"Fukushima Ain’t Got Time for Olympic Games”
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Foreword
By Maggie Gundersen
Today, Fairewinds is sharing several very personal essays and thoughts on our Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog and via Fairewinds Newsletter, Twitter Feed, and Facebook page. Several weeks ago, our friend and colleague, Dr. Norma Field, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, published one of the best overviews any of us at Fairewinds has read about the impact of the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi atomic power reactors upon the people and culture of Japan. Published on June 25, 2020, by The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, the article entitled – This Will Still Be True Tomorrow: “Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games”: Two Texts on Nuclear Disaster and Pandemic is a must-read worldwide.
Atomic power plants and nuclear power waste dumps are located all over the world. When one adds in the burden of nuclear test labs, uranium mining, and the manufacturing of atomic power fuel and nuclear weapons, the ecological weight of the radioactive legacy we all live with is overwhelming.
In the aftermath of Fukushima Dai-ichi, Dr. Field has written a well-researched and documented analysis of what is happening today to its victims. Tokyo Electric Company (TEPCO), the owner of the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors, and the government of Japan have forged ahead with decisions that have compromised the health, livelihood, and futures of victims and their families and their subsequent children – for generations. The government of Japan, in its allegiance to nuclear power and the international military/industrial complex, has failed miserably in its commitment to its citizens and severely impacted the health and welfare of generations to come with its contaminated land, air, water, and food.
As Dr. Field wrote in her abstract of the essay: “The fear of being forgotten that haunts the victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster set in quickly in the months following March 11, 2011.… The essay below elaborates on that context as an introduction to the two texts by Muto Ruiko, head of the citizens’ group whose efforts led to the only criminal trial to emerge from the Fukushima disaster…” [Note: In Japan, most names are written with the last name first, like the name Muto Ruiko. In our essays, we have written using Ruiko Muto in the English language style with the first name followed by last].
After reading and rereading and talking about Norma Field’s essay, Fairewinds contacted her to see if we could have a discussion and extract parts of her article to share with the Fairewinds community. She said yes, she would love that and would talk with The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus as well. Our special thanks to The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus to allow us to share Dr. Field’s fantastic article in total with you.
Most importantly, I asked Norma Field and Chiho Kaneko, a director with Fairewinds Energy Education, to write personal essays about the entire article posted here. Our work at Fairewinds Energy Education is not just about the technical aspects of nuclear power that we delve into as scientists and researchers, but more importantly, in our view it also focuses on the human perspective of atomic energy. Nuclear energy has its roots in the atomic bomb and is intertwined with today’s nuclear weapons.
Therefore, in this Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog post, you will see:
Fairewinds brief prologue to Dr. Field’s research.
A personal essay about why she wrote this article.
The article itself, with Dr. Field’s well-researched lead up to the remarkable efforts of Ruiko Muto to defend the victims of Fukushima, is critical to understanding what is happening in Japan and to the victims of this tragic debacle.
Ruiko Muto’s own inspiring and telling words about the nuclear disaster and the impact now on the so-called recovery Olympics and the people of Fukushima due to Pandemic 2020.
Afterward, please read the individual personal essay by Chiho Kaneko, a director with Fairewinds Board of Directors. Chiho has been integral to our scientific research and arranging our trips to Japan. We are so thankful to have her insight and support as a board member.
Finally, I have a brief epilogue at the end as to why it has been so crucial to Arnie and me to focus on the ongoing catastrophe of the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Prologue & Personal Essay
By Norma Field
The shadow of the Hiroshima man seated on the Sumitomo bank steps. CREDIT: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
A TV set was introduced into our household in 1957. That’s how I date my first encounter with the atomic bomb—not the mushroom cloud, but a grainy black-and-white image of a seated figure, silhouetted because vaporized was a term I didn’t yet know. The figure was so alarming that for days after, I couldn’t understand why grown-ups didn’t spend all their time trying to keep these weapons from ever being used again. It would be years before I put that image together with the earlier memory of breakfast table arguments between my American father, who came to Japan as a member of the US Occupation forces at the end of WWII, and my Japanese mother. My father insisted that the Pacific testing of nuclear weapons was necessary to defeat the Commies; my mother was adamantly opposed, though I got that only through her frowns and sighs. The power relationship between victor and vanquished was unambiguous even for a preschooler.
Trying to learn about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that began on March 11, 2011, I realized it would test whatever knowledge and tools for grappling with the world I had collected in adulthood. I had never bought the Japanese government campaign to get the Japanese people over their “nuclear allergies” and accept nuclear power. Still, the link between weapons and energy was fleshed out through the too-short life of my friend Sharon Stephens, an anthropologist who studied the impact of Chernobyl on the indigenous children of Scandinavia. Through her work, she came to understand that her health problems, dating back to childhood, were likely related to her having grown up as a downwinder of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced. She became interested in exploring the secrecy that haunts individuals, families, and communities around nuclear harm.
