Truth of Fukushima (eBook)

Following is an account by a single male, age 36, who resided at 3.1 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant at time of the accident.

I was living in Futaba town, Fukushima prefecture, only 3.1 km from the nuclear plant. I am 36 years old, single, and was living with my family, I evacuated to an apartment in Koriyama city where I live now. My family was forced to evacuate to different places, and we are broken.

Nuclear power plant gives jobs and money to a poor town. So I cannot flatly deny it but I am feeling betrayed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) headquarter, national and prefectural governments. I am left with nothing - no hope for my life and my future!

I want to know if and when I can go back to my homeland where I was born and grew up. I cannot take the agony anymore!

I did not work for the nuclear plant but lost my job because of forced evacuation.

We are the victims not the sufferers of disasters. Not only TEPCO but also our government promoted nuclear power, and Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) guided the process. They are the wrong-doers.

Who supressed the critical information, and spread the fabricated disinformation? The national and prefectural governments are liable for neglecting to provide speedy measures. But why there is no criminal investigation against them?

No matter how small an amount, no one should be exposed to harmful doses of radiation outside the radiation controlled area. It is illegal to leave the hot spots, radio-active mud and debris as they are, isn’t it?

Governments and Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) are not keeping their promises! As a local resident who coexisted with the nuclear plant, I was more sensitive than people in other regions about risks including tsunami, pluthermals, and aged reactors with over thirty years of operation.

I had doubts about them before even this great disaster but I thought that if there were problems they would be immediately stopped because our governments, national and prefectural, permitted the operation.

They say that the tsunami of this scale occurs once in a thousand years, and nothing could be done to have prevented it. But the governments are responsible for providing the countermeasures after the accidents. I attended the seminar on, and trusted the disaster prevention plan, but nothing was actually done.

There is a Nuclear Power Centre in Fukushima Prefecture. It organises radiation measurement, monitoring of nuclear plant under inspection, reporting of the test results to the local areas, and PR activities.

There is a “Nuclear Safety Promotion Committee” made up of approximately twenty members collected from various local towns and villages, meeting four times a year for training sessions. Ibaragi prefecture has a big facility called “Nuclear Power Emergency Support and Training Centre” where experts hold a crisis conference, face-to-face or via television-phone, when an accident occurs. Every year they explained, “If off-site staffs get panicky, they will receive instruction from there, so it is safe.”

The off-site centre functions as headquarter when something happens to the nuclear plant, yet it is non-functional this time. I have not heard even once that the Nuclear Power Centre in Ibaragi prefecture was utilised. When evacuating, busses were supposed to arrive for the evacuees, and the staff from the off-cite centre would go to the towns’ task forces to conduct a health survey.

But nothing is done at all – people evacuated in their own vehicles, with no belongings or knowing where to. No health survey is done, and we are left abandoned. They told us to evacuate by ourselves if we could.

My mother said she went to a local community hall first, then to a community hall in other area, and then a gymnasium in Kawamata town…and in the evening a decision was made to evacuate her to Super Arena in Saitama prefecture, and the next day town’s busses moved her there. Neither my mother nor I were contacted regarding health survey, and when we contacted the town and prefecture they said “not yet.” My grandmother who evacuated to Kagoshima in southern Japan requested the internal radiation exposure examination at a hospital in Kagoshima prefecture but the Kagoshima health centre, its prefectural office, and Fukushima prefectural office would not give permission. She is still being rejected.

No priority was given to those who lived within 3 km from the troubled Fukushima plant: no health check, no aid for evacuation, no return for a brief home visit. The government just ordered us to evacuate. (as of 2011.08.25) Still, I am personally against the immediate denuclearisation, anti-nuclear movement. I don’t think we have enough power-generation facilities to replace nuclear plants at present. Even if we have enough of them, the thermal power stations and hydro power stations can have accidents and will require maintenance.

If we denuclearise immediately, it will cost a lot of money and time to dispose nuclear fuels and reactors. I am against the construction of a new nuclear plant but we should gradually shift to natural resources and energy while safely operating and earning revenue from the existing nuclear power plants, and decommissioning the aged ones.

Every neighbouring town has the budget for the current fiscal year already in place, and it will cost lots of money to restore lifelines, clearing away debris, and more. The national and prefectural governments are unlikely to put money aside for the residents’ subsistence and health.

Revenue from the nuclear power is at the core of every Fukushima small town’s budget, as the majority of the residents work for the nuclear and thermal power plants, while most of the rest runs businesses for the money the nuclear plant workers spend. If the residents leave the town loses sources of income and tax revenues. If children cannot live there due to health risks, their parents must leave, too. The towns and villages will suffer from rapid aging and advanced depopulation. One cannot survive on pretense.

I live in Koriyama city now. Hardly anyone plays in the park. There are fewer children in the streets. I see children in elementary schools jogging, their faces covered in masks.

I witnessed many times at shopping centers that parents became very nervous at just a few sprinkles of rain. Children were playful in the rain but the parents were upset, telling them to wear hat, raincoat, umbrella, and not to get wet. Children became fretful and non-compliant because they did not understand why the parents were so angry.

In the meantime, the news reports that elementary schools scraped heaps of radioactive surface soil from the playgrounds. Piles of radioactive mounds lie in their school properties.

Some people think we have been over-sensitive. A head of a municipality in Fukushima prefecture ordered the residents to return, saying that he was relieved that the measured radiation level was low even though internally exposed to radiation.

Even for us, victims, who have become quite sensitive about the issue of radiation, it is very difficult to judge what is safe and what is dangerous. Many academics say it is safe but there is no clear safety standard. How horrible if we get sick in the future!

Honestly, this is a fight against the invisible foe. Fear, I have. The government must disclose correct information immediately so that our unnecessary fears are eliminated.

Without the establishment of clear and safe public standard the residents must evacuate voluntarily. I hear rumors that the families of the mayors and executive members of government offices have already evacuated. They say “It’s OK” but who will trust them?

There are municipalities that collect information of the evacuees to support the disaster victims (to distribute supplies and circulate information about volunteers and support) but in Koriyama city, these services are only available at evacuation centres. To this day the city has not grasped evacuees’ information.

City-operated evacuation centres were quickly dissolved, and now the prefecture runs an evacuation centre called Big Palette. Koriyama city is apparently not involved with evacuation centres in Tomioka village and Kawamura village (expected to dissolve sometime in August)

I heard that, just after the disaster, Koriyama city opened up its elementary schools and meeting halls for the evacuees, and circulated supplies to support them. But at present, Koriyama city has to piece out the information regarding the evacuees with the city only through the numbers provided from the prefecture. Name, former address, and current address were reported to be kept by the original municipalities before the evacuation.

2011.03.11 (Fri.) 14:46 pm

A magnitude 9.0 massive earthquake hit the coast of Sanriku (at latitude 38 ° N, 142.9 ° E longitude.) The depth of hypocenter was estimated to be 24 km.

The magnitude of each area is as follows:

Magnitude 7: Kurihara city in Miyagi prefecture

Over magnitude 6: Hitachi city in Ibaragi prefecture, Naraha town, Tomioka town, Okuma town, and Futaba town in Fukushima prefecture, Natori town in Miyagi prefecture

Under magnitude 6:  Ofunato city in Iwate prefecture, Ishinomaki Town and Onagawa town in Miyagi prefecture

Magnitude 5: Miyako city in Iwate prefecture, Fukushima city in Fukushima prefecture, Ota-ku, Sendai city in Miyagi prefecture

Under magnitude 5: Kuji city in Iwate prefecture, Kariba village in Niigata prefecture

Earthquake like this occurs only once in...