my last

expedition to this Southern Ocean-namely ‘I’m sorry, I

really am’. So what am I sorry about? Well a number of

things…

 

" I’m sorry " No. 1- I’m sorry about the fact my fellow

Japanese are still totally committed to large-scale

whaling, so criticized by other nations, in this day

and age (it is the 21st century already, after all),

sorry to the people of the world and especially the

crew of this ship, who are working so hard on this

campaign. Sorry that the Japanese should be doing

this...None of my relatives are involved in whaling,

there is no need for me to apologize, nor will my

apologizing make the slightest difference.

Occasionally I hear a member of the crew saying “the

Japanese this...” or “the Japanese that...” about my

countrymen. I think it’s only natural if you witness a

baby whale shot and suffering in front of you to ask,

“Why do the Japanese do this?” and for that puzzlement

and anger to come out in the form of quite strong

language. Every time I hear it I think “Sorry...” or

“What a shame”. But the ‘Japanese’ in my “I’m sorry

the Japanese are doing this” are not the crew of the

Japanese whaling fleet standing there in front of me,

it’s the Japanese Fisheries Agency that have sent them

here with the order to whale. I’m really sorry about

such a government, and embarrassed at the same time.

 

" I'm sorry " No. 2 – I’m sorry to the men of the

whaling fleet. Thanks to the Fisheries Agency hugely

expanding the quota this year, they have been forced

to work extremely hard. Despite all these efforts to

catch the whales the whale meat that comes on to the

market as a 'survey by-product' is hardly in any

demand and is just piling up unsold in warehouses.

These Japanese crewmembers, sent to the extremes of

Antarctica doing their job all because of some

ridiculous order from the Government. They are just

doing their job, and meantime the decision-makers (of

the Fisheries Agency and affiliated industries) who

formulated this farcical strategy bask in the comfort

of a New Year at home in Japan. The crew on the

whaling fleet are not the real decision makers, and

they are confused in the face of our effective actions

to stop them. I feel a little bit sorry about that

too.

 

On the inflatable today I saw some of the crew gesture

as if to say ‘Is that a Japanese person?’ Hana who was

on the boats in the afternoon said the same thing. I’m

sorry, but I think it is really important to be here

in the Southern Ocean to protest what is happening

where nobody can see it, and to try and reduce, by

however small an amount, the unbelievable numbers of

whales being taken. So, members of the whaling fleet,

it looks like we will be with you for a while yet...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__

 

News: View breaking news via streaming video today!

http://au.news./video/