In Fukushima, the divisions induced among those put in harm’s way emerged early on as a most painful, intractable issue. First and foremost, the divisions are an expression of the terror provoked by the prospect of radiation exposure, especially given the knowledge that illness does not announce itself immediately. Such is the lingering power of “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki.” Those who could flee are envied and resented by those who could not. Evacuation is a direct statement of danger perceived. Parents who feel powerless to protect their children, who are desperately trying to stay upbeat, don’t appreciate parents who voice anxiety. Others warn that to worry out loud is to impede economic recovery. And still others say to point out Fukushima risk is to engage in Fukushima discrimination, an ominous reference to the marriage and employment discrimination faced by the sufferers of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. As if impaired health, or the possibility of such, actually warranted such discrimination. Better to leave such issues unexplored; better yet, to deny the presence of risk factors altogether.
Many Japanese citizens rose in protest after the reactor explosions. In the long, short time lapsed since March 11, 2011, some—both those who left Fukushima and those who have stayed—have maintained their activism. Like many activists, they are resented by those who are trying just to get on with their everyday lives. They may be denounced as outsiders. More and more, as we approach the 10th anniversary of the disaster, we can see that these activists are struggling not only to win justice for themselves but for justice for all. They also work to reveal the structure that makes such disasters possible, to insist on accountability, to protect the earth itself from more needless contamination. In this, they are following the footsteps of the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite the burdens of age and ill-health, have unceasingly pushed themselves to call for a world without nuclear weapons.
From late February to March of 2020, the onset of the pandemic threatened to make Fukushima issues invisible even more effectively than the government or pronuclear forces. I wanted to acknowledge those who maintain their struggle, their truth-seeking, with courage and thoughtfulness. I especially thank Ruiko Muto for her steadfast example of how we might conduct our lives.
Norma Field was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She first came to the US at college age. Her BA is from Pitzer Collge, MA from Indiana University, and PhD from Princeton University. Now professor emerita, she began her career at the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations of the University of Chicago as a scholar of classical Japanese literature (The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji, 1987). In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century’s End, 1991) is her first political-cultural publication. Subsequent work on modern Japanese leftist literature in Japanese (Kobayashi Takiji 21seiki ni dou yomuka [Reading Kobayashi Takiji) for the 21st Century] and English (co-editor and translator) For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature, 2016) informs her current work on the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
She is editor and co-translater of Fukushima Radiation: Will You Still Say No Crime Has Been Committed? Her most recent publications are Ima, “Heiwa” o honki de kataru ni wa: Inochi, jiyu, rekishi [To seriously talk peace today: Life, freedom, history]; The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics (introduction and translation of Koide Hiroaki). With Yuki Miyamoto, she maintains the Atomic Age website.
This Will Still Be True Tomorrow: “Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games”: Two Texts on Nuclear Disaster and Pandemic
Article was originally published in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
By Muto Ruiko
Introduced and translated by Norma Field
Abstract (1)
The fear of being forgotten that haunts the victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster set in quickly in the months following March 11, 2011. The Tokyo Olympics, touted as the “Recovery Olympics,” has served as a powerful vehicle for accelerating amnesia, on the one hand justifying the rushed reopening of restricted zones and other decisions of convenience, on the other, programming moments highlighting Fukushima in the Games. As preparations for the latter, especially the torch relay, reached fever pitch, the novel coronavirus intervened to force an abrupt postponement. It also disrupted ongoing and special events planned for the ninth 3.11 anniversary. The essay below elaborates on that context as an introduction to two texts by Muto Ruiko, head of the citizens’ group whose efforts led to the only criminal trial to emerge from the Fukushima disaster. The first, a speech anticipating the torch relay, outlines what the Olympics asks us to forget about Fukushima; the second is a reflection on living under two emergency declarations, the first nuclear, the second, COVID-19.
Key words: Olympics; Fukushima; torch relay; COVID-19; coronavirus; Dentsu; activism; Muto Ruiko
Prologue from an Ever-Shifting Present
Everybody has experienced, from childhood on, time crawling and time galloping, or time simply standing still, against the indifferent tic-toc of the clock. For much of the world, there is now a recent remote past—before the pandemic—and a present of bottomless uncertainty. But time continues to move unevenly in the new present, marked by unpredictable drama, as in the case of a tweetstorm that forced Abe Shinzo’s government to shelve a bill extending the retirement age of prosecutors, or by unexpected power, as in the global fury unleashed by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. The former, exploiting the attractive anonymity afforded by Twitter, punctuated years of quiescence following the demonstrations provoked by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when tens of thousands of Japanese were willing to show their faces in protest. The latter seems the logical culmination of only the most recent instances of police brutality hurled before our eyes by the unabated racism and structural inequality prevailing in the U.S. Although the Japanese instance has been related to the coronavirus, the U.S. case is indisputably magnified by the overwhelming disparity in COVID-19 suffering, whether in numbers of death, the preponderance of minorities in the under-compensated, risk-burdened ranks of essential workers, and the economic nightmare, owing to job insecurity and paucity of savings, produced by the pandemic, such that “logical” now has the force of “inevitable.” And yet, is so remarkable as to also seem unpredictable.
