Unlike in the United States in the wake of the Three Mile Island Accident, the many people in Japan, especially those in areas near where the disaster took place, remain skeptical of the government and allied entities, angry about how the situation has been handled and fearful of what might happen in the future. Many residents of towns in Fukushima Prefecture, even though they were far out of the fallout zone, refused to let their children play outside and constantly monitored the food they bought for their families to make sure that it was safe to eat. Entire NGOs have been set up for these problems in mind: Daycare centers that organize trips for young children so that they can go to other prefectures to play outside and homemade laboratories that will test food that residents bring them for radioactive particles.
A map of Fukushima Prefecture showing the extent and severity of the disaster. Photo courtesy of www.caliper.com <http://www.caliper.com/featured-maps/maptitude-fukushima-evacuation-zone-map.html>
Residents of Tomioka
It took an earthquake and a tsunami to do it, but the meltdown of our reactor at fukushima daichi managed to render numerous towns, including Tomioka, uninhabitable. The initial waves completely destroyed the coastal area of the town, destroying the town train station and whatever else was on top the rows of parking lots filled with massive bags of contaminated soil and other radioactive debris. With pride, our guide shows us pictures of the fall trees blossoming and a snow covered park. Despite this our first impression of the landscape is a waste land. Radiation detectors are posted at streetcorners, displaying the microsevert levels to four significant figures. Along the old sea wall, there is a model of how high the new one will be; eight meters high and much longer across. Once we’ve climbed high enough into the hills there is no more evidence of the tsunami five years ago, but there is earthquake damage, in the form of shattered storefronts and cracked sidewalks. One of our guides shows us her home. There is a piece of cardboard taped over the window on the door near the knob. She confirms that someone has broken into her house. She laughingly says she doesn’t get it fixed because someone lese would just break in. At least now the burglars know there’s nothing valuable inside.
Deserted businesses, overgrown foliage, and the foundations of torn down homes stand out on our tour. The workers wearing surgical masks, moving dirt and cutting down trees are easy to find, a comforting reminder of the governments dedication towards repopulating the area. We are informed that on the street we are standing, people living to the left will be allowed to move back in March. For people living on the right side of the street, it is too dangerous. Some are eager to go back home, some have sworn never to do so, and others are uncertain. In any case, it will not be as it was. Businesses remain closed, local infrastructure is still largely unrepaired, and the only people are the ones further polluting the area with the melody of decontaminative construction. It is a known fact that most of the energy from the plant, indeed many of the plants, produce energy not for the towns where their workers live, but the monstrous mega city of Tokyo. To this they make a tired acknowledgement. But still, they admit that they never held much concern for the presence of the plant previously. It is only in the wake of destruction that they realized the giant in the backyard was a sleeping dragon.
Koriyama purchasers
The government says that food is okay to sell if it contains less than 100 Bq of radiation, though some supermarkets may set their own limits. Yet the elementary schools in the area all possess machines to measure the radiation of all the ingredients for the students lunches, with a threshold of 10 Bq. If this limit is breached, the children are served precooked frozen curry, or something similar. In japan, it is extremely atypical for students to bring their own lunches; the culture is such that the few parents who insist on preparing their children lunches with food from other prefectures are teased by their fellow students and pressured by the teachers. It is a shame, but the few parents who feel it necessary to ensure that potentially radioactive food stay away from their children are in the extreme minority, and as such have little recourse. They often buy food from other prefectures at the supermarket, it is only Fukushima that is contaminated. But these often cost a bit more, and may not be available if they are not in season. That is why the organization before us is so important.
Between fifteen and twenty people frequent this tiny office, select some carrots, freshly baked bread, and greens from several shelves in front, then approach the leader of the organization to put their money in the small steel cash box and select their change. It may be a small operation, but by importing these basic foodstuffs from other prefectures, the group of mothers before us provides an essential service to the local concerned parents of Koriyama. When we sit down to ask our questions we are presented with a mug of tea, which is regularly refilled, and platters of baked goods. We are told this is our lunch that they’ve prepared for us, so we indulge fully. Between mouthfuls of sweet bean bread we asked about the customers, the food, the volunteers, and the organization. We sipped our tea while we awaited the translation and took our notes. And I was reminded of the caring and cautionary actions of my one mother. Always insisting on buying organic food, though I insisted the price tag was the only difference. Plying me with salad and fish instead of meat and potatoes. And refusing to buy me processed, prepackaged food that would never go stale, because it was never fresh.
It is not only the children who don’t understand the need for this, most parents are complacent with the standard supermarket fare, quick to sweep aside concerns about safety and unsubstantiated cries of danger. Even inside households, most of the volunteers here giggle when they admit that their husbands don’t know where they shop, or how they’re involved for fear of an argument on the subject. Nobody wants to admit that the food they feed their family is unsafe.
