Hero.

A Japanese teacher, after 34 years of service, may lose her job because, as a pacifist, she refuses to stand and sing the national anthem, which calls for the "eternal reign" of the emperor. Kimiko Nezu has been transferred 4 or 5 times in the past few years, has had her salary temporarily cut, and was suspended for a month for violating a Tokyo school board rule that the anthem (the World War II hymn "Kimigayo") must be respected. "They are trying to weed us out of society," Nezu said. "The pacifists, the people who oppose nationalism in Japan. We are gradually being silenced." But she remains adamant: whatever the punishement, even if it's being transferred to a school two hours from home, "I will never stand for that song, the same one that played when [the Imperial Army was] invading Asia. Never."