As one recent remote past is replaced by another, we cannot forget that the issues thrust upon us by each of these recent pasts have hardly been resolved. Even as they momentarily recede from the foreground, they constitute a cumulative, living—and therefore, shifting—seismic force upon our present. This is the spirit motivating the following examination of the Tokyo Olympics and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, meant to serve as an introduction to two reflections by Muto Ruiko, head of the Complainants for the Criminal Prosecution of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. The first was delivered in anticipation of the 2020 Olympic torch relay to be kicked off in Fukushima; the second, written in the midst of the COVID-19 emergency declaration.
A Dream Vehicle for Amnesia
In the early spring months of 2020 in the northern hemisphere, the grim march of infection numbers was punctuated by reports of miraculous sightings, some true, others false: swans (false) and fish (true) in the lagoons of Venice; or blue sky in New Delhi. It felt as if decades of devoted action, joined in recent years by youth from the world over demanding that the earth be habitable for them, were being mocked. As if only a pandemic could bring about conditions seemingly more hospitable to life forms even as livelihood for many threatened to imperil health or simply vanish.(2)
In Japan, as if to scoff at the concerted efforts to protest that fabulous exercise in deceit called the “Recovery Olympics,” postponement of the games was abruptly announced on March 23, 2020, a scant four months in advance of the opening, when the torch—dubbed the “Flame of Recovery”—had already begun its triumphal progress(3) in northern Japan. Does this mean that the effort expended in opposing the Olympics was wasted? The question is rhetorical, of course. In the coming months and years, we will need to reflect on the political, socioeconomic, and experiential impact of the assaults brought on by two kinds of invisible agents, radionuclides and a pandemic-causing virus. But for now, let us pause over the actions of antinuclear activists confronting the convergence of Covid-19 and the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
“And in any case, I absolutely cannot inflict such a fate on my own children”Special cabinet adviser Kosako Toshiso announcing his resignation at press conference
April 29, 2011. Source
There is nothing bold about claiming that a major design of the games was to put paid to the 2011 triple disaster, most especially, the nuclear disaster. That objective is trumpeted in the official moniker, the “Recovery Olympics” (or in the even less merchandise-friendly translation of fukko, “Reconstruction”). It is still worth remarking how quickly those wheels were set in motion—the goal announced and declared achieved in virtually the same breath, as in Prime Minister Abe’s “under control” statement before the International Olympics Committee in Buenos Aires, a claim at which even TEPCO would demur shortly after it was made. That was September 2013. But the domestic selection of Tokyo as Japan’s candidate city had taken place on July 16, 2011, an indecent four months after the terrifying explosions. Only one month earlier, the Japanese government had admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency that the molten fuel in reactors 1-3 had suffered a “melt-through” and not a mere “meltdown.” The daunting physical trials posed by the Fukushima Daiichi plant generated correspondingly difficult administrative challenges for Kan Naoto’s Democratic Party government. In late April, University of Tokyo professor Kosako Toshiso, hitherto a reliable government expert testifying against A-bomb survivors pressing for recognition, resigned as special cabinet adviser in a tearful press conference: as a scholar and from the standpoint of his “own humanism,” he could not condone raising the annual exposure rate for workers from 100 millisieverts (mSv)/yr to 250, or from 1 mSv/yr to 20 for primary school playgrounds in Fukushima.(4) How could anyone in a position of responsibility have had the spare time to be plotting an Olympic bid during that period?
Preparing for official 2020 Tokyo bid:
Governor Ishihara Shintaro with Jacques Rogge, IOC chair
July 2, 2011. Source
A quick review suggests it was more a case of who was sufficiently determined to press on with pre-existing ambitions in the face of a catastrophe. Right-wing, nationalist politician Ishihara Shintaro, then Governor of Tokyo, had felt thwarted by the loss of the 2016 games to Rio de Janeiro.(5) With strong encouragement from former prime minister Mori Yoshio (who would become head of the 2020 organizing committee), Ishihara declared that Tokyo would bid again once he was reelected on April 11. On that same day, Matsui Kazumi, a Hiroshima mayoral candidate opposed to that city’s Olympic bid, was elected, and in short order, withdrew the city from the running, leaving Tokyo as the de facto candidate from Japan.(6) Ishihara, speaking in Tokyo on July 16, 2011, “passionately” proclaimed the purpose of the “Recovery Olympics” (fukko gorin) to be the demonstration of Japan’s recovery from the 2011 disaster. By the end of 2011, a pet scheme opportunistically harnessed to the disaster by conservative politicians had won support across party lines. Noda Yoshihiko, who succeeded Kan as prime minister even or especially as the latter showed himself susceptible to public sentiment favoring de-nuclearization, declared that the Fukushima plant had successfully entered a “cold shutdown” on December 6. (See timeline here.)
