Put on a Happy Face – Japan Speaking Tour Series No. 4
/ Grayson Webb
Before speaking to audiences in Sendai, Japan, where restart of atomic power coincided with a volcanic eruption a mere 31-miles away, Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen talks with the Fairewinds Crew about the current lives of Japanese people affected by the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. Stories shared include women stigmatized as ‘traitors’ for removing their children from the Fukushima Prefecture, doctors put out of business for diagnosing radiation sickness, and the conflicting pressure by the government for evacuees to reunite with family within the Fukushima Prefecture and make Fukushima a home again. Frightened, homeless, and and oftentimes ill, those displaced by the atomic meltdown are encouraged by the Abe regime to simply smile – as Abe’s spokesperson says, “the cure for radiation is a smile”.
Transcript
English
CP: Hi, you’re listening to the Fairewinds Energy Education podcast hosted by the Fairewinds crew. I’m Caroline Philips, Program Administrator and welcome to the show. Today we will be talking to Arnie Gundersen from his Japanese speaking tour, and we’re excited to hear what he has to say and report on. Hi, Arnie.
AG: Hey, Caroline. Hi, how are you?
CP: Doing pretty well. Where are you today?
AG: Well, I’m in Kobe, and that’s the site of that huge earthquake back in 1995. But then we’re heading down to the Sendai reactor and that’s the one that’s right next to the volcano, so I might get to see a volcano later.
CP: Right. Will you be able to see lava?
AG: I know it was spouting lava earlier. It was dormant for quite a long while, and then when the Japanese decided to start up Sendai, the gods decided to start up the volcano.
CP: So who will be your audience today?
AG: The audience is a mixture. We’ve spoken to a lot of YMCA organizations, believe it or not. The Y is huge over here in Japan. But we also spoke to UNICEF, and just yesterday I spoke to the Kobe Co-Op. If you’re in the States, you think of these co-ops as the little local store you’ve got in town, but the Kobe Co-Op has got an eight-story building. They’re just absolutely huge. I think, though, the interesting thing is, regardless of whom I’m speaking to, they’re all interested. We had the women from Fukushima tell us that we were the first people that ever took – these are people that have been displaced and are in refugee camps – they say we were the first people to talk to them about radiation.
CP: That’s so tragic, the thought of that for me, to think of these families displaced and no one in five years from the government or from TEPCO or from anyone has bothered to talk to them.
AG: Oh, yeah. And it’s worse than that. We’ve bumped into a lot of women and I’m sure there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of them in southern Japan who have taken their kids and left. Yesterday I met one and she said her parents are calling her – and the exact word was a traitor to Japan, because she’s left. Another woman told us that her family told her that if everybody ate the same food and everybody went and hung out together in Fukushima Prefecture, it would be fine because everybody was there. A famous doctor here in Japan is saying that the best cure for radiation is smiling. The pressure these families are under to reunite in Fukushima Prefecture is enormous. But I have to give the women a lot of credit. They are – against all odds, they’ve taken their kids and they’re in a much safer location.
CP: Arnie, do you know what they’re now doing for a living, job-wise or how these women are being able to support their children and support themselves while they’re going against family and potentially their spouses?
AG: (3:38) They find jobs in the local communities. When their families are intact, their husbands continue to send them money. One of the women I met – more than one – there’s several whose husbands are divorcing them – and in the Japanese court system, if the judge believes that there’s no such thing as radiation – one woman said that the family’s position is that she’s joined a religious cult and things like that – but in the Japanese court system, if the judge believes that her fears are unfounded, the kid goes back with the father. And there’s a lot of that here. The other interesting things is that there are many communities who want these woman. Japan’s rural areas are depopulating. Some of these villages, half the houses are empty as people die and the young people go to the cities. Large portions of these little tiny towns are unpopulated. So a lot of cities are competing to get these families back into a home, and there’s actually agencies that do it. The problem is, a lot of the women go but the husbands stay behind. So we’re having these broken families.
CP: So let me see if I get this right. These cities that are not near Fukushima Daiichi and not near the radiation are recruiting people who have been living in refugee camps or who are refugees from the radiation, to come and live in homes that they have there that they could provide for them?
AG: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And they’re nice homes and these are nice villages. The problem from the women’s standpoint is that the village doesn’t come with them. All of the village ties – they can’t take the entire village. But there’s enough houses in some of these towns to take a half dozen or a dozen families in a dozen homes. So it is possible you could be with your group of friends, but not your entire village.
CP: What is the feeling towards these refugees? It sounds to me like it’s very welcoming, but I remember that after World War II, many of the refugees from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were treated as if they were lepers.