Protesters
One gentleman we spoke to at the protest, who works as a physicist, said that he was unsurprised to hear that the reactors at the Fukushima plant had exploded but at the same time he feared for his safety and the safety of others. He stated that he had been attending the protests since they started in 2011 because he wants to stop the continued use of nuclear power in Japan, but he remains pessimistic because he believes that most people in the country are comfortable with nuclear power since they get the majority of their electricity from it and so it will be very difficult to enact significant change, adding that, “people are just idiots,”. When asked if he thought another accident like the one that occurred in Fukushima will happen again, he replied that it is hard to speculate about but if it did happen one or even two more times, change toward phasing out nuclear power would still be difficult. What the Fukushima disaster did change for him on a personal level though, were his own views on atomic energy. Before the accident he was worried about things like how the waste was dealt with and the fact that the spent fuel rods were being kept on-site but did not actively voice his opinions or protest. After the meltdowns and explosions at the plant, however, he became much more active and vocal in his opposition to nuclear power and began faithfully attending protests against it.
When asked whether he thought the government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) were deliberately being dishonest in their reporting of the incident and its effects, he emphatically replied, “of course!” and also stated that he believed that journalists in the media were being purposefully dishonest to the Japanese populace as well. In addition, he told us that while he recognizes that nuclear power and atomic weapons are different, he sees some overlap between them in terms of their potential danger to human life and so is opposed to both.
Another protester we had the opportunity to speak with at the protest, in Tokyo at the time of the disaster, said that she didn’t know much at all about nuclear power and so she didn’t realize that radiation could travel far from the plant and be dangerous to people living miles away from the epicenter of the event. She thought that it would probably be better if there were not any nuclear power plants in Japan, but she didn’t think too much about it. When she first heard about the disaster on television, she was scared.
She explained to us that she has attended these monthly protests for the past four years because if nobody does anything to oppose atomic energy, nothing will change and is hopeful that the protests will have some impact. She said that if there hadn’t been so many protesters in the streets after the Fukushima accident, more power plants would have been started back up than the two that are currently running, so the believes that vocal opposition does have some impact.
Like so many others, she distrusts the government, especially Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, whom she said is a liar and does not take responsibility for the things that he says. She also thinks the government was dishonest in their handling of the Fukushima disaster because they shared information with the United States military that they did not release to the Japanese public. She also does not trust TEPCO as she believes they change their data and reporting to suit their own self interests to make money. While she believes there is a good chance a nuclear disaster could happen again in Japan, it is hard to predict when due to the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters. She does not feel safe living in Japan, but says there is not much she can do about it. She is most worried about spent fuel and thinks that enough power can be generated without nuclear power plants by using other renewable sources of energy such as solar.
Concerned Mothers in Aizu
Multiple activists in the city of Aizu in Fukushima prefecture expressed their extreme skepticism of information and campaigns coming from the government designed to keep people from panicking about radiation levels in their areas since the accident. Even before 3.11, one interviewee stated, they automatically distrusted almost any information coming from the government. They believe it is their right to decide what is safe and what is not safe for themselves and their families, so they take it upon themselves to test food, household items, and areas in their communities for elevated levels of radiation. They also test children’s school uniforms, gym outfits and shoes to be sure the schools are safe for their children to attend, and claim to have found elevated levels of radioactive Cesium in these uniforms, which they say is a very tough but necessary reality to face.
One mother, concerned about the well-being of her son, who was three months old at the time, voluntarily left the area where she was living despite it being outside of the mandatory evacuation zone. She chose to move to Aizu because, even though it was still relatively close to where she had been living before, she believed it would be safer and it made it easier for her husband to see her and their son as he could not leave his job where they formerly lived and so had to commute about an hour from one city to another every day. Because of the long commute, she and her husband live apart and do not get to see each other nearly as often as they would like. He does not see eye-to-eye with her on the level of danger in Fukushima Prefecture and thinks she is being unreasonably cautious. It is also hard for her seeing the people who still live in the town that she left living normally, as if there were no radiation to worry about at all.
Aizu Refugees
Many of those living in temporary housing who were displaced by the disaster have decided to resettle in Aizu, believing that it is unlikely they will ever be able to get back to their hometown. Several also expressed their fears toward voicing their concerns about radiation exposure in the area, since most people are convinced that it is safe to live in these areas and that there is no cause for concern.
One temporary housing resident, who had worked on other nuclear reactors in the past, said that before the disaster that he thought the Fukushima plant was one of the safest in Japan’s fleet. Living only 9 kilometers away from the plant, he was told to evacuate soon after hearing that the Fukushima plant could be dangerous. Living conditions in the evacuation centers were difficult, as facilities quickly filled up with thousands of displaced residence and it became difficult for authorities to distribute heat, food, and water.
Another resident stated that she had moved through about five different shelters for refugees of the disaster before coming to Aizu, and the biggest lasting problem of the disaster for her has been a stress-related illness she has been suffering from. She has also had difficulty dealing with her some living quarters, as her old age made it difficult for her to reach her living space, which was on the fourth floor of a building. Another resident expressed her anger and disappointment that herself and other people living around the plant were not told that they would not be able to go back due to the nature of the disaster, and this remains fresh in her memory despite forgetting many other things. Distrust of the government was also brought up, as one interviewee stated that she distrusted the government’s announcement that the area around Aizu was safe because at the same time these announcements were being made many people she knew who were foreigners left Japan and many have still not come back. She believes that both the United States and Japanese governments are deliberately withholding information from the population about the real dangers of the accident.
To see how people were affected by the Three Mile Island accident, click here.
To learn about how the Fukushima disaster played out, click here.
To find out more about how nuclear disasters happen, click here.