With hindsight—and not much of that—it is easy to grasp that the disaster and the 2020 Games were a match made in Olympic heaven. Without this bit of serendipity, the 2020 bid might have floundered in search of a convincing brand. (The mission of the failed 2016 bid was “Uniting Our Worlds.”) In the coming months and years, one worthy goal or another was accentuated for Tokyo 2020, but Recovery has been the mainstay.(7) The serendipity has proven to be priceless because the promotion-proclamation of recovery, regardless of cost to people, the environment, and even government credibility, was the guiding principle behind managing the disaster from the start, as reflected in the watchwords of “ties that bind” (kizuna), “recovery/reconstruction/revitalization” (fukko), and “reputational harm” (fuhyo higai). This triplet of key words—two carrots of hope, one stick of warning—has managed to police Fukushima discourse to the present day: who would resist the call for solidarity in the hope of recovery? Or impede recovery by expressing worries about food safety? The expression of anxiety, whether on the part of mothers who stayed on or Tokyo consumers, is susceptible to the charge of causing “reputational harm,” which can further be seen as participating in discrimination against Fukushima.(8) Redefining evacuation zones, ever so narrowly defined from the start, along with assistance cutoff, began as early as September 30, 2011, well before the Olympics were secured, but convenient markers of recovery gained tacit and explicit reinforcement as soon as the Olympics appeared on the horizon.(9)
Getting ready for the Olympics in Fukushima Children at work on turf seedlings at J-Village May 8, 2018. Source
True to the adage that a good offense is the best defense, Fukushima itself was assigned a prominent role: to host the opening matches in baseball and softball, and perhaps even more significantly, to serve as the starting point of the torch relay.(10) In other words, the intractable nuclear disaster, which had often taken a back seat to the earthquake and especially, the dramatic tsunami in invocations of the “triple” disaster, was to be featured front and center, albeit momentarily, in the form of its erasure: Fukushima would be displayed to the world as having recovered. And to further drive home the point, J-Village, the former national soccer training center that served as the frontline base for operations for Fukushima Daiichi (workers lodged, vehicles washed, protective gear donned and disposed of) from March 15, 2011, was selected for the start of the torch relay. Not surprisingly, despite extensive efforts to clean up and beautify—including having local elementary students planting grass seedlings—radioactive hot spots continue to turn up.(11)
The Astonishing Journey of the Torch
By February, the crescendo of 2020 Olympics preparation in Fukushima took on a manic quality before descending into a surreal sublime and finally, sputtering into silence. Day one of the torch relay was to take runners through areas close to the plant. Futaba, one of two adjacent towns hosting the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, its entire population still under mandatory evacuation, was not on the original route. With a partial lifting scheduled for March 4, the organizing committee decided on February 13 to respond to the wishes of the prefecture and rearranged the schedule to include Futaba. This would, said the grateful mayor, “light the flame of hope in our hearts and become a boost for recovery.” On March 14, the severed sections of the Joban train line that connected this portion of Fukushima with Tokyo were reconnected for the first time in nine years. Some gathered to cheer on the platforms, despite the fact that not much of the land beyond the station was accessible, for most of the town was still designated as “difficult-to-return-to” in the tactful—that is to say, strategically obfuscating—parlance of Fukushima disaster management.(12) The plan was to have the flame, carried in a lantern and accompanied by runners, transported by train to newly reconstructed Futaba Station as part of the relay on March 26.
Lantern transported on Sanriku Railway from Miyako to Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture March 22, 2020—two days before postponement announced. Source
Back in the metropolitan region, in the meanwhile, the number of people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Yokohama testing positive for the novel coronavirus shot up from 10 to 700 between February 4 and 28. With the Abe regime clearly hell-bent on holding the Olympics as scheduled, local organizers scrambled to stay one step ahead of the virus. They could not bring themselves to relinquish plans for displaying the torch in the three disaster-hit prefectures prior to the relay, not to say the relay itself. Whatever the precautionary advice, nothing like social distancing was on display as people flocked to see the “Flame of Recovery” at its various resting places. Most provocative, though, was the flame’s journey on the local Sanriku Railway in Iwate Prefecture. Secured in a lantern, it was placed between facing seats before a window, through which the “coastal townscape of recovery proceeding apace spread before the eye.”(13) Passengers had been excluded, but the lantern could be viewed at key stops, where people gathered to welcome and then send off the flame.
