The Fukushima disease: Creation of virtual world based on radioactive reality

Greetings,

The Fukushima disease: Creation of virtual world based on radioactive reality

Visiting Tohoku region of Japan for a second time in four years brings a variety of evocative emotions to the surface after witnessing the wrath of nature combined with the man’s attempt to defy it.

While human dimensions of the catastrophe are present now as much as then, there is a complete change in the Japanese zeitgeist when it comes to dealing with the disaster’s aftermath.

The area around Haranomachi JR station in Fukushima Prefecture is a de facto entry gate to a recently declared safe area that was closed to the outside world until recently. Despite continuous assurances from both municipal, prefectural and national governments that the area is safe to go back and live, the majority of people under 40 with young kids are decidedly against moving back. “I decided to stay here as I have no place to go but my sister with her kids is not coming back here,” said Setsuko-san as she packed my groceries in the local store. “Despite all they are all telling us nobody believes it and besides many people already have their lives somewhere else so there is no use to start it here again. Just look at the town and see for yourself if there is anything to go back to,” said Setsuko-san.

The two kilometer walk from Haranomachi station to the Minamisoma City Hall leads through rows of dilapidated businesses, many of which are shut down or on the way, judging from lack of customers in them. The city itself has regrouped in an attempt at a comeback, a far cry from March 2011 when its mayor Sakurai-san [Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai] announced that people had been “abandoned” by the national government in the wake of orders for all remaining residents to stay in their homes despite raising radiation from the Daiichi Nuclear Plant, 16 miles away. The city produces regular monitoring reports of radioactivity from 10 locations around town with Geiger counters placed in public spaces for residents and visitors to check their daily intake.

“We are in a difficult position that we made ourselves reliable on nuclear energy first and then were hurt by it,” said a local city employee who asked to remain anonymous as he was not authorized to talk to the media. “Many people here had good jobs and good lives and when the nuclear accident happened this came to a complete halt,” he said. The city’s website now is very optimistic in its proclamation of moving forward without nuclear power, despite the central government’s move to the contrary. The government in Tokyo has decided what is best for the citizens of Minamisoma and all of Japan.

Furthermore, nuclear power is back in charge as if it never left. Nationalist Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s administration is another one anointed by “kempatsu mura” – “the nuclear village”, power and money complex that has been a steady fixture in the history of modern Japan. In 2012, Tokyo’s Waseda University researcher Tetsuo Arima disclosed declassified CIA documents dating to the 1950s.

It was revealed that the long time kingmaker of Japanese politics, Matsutaro Shoriki and head of the country’s most powerful Yomiuri Shimbun media empire, worked hand in hand with the CIA to popularize nuclear energy as way for the future. Despite its peaceful angle and spin thrown onto the Japanese public that was still traumatized within a generation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Shoriki insisted the way to a successful future would have to include Japan’s nuclear armament.

Regardless of the existing US nuclear umbrella over Japan in the form of defense treaties and US bases, the thought of a “made in Japan” nuclear capability has been a wet dream of the Japanese political establishment ever since. In 2012 before becoming a defense minister, Satoshi Morimoto stated he viewed the nation’s nuclear power plants as a deterrent against foreign attack, apparently because they made neighboring countries believe Japan could produce atomic weapons quickly if it wanted to. That is despite the fact of Fukushima’s meltdown eight months earlier and its own government’s moratorium on nuclear power in time he made his statement…..More Here

Click here for reuse options!
Copyright 2015 Hiram's 1555 Blog