What Can You Do?

There are only nine days before I board my plane for Osaka, Japan.  I’ll be spending a week in the small town of Taiji to protest the annual dolphin slaughter that takes place there.  Each day the weather permits, the killers do everything they can to push migrating dolphins into a small cove where dolphin trainers select the best dolphins for their aquariums (valued at approximately $300,000 USD), leaving the rest to be murdered by the Butchers of Taiji.  On Tuesday, it wasn’t only the “fisherman” who were involved in the killing.  The trainers, the people who profess to love the dolphins, murdered two with their bare hands by holding them under the water and drowning them.

The Japanese claim that this annual slaughter of the dolphins is tradition.  Tradition isn’t something you hide, it’s something that is celebrated and shared with the world.  Tradition is something to be proud of.  Why are you trying so hard to conceal your actions?  Proclaiming this massacre as tradition only assures that you can label those who oppose the genocide of the dolphins as being racists or imperialists.

You’re wrong.

No one is trying to impose their value system on the Japanese people.  We’re fighting to protect the lives of creatures that have as much right to exist as any human being.  We’re the voice of the voiceless.  The world is watching and we’re not as docile as the dolphins you’re killing out of greed.

What can you do to help stop the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan?

Send a letter, e-mail, and/or fax to the Prime Minister of Japan, the Minister of Fisheries, your local embassy or consulate and other Japanese officials to let them know that this barbaric slaughter is unacceptable.

PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN
Prime Minister Naoto Kan
Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
1-6-1 Nagata-cho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. 100-8914 JAPAN
+81-3-5253-2111

Website: http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/index-e.html
Online comment form #1: https://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment_ssl.html
Online comment form #2: https://form.cao.go.jp/kokusai/en_opinion-0001.html

MINISTER OF FISHERIES
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Masahiko Yamada
1-2-1 Kasumigaseki
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. 100-8950 JAPAN
Tel: +81-3-3502-8111
Fax: +81-3-3502-8220

Website: http://www.maff.go.jp/e/index.html
Contact form: https://www.contact.maff.go.jp/maff/form/114e.html

EMBASSY OF JAPAN IN WASHINGTON D.C.
Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki
2520 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008-2869
Tel: (202) 238-6700
Fax: (202) 328-2187

E-mail: jicc@ws.mofa.go.jp
Website: www.us.emb-japan.go.jp