Lantern transported from Kamaishi to Hanamaki, Iwate Prefecture on SL Ginga [Milky Way], inspired by the work of Iwate-born writer Miyazawa Kenji
March 22, 2020. Source
Even as this frenzied prelude unfolded, anxiety mounted as to whether the torch relay itself could in fact take place. On March 17, it was announced that the relay would be held, but without the ceremonies planned at stopping points. Spectators would be permitted as long as they “avoided” overcrowding, though one resident expressed disappointment: she had thought “the sight of overflowing crowds would symbolize recovery.” In less than a week, on March 23, this plan was replaced by a new proposal: a torch relay with no spectators—and no runners. The flame would be driven around Fukushima Prefecture, stripped even of the romance of rail travel. The following day, however, the other shoe dropped: the Games were to be postponed until 2021, and the 2020 torch relay canceled altogether. Ever resilient, organizers put the flame on display at J-Village for a month beginning April 2, with the hope that it could tour other parts of the country in the interest of “revitalization.” This, too, came to naught within the space of one week, with the Prime Minister’s declaration of a state of emergency.(14)
It could be taken for parody, this frenzy over the torch relay. The Olympics were meant to be a magic wand waving a spanking new post-disaster world into existence. As those prospects began to dim, the flame burned ever more brightly. The fuel? Greed. Pride. A yearning for fantasy in the midst of a dubious recovery, and an appetite for exploiting it. And the apparent means to do so. Or deciding that the means existed, despite mounting cost overruns.(15)
Recently, it was reported that the Foreign Ministry was directing $22 million to AI monitoring of overseas coverage of Japan’s pandemic response—as if this were more a “PR challenge than a profound public health crisis” (Kingston 2020). Perhaps this mode is even more far-reaching than we cynically, or more neutrally, abstractly, imagine. About one year ago, Taakurataa, a remarkable little magazine published in Nagano Prefecture, managed, through tenacious use of Japan’s version of freedom-of-information requests, to discover that in the seven years between 2011 and 2018, the central government and Fukushima Prefecture had paid $224 million to the PR firm Dentsu. The Environment Ministry was by far the greatest customer, using approximately half that budget for Dentsu’s services in the campaign to inform the public about its decontamination and debris cleanup efforts. The guidelines were to make people feel “safe and secure” (anshin anzen) again, “bring people back to their home towns,” and “have citizens recover pride in their hometowns.” A study group was created, consisting of staff from the prefectural forestry and fishery division as well as newspaper and TV marketing divisions, not to purvey a message, but in order to monitor twitter users and identify those who could be classified as “sources of reputation harm,” “supporters of the right-to-evacuate trial,” or simply “noise,” if they said anything that would dampen enthusiasm for Fukushima agricultural products.(16) It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a marketing firm had been appointed a principal actor, with potential censorship power, in deciding Fukushima policy. And of course, that same firm is a major player in Tokyo 2020: Dentsu Inc. is the Games’s official marketing agency.
A briefly revealed, quickly forgotten detail about the Olympics-Dentsu chain of operations makes Fukushima seem a minor, though useful, link in that chain: a former Dentsu executive and member of the organizing committee disclosed, a few days after postponement was announced, that he had played a key role in securing the support of an African Olympics power-broker now under investigation by French prosecutors. He, Takahashi Haruyuki—still on the organizing committee—had been paid $8.2 million by the Japanese bidding committee, which presumably had some relation to the $46,500 the bidding committee paid to Seiko Watch. Seiko watches and digital cameras, said Takahashi, were “cheap,” and common sense dictated that “You don’t go empty-handed.” Dentsu’s contracts for Fukushima recovery—as known to date—come to seem almost reasonable, at $224 million over seven years, or $32 million per year. Takahashi singly was paid one-quarter of that to procure the Recovery Olympics.
Perhaps this is all unsurprising—a version of normal operating procedure most of the time for certain strata of the world. If so, then here, as in countless other instances, we need to make the modest yet seemingly immense effort to refresh our capacity for surprise. And anger. That there is so much profit to be made in doing anything but genuinely contribute to Fukushima remediation, to in fact, profit by diverting attention and burying the disaster, as if “nothing had happened,”(17) should rouse us all, in solidarity both with the few who sustain the struggle and with those who gave up long ago, too exhausted from maintaining daily life to keep insisting not only that something had happened, but that it was still happening. Some of the struggle-weary were likely in the throngs greeting the arrival of the flame from Greece, or taking selfies with the lantern-encased flame. And as astonishing as it seems, there is already a new generation of children who were infants or unborn in 2011 now grown old enough to enjoy a spectacle touting the recovery of their region, their pleasure untainted by responsible education about the long-term impact of a nuclear disaster.(18) Their parents may have welcomed the chance to banish recurring reminders of the disaster: reports of the re-dispersal of radionuclides and especially conspicuous, images of decontamination waste bags unmoored in the flooding brought on by Typhoon Hagibis; or the agonizingly protracted, risky dismantling of a highly contaminated vent stack at the Fukushima Daiichi plant itself; or the Olympic plans themselves putting hot spots back in the news.(19) Bread and circuses is the bright side of the coin whose other face is expert exhortation to accept living amid decontamination waste for the foreseeable future: “Why would other prefectures want to accept waste that you yourselves don’t want?”—exhortation sweetened by the assurance that Fukushima contamination is not, for the most part, harmful. Anxiety, after all, is a matter of the mind/spirit (fuan wa kokoro no mondai).(20)
Radiation instruction for the very young:
“Let’s block beta particles with ‘scissors’!”