AG: Yeah. A lot of them are not telling people where they came from. It was interesting. We ran into a guy and he said that when he changed his address, which changes his license plate – when he drove back into Fukushima to see his friends, people were scratching his car because he was a traitor to them. And then we had other people that did the opposite. When they kept their Fukushima license plates and they left Fukushima Prefecture, people were scratching their car because they were in a different prefecture. So it seems to go both ways. The biggest issue, it seems to me this far south in Japan, far away from Fukushima, is they’d like to keep these rural towns alive. So they’re actually encouraging it. But the families don’t want it and the government doesn’t want it, either. Somebody told me yesterday that the government’s motive here is they don’t want any refugees by the time the Olympics happen in 2020. Their position is, you either move back or you have moved to another community, but all of the funds for refugees will be eliminated so they can tell the world that Fukushima has been solved.
CP: (7:15) That’s interesting. I had read – I think it was last week, so many about five days ago – an article from Asai Shinbaum (?7:25) and they were discussing various governors from different prefectures, notably Fukushima, were talking to the youth of Tokyo, and they were saying, we really want you to come back out to the country, to places like the Fukushima Prefecture. There are job opportunities, a better life. So it’s an interesting pitch to hear, what you’re saying is refugees are going to various places in the countryside and that’s good. And within the city, you’re definitely hearing, at least from the local paper of Japan, a promotion to go back to Fukushima Prefecture, which is unnerving.
AG: The people in the prefecture who stay are just absolutely unwilling to admit there’s any radiation anywhere. But I think the moms really understand that especially while their children are young, the best thing to do is to get the heck out regardless of the social pressure. They said it’s ripping the society apart at a time when they really should be drawing together. It looks to me like the issue of moving people out of Fukushima could help these towns that are dying because the old people are moving on.
CP: Arnie, what else would you like to share with us from your meetings and interviews?
AG: I personally met a doctor day before yesterday. His clinic was put out of business by the Japanese government. What they did was they never really said we’re putting you out of business. They just stopped paying his bills. He was treating people – and on the symptoms he would say radiation related. So any bill he submitted that was radiation related, they refused to pay. So I think that’s another – we’ve had the doctors say they were threatened with hospital privileges and things like that. But this is just another one of those schemes. The guy had to close his clinic because he wasn’t being reimbursed for the services. The Japanese government’s position is when your hair falls out and your nose starts to bleed and you’re hacking up blood, that that’s all stress related. And unless you put on the form that it’s stress related, as opposed to radiation related, they just refuse to pay.
CP: If you’re having all of these stress-related cases, I’m interested what psychiatrists are saying around the country.
AG: (9:52) I haven’t met with a psychiatrist lately, no.
CP: Well, that’s awful. You did say there was that one person who said if you put a smile on your face then it’ll all go away.
AG: That’s a commonly held attitude. That was the highest ranking person in government to say it, but this issue if we all hang together then the radiation will be fine. Obviously, there’s no scientific basis on it, but this is a culture of, if we all do the same thing, then we’ll all be protected. It reminds me of that nursery story, The Emperor Has No Clothes. All of the crowd was convinced that the emperor had a beautiful gown on. So the crowd is saying oh, look at the beautiful gown the emperor is wearing. And as long as they old told the same story, everything was fine, until the little kid chirps out, this guy is naked. And that’s really the role the mothers have here. The mothers are saying this is a scam, I’m not going to risk my kid’s health because you guys want to sing a happy song. So they’ve moved on.
CP: And you want to sing a happy song because you want money and you want prestige. So you want to have the Olympic games hosted there and you want to save money because you don’t want to pay for the damages that have happened and the illnesses for all these people.
AG: Yeah, it’s crystal clear that the Olympic games were a ploy to get people to forget about the disaster. You know, I don’t see any Tokyo Electric executives or key government officials buying their vacation home in Fukushima Prefecture. When that happens, then I think you can say the crisis is over. But none of these guys are here visiting the Prefecture and living with these people. We had a woman back my first week that was there, the radiation levels were so high, her feet turned black for four years. And I was at the Hiroshima Museum and I saw the same thing. I saw pictures of the Hiroshima victims with their feet blackened from radiation. The government has done a very successful job of covering this up, and frankly, a lot of people in Japan are thankful for Fairewinds.
CP: That’s wonderful to hear. And I’m curious what sort of reaction you’ll get after speaking with people in Sendai who’ve just had a nuclear reactor restart and a volcanic eruption.
AG: I’m looking forward to going down there and talking to them. That’ll be my next report.
CP: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate the time with you. Thank you for getting up at the crack of dawn in order to make the time difference work for us here in the office.
AG: It’s actually before the crack of dawn here.
CP: Safe travels.
AG: All right. I’ll see you guys soon.