Fukushima Prefectural Centre for Environmental Creation, Community Relations Wing - July, 2018
It was back in June of 2019, an eternity before Covid-19 would appear on anybody’s horizon, that the torch relay route was announced, omitting Futaba. Was that omission owing to the last, frayed shred of realist perception, in view of the fact that the town was still off limits to the entire population? As Kowata Masumi, councilor of Okuma, the other town hosting the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and one of the painfully few elected officials in Fukushima willing to address radioactive contamination, observed, “National Route 6 still has high radiation levels. There are places where hardly any residents have returned, and conditions are not suitable for people running or cheering from the roadside.” Voicing the common complaint that the Olympics were deflecting workers and materials from Fukushima, she told Our Planet-TV, “They seem to have turned the idea of recovery on its head.” Any legitimacy accruing to the commonsensical had long ago been extinguished in the fever dream of the Olympics.
Protest and Pandemic
“It’s all Olympics all the time,” said emails from Fukushima. But as February wore on, with the drumbeat of news from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the novel coronavirus became an ominous competitor for attention. Emails began to say, “It’s exactly the same. Deny it’s happening. Don’t test. Find experts who’ll support that policy.” And rather sooner than later, “Is anyone taking responsibility?”(21) If COVID-19 cast a shadow on Olympic plans, it also was a challenge for groups long opposed to the games. This was the run-up period for the 9th anniversary of March 11, a difficult time for survivors and a crucial occasion for them and antinuclear activists to remind the rest of the country of what had happened and how much remained unresolved, with some hardships predictably aggravated, rather than alleviated, through the passage of time. Anguished discussions took place about canceling or proceeding with activities that had already consumed months of painstaking preparation. Sharing with other progressives a deep-seated antagonism to the Abe administration, activists were reluctant to relinquish the platform of the anniversary occasion, given already fading public interest exacerbated by the Olympics. Wouldn’t cancellation have a ripple effect on other organizations? Wouldn’t the government exploit this to apply pressure for “voluntary restraint” (jishuku)(22) across a range of activities? At the same time, wasn’t the desire to safeguard health at the heart of the antinuclear movement? Was it appropriate for those who had made the agonizing choice to leave, not just Fukushima and immediately adjacent areas but the Tokyo region as well, to put themselves along with others at risk of exposure? If a valued keynote speaker were willing to appear remotely, were the organizers obliged to follow through? What were the ethics of putting one’s body on the line in these circumstances?(23)
Anniversary events, large and small, were postponed or canceled outright. One of the largest had been planned by FoE Japan (Friends of the Earth). Although not exclusively dedicated to the nuclear issue, it has been a leader in the field since 2011, remarkable for the depth of on-the-ground work underlying its educational and watchdog activities. Besides issuing its own carefully researched public comments, FoE has taken initiative to hold public-comment writing workshops, so that citizens unaccustomed to expressing themselves in this medium—never mind on such topics as evaluation of the Rokkasho reprocessing facility or the release of contaminated water into the Pacific—could be empowered to participate. In 2019, it launched an ambitious “Make Seeable” (mieruka) project to contest the Olympics-accelerated obliteration of traces of the disaster, whether the number and circumstances of evacuees, the disposition of contaminated soil issuing from “decontamination,” or health effects. The March 2020 symposium would have brought together workers from Fukushima, a liquidator from Chernobyl, evacuees, physicians and scholars, a physician and energy specialists from Germany, for presentations in Tokyo followed by two venues in Fukushima.(24) In April, as part of the “Make Seeable” project, FoE Japan planned to send young people to a workshop in Germany where they could network with youth from France and Belarus as well as Germany. This, too, was not to be. Here, as elsewhere in the world, the novel coronavirus, itself as invisible as radionuclides, asserted its power in unmistakably visible fashion—revealing what had been obscured and providing opportunities for new concealment in the process.
The days of “voluntary restraint” from activity, without economic support to speak of, have imposed hardships, predictably severe for the most vulnerable. They have also intensified antinuclear activists’ sense of urgency: not only have they witnessed the power of the coronavirus to swiftly and therefore visibly impact all sectors of society, but they soon came to realize that it provided cover to proceed with activities they strenuously opposed, such as paving the way for dumping “treated” water from the damaged reactors into the Pacific.(25) On another front, court dates for the approximately thirty Fukushima-related cases winding their way through jurisdictions around the country have been postponed or even cancelled, eliminating a precious occasion for plaintiffs, lawyers, and citizen supporters to rally at the courthouse and hold press conferences—for themselves, for all of us who should care, and for the judges, who need to know that there is still a caring public. One of the most active and inclusive groups of plaintiffs (both mandatory and “voluntary” evacuees, from within and without Fukushima) seeking compensation, their attorneys, and supporters centered in the Osaka area put together a composite video message to fill the lacuna, reminding us of their goals—securing normal lives, the right to evacuate, and a safe future—and giving us a glimpse of how nuclear evacuees are experiencing the coronavirus. The video format also reveals the still differing degrees of visibility participants feel able to tolerate—from full face, full name to full face but first/assumed name only to voice only.
With the pressure of the Olympics removed for the moment,(26) these groups are having to grapple with the coronavirus as they continue to address the consequences of the nuclear disaster.
From Olympics to Pandemic: Two texts by Muto Ruiko
Muto Ruiko outside Tokyo District Court on the morning of September 19, 2019, before the judgement. (Photo by N. Field)
Muto Ruiko, who was propelled to antinuclear activism by the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, captured the nation’s attention with a breathtaking speech at the first “Sayonara Nukes” rally in Tokyo in September of 2011.(27) She became head of the Complainants for Criminal Prosecution of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, which, against all odds, led to the only criminal proceeding—against three former TEPCO executives—to result from the disaster.(28) She is a respected leader, vital to many of the activities referred to above and more. The first text below, “Fukushima ain’t got the time for Olympic Games” is a speech delivered at Azuma Sports Park in Fukushima City on March 1, 2020, just as storm clouds were gathering for the Olympics-pandemic collision. It was an action jointly organized by Hidanren—Fukushima Gempatsu Jiko Higaisha Dantai Renrakukai (Liaison of Fukushima Nuclear Accident Victims’ Groups) and Datsugempatsu Fukushima Nettowaku (Fukushima Denuclearization Network). It is translated here with permission from Muto Ruiko; the original may be found here. The second is a reflection from May on the two overlapping emergency declarations: the nuclear emergency, issued March 11, 2011, at 19:03 and as yet unrescinded;(29) and the novel coronavirus emergency, declared on April 7, 2020, and rescinded in stages, by locale and region, between May 14 and May 25, 2020. The second piece was written before the coronavirus emergency declaration was lifted, for the newsletter of Tomeyo! Tokai Daini Gempatsu Shutoken Renrakukai (Shut it down! Liaison of Citizens from the Metropolitan Prefectures Seeking to Close Unit 2 of the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant).(30) The piece, from Nyusu No. 4 (June 2020) is translated here with their permission.
Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games
With the risks of the coronavirus in mind, we went back-and-forth about whether to proceed with this action, but considering that it would take place outdoors, that it wouldn’t involve large numbers, and that we would be equipped with face masks and alcohol, we managed to arrive at the decision to go through with our plans.
Nine years since the nuclear accident, the Olympics and the torch relay now dominate the news and the whole atmosphere of Fukushima Prefecture.
Night and day, athletes are giving their all to prepare for the Olympics.
Middle-schoolers have hitched their dreams to the torch relay and are eager to run.
And probably, there are people looking forward to watching the relay and the ball games.
Then why must we take this kind of action?
Because we think this is no time to be hosting an Olympics in Fukushima.
Have on-site conditions been stabilized since the accident?
Is the contaminated water under control?
How many workers have had to climb the vent stack to dismantle it?
Have victims been properly compensated?
Have their lives been restored?
Has industry returned to pre-accident levels?
Will these Olympics truly contribute to recovery?
Is it certain that neither athletes nor residents will be subject to radiation exposure?
With problems piling up one after the other, the people of Fukushima, both the ones living here and the ones who’ve left, are desperately trying to live their lives.
There isn’t a single person who doesn’t wish for a true recovery from the disaster.
In Fukushima today, what is it that we should be prioritizing first and foremost?
Stupendous sums of money are being poured into the Olympics and the torch relay. Multiple problems, hidden by the Olympics, are receding from view. We are worried about what will be left once the Olympics are finished.
It’s not the Fukushima that looks recovered on the surface that we want to make known. It’s the true conditions we want the world to know, about the cumulative problems that can’t be solved in nine short years—the suffering and the struggle caused by the harms of the nuclear disaster.
Then let us today, all together, proclaim heartily, “Fukushima ain’t got the time for Olympic Games!”
Life Under Two Emergency Declarations
In Fukushima, the “declaration of a state of emergency” issued with the spread of the novel coronavirus was superimposed on a “declaration of a nuclear emergency situation” that has never been rescinded. For victims of the nuclear accident, this occasion calls up many memories of that experience: staying indoors; wearing a mask; searching frantically for information; fighting the mounting tide of anxiety. In the early days of the contagion, we felt terribly oppressed, psychologically.
But gradually, it became possible to see that there were commonalities and differences between the nuclear accident and the spread of the coronavirus. Fearing that people would panic, the government concealed the truth. It limited testing as much as possible, and without disclosing accurate case numbers, made them seem trivial. Ad hoc measures led to the sacrifice of the most vulnerable. Expert opinion was distorted to suit political power. Taking advantage of the disaster, opportunistic capitalist ventures rose to press their interests. These are some of the commonalities.
Some of the differences are the speed with which the infection has spread, making it more readily graspable; the dispersal of the afflicted in large numbers throughout Japan; and large-scale citizen protest prompted by the government’s coercive actions with little regard for laws and statutory authority, such as the sudden request for school closures or the proposal for revision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office Act.
After the nuclear accident, we anticipated a transformation in values, in worldview. It turns out that such a wish is not readily granted. Maybe this time—we can’t help hoping. But, in a world where more chemical substances are added to the environment by the day, where climate change is intensifying, it is possible that the next emergency is already waiting in the wings. Rather than tossing and turning between hope and despair, we need to work hard, together, to gain clarity on what we should prioritize for protection in the event of such an emergency. Otherwise, we run the risk of letting our fear and sense of oppression invite the heavy hand of authority.
Eventually, the state of emergency occasioned by the coronavirus threat is likely be lifted, although questions about appropriateness of timing and extent will remain. But how long will the “declaration of a nuclear emergency situation” remain in effect, imposing on people annual exposure levels up to 20 millisieverts per year, or leaving behind waste with levels of radioactivity 80 times pre-disaster levels? In the shadow of the coronavirus, problems that demand resolution are accumulating, while opportunistic measures are advanced, such as the use of the torch relay to trumpet Fukushima recovery, or the release of contaminated-ALPS-treated water into the environment.
Living under a double state of emergency, I have come to hold, more than ever, that we must commit ourselves in earnest to the following simple task: “to learn the truth and to help each other.” Failing that, it will be difficult for us humans, along with other living things, to survive on this planet.
March 1, 2020. Source
Note: The Fairewinds Energy Education website host does not allow superscript hyperlinking. Footnotes have been marked in bold where they appear in the original journal article. You may check those references here (footnotes are listed at the bottom of the page).
Afterword & Personal Essay
By Chiho Kaneko, Member, Board of Directors Fairewinds Energy Education
“People are divided as if to mimic the nature of nuclear technology – splitting of atoms.”
When I visited Fukushima prefecture in the fall of 2012, a thoughtful man, who subsequently became a friend, told me this. He also introduced me to Ms. Ruiko Muto.
Ruiko is widely known as the leader of the plaintiff group that brought charges against the former TEPCO executives. Her motive, she told me in 2012, was to attribute the culpability of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi to the correct source, so that the victims could direct their frustration and anger appropriately, instead of fighting among themselves. Doing so was imperative, she said, to find true healing. I appreciate Ruiko’s wisdom and commitment. She has been kind and generous to make time in her incredibly full life to show me around whenever I have visited eastern Fukushima.
I am grateful to Professor Norma Field for bringing attention to Ruiko’s voice. Norma’s thoughtful and comprehensive background analyses reflect her own wisdom and commitment. I have spoken with Norma on the phone and we have exchanged some emails over the past few years. Her insights are razor-sharp and spot-on, in my mind, anchored by her deep understanding of two cultures. Perhaps one day I will get to meet her in person. I truly hope so.
Ruiko and Norma. Notably, I got to know these extraordinary women because of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster. When the danger is great, so is our instinct to counter it. When someone is trying to divide us, it is good to remember this and act on such instinct.
Chiho Kaneko was born and raised in Iwate, Japan, one of the northern prefectures hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. After graduating from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Chiho has spent most of her life in the United States, while maintaining a solid tie with her native land. She is a visual artist, journalist, and musician.
Epilogue
By Maggie Gundersen
[Why I wanted to feature Dr. Norma Field’s research and tribute to Ruiko Muto]
As many of you know, I founded Fairewinds Energy Education Nonprofit in 2008 as an educational offshoot of Fairewinds Associates, Inc, the paralegal services and expert witness firm I founded in 2003 [and incorporated in 2005]. Arnie and I initially thought we were doing the right thing when we worked in the atomic power industry to support the ‘peaceful use of the atom’. We believed the industry’s claim that no nuclear weapons and no atomic bombs would ever be needed again if atomic power provided electricity to all people and would be as they advertised: “too cheap to meter”.
Arnie and I were wrong in our assessment and initial belief regarding nuclear power. We grew up during the administration of President Eisenhower when we were taught that the Atoms for Peace program of nuclear power was a correction for the devastation of the atomic bomb. Arnie became a nuclear engineer, and I used my journalism background to work in nuclear public information. Since becoming nuclear whistleblowers in 1990, we have dedicated our lives to safe, ecologically compatible, economic, and environmentally just forms of producing energy. Ironically, when we were sued by former nuclear industry employers and forced into bankruptcy, the house we lost was a 1970s active and passive solar house out in the country. Even back then, we believed in sustainable energy.
I first became interested in Japan as a country when I was in eighth grade, and my father’s business associates from Japan visited us and spent a week at our home in rural Connecticut. A few years later, my parents took an extended business trip to Japan. When they returned, my mother spent time speaking publicly at local schools and community events to share her experiences of life and travel in Japan. I continued my interest in Japan when I taught at a high school with many international students, one of whom became my advisee and also spent some time living with Arnie, me, and our children who were near her age. I have always hoped to travel there, and that is one item still unfulfilled on my bucket list.
When the tragedy at Fukushima Dai-ichi occurred, we jointly committed to bringing every fact about the meltdowns forward to help the people of Japan survive and move on safely from the Fukushima debacle. We will continue this effort. Fairewinds will keep you informed.
