'Kids
die, govt lie!' Ex-mayor exposes real scale of radiation in Fukushima
(FULL INTERVIEW)
Nearly
three years ago, Fukushima nuclear plant disaster forced thousands
out of their homes. This also led to deaths of many more. Tokyo
claims the effects are all but gone; however disturbing facts
sometimes rise to the surface.
To shed some light on the mystery of Fukushima Sophie Shevardnadze talks to former mayor Katsutaka Idogawa
To shed some light on the mystery of Fukushima Sophie Shevardnadze talks to former mayor Katsutaka Idogawa
Fukushima
radiation killing our children, govt hides truth - former mayor
21
April, 2014
Katsutaka
Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba, a town near the disabled Fukushima
nuclear plant, is warning his country that radiation contamination is
affecting Japan’s greatest treasure – its children.
Asked
about government plans to relocate the people of Fatuba to the city
of Iwaki, inside the Fukushima prefecture, Idogawa criticized the
move as a “violation of human
rights.”
Compared
with Chernobyl, radiation levels around Fukushima “are
four times higher,”
he told
RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze,
adding that “it’s
too early for people to come back to Fukushima prefecture.”
“It
is by no means safe, no matter what the government says.”
Idogawa
alleges that the government has started programs to return people to
their towns despite the danger of radiation.
“Fukushima
Prefecture has launched the Come Home campaign. In many cases,
evacuees are forced to return. [the former mayor produced a map of
Fukushima Prefecture that showed that air contamination decreased a
little, but soil contamination remains the same.]"
Screenshot
from RT video
According
to Idogawa there are about two million people residing in the
prefecture who are reporting “all
sorts of medical issues,”
but the government insists these conditions are unrelated to the
Fukushima accident. Idogawa wants their denial in writing.
“I
demanded that the authorities substantiate their claim in writing but
they ignored my request.”
Once
again, Idogawa alludes to the nuclear tragedy that hit Ukraine on
April 26, 1986, pleading that the Japanese people “never
forget Chernobyl.”
Yet few people seem to be heeding the former government official’s
warning.
“They
believe what the government says, while in reality radiation is still
there. This is killing children. They die of heart conditions,
asthma, leukemia, thyroiditis… Lots of kids are extremely exhausted
after school; others are simply unable to attend PE classes. But the
authorities still hide the truth from us, and I don’t know why.
Don’t they have children of their own? It hurts so much to know
they can’t protect our children.
“They
say Fukushima Prefecture is safe, and that’s why nobody’s working
to evacuate children, move them elsewhere. We’re not even allowed
to discuss this.”
The
former mayor found it ironic that when discussing the Tokyo Olympics,
scheduled for 2020, Prime Minister Abe frequently mentions the
Japanese word, “omotenashi,”
which literally means that you should “treat people with an open
heart.”
In
Idogawa’s opinion, the same treatment does not apply equally to the
people most intimately connected with Fukushima: the workers involved
in the cleanup operations.
“Their
equipment was getting worse; preparation was getting worse. So people
had to think about their safety first. That’s why those who
understood the real danger of radiation began to quit. Now we have
unprofessional people working there.
Reuters
/ Chris Meyers
They
don’t really understand what they’re doing. That’s the kind of
people who use the wrong pump, who make mistakes like that.
“I’m
really ashamed for my country, but I have to speak the truth for the
sake of keeping our planet clean in the future.
Idogawa
then made some parallels with one of the most tragic events in the
history of Japan: the use of atomic bombs on the industrial cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War
II.
“The
authorities lied to everyone (about the effects of the atomic
bombings)...They hid the truth. That’s the situation we are living
in. It’s not just Fukushima. Japan has some dark history. This is a
sort of a sacrifice to the past.”
When
pressed on the details of a United Nations report that says there
have been no radiation-related deaths or acute diseases observed
among the workers and general public, Idogawa dismisses it as
“completely false,”
before providing some of his own experiences at the height of the
crisis.
“When
I was mayor, I knew many people who died from heart attacks, and then
there were many people in Fukushima who died suddenly, even among
young people. It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth
from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually
many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that but TEPCO
employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it.”
When
asked to provide solid figures on the actual number of people who
died under such circumstances, Idogawa refrained, saying “it’s
not just one or two people. We’re talking about ten to twenty
people who died this way.”
Asked
about other options that Japan has for providing energy sources to
its 126 million people, he responded that despite having many rivers,
the government neglects to promote hydro energy.
Why?
Because it’s not “profitable
for big companies!”
Idogawa
goes on to provide a blueprint for fulfilling Japan’s energy needs
that sounds surprisingly simple.
“We
can provide electricity for a large number of people even with
limited investment, without taxes. Just use gravity, and we may have
so much energy that there’ll be no need for nuclear plants
anymore.”
Premonitions
of disaster
Even
before the massive failure at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on
March 11, 2011, the day northeastern Japan was hit by an
earthquake-triggered tsunami that caused the meltdown of three of the
plant's six nuclear reactors, Idogawa knew the facility was
dangerous.
“I
asked them about potential accidents at a nuclear power plant,
pretending I didn’t know anything about it, and it turned out they
were unable to answer many of my questions,”
he said. “Frankly, that’s
when it first crossed my mind that their management didn’t have a
contingency plan. It was then that I realized the facility could be
dangerous.”
The
former mayor, who happened to be in a nearby town on the day the
tsunami struck, recalled driving back to Futaba upon news of the
earthquake. Only later did he discover how close he came to losing
his life in the approaching tsunami.
“I
managed to get there before the bigger tsunami came. It was only
later that I realized that I escaped the water... I got lucky. The
tsunami came after I drove off that road and up the mountains.”
Members
of the media and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) employees wearing
protective suits and masks walk toward the No. 1 reactor building at
the tsunami-crippled TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in
Fukushima prefecture March 10, 2014.(Reuters / Toru Hanai)
Questions
regarding the nuclear power plant dominated his thoughts on the
30-minute drive home. “I
just kept thinking, ‘If it’s that strong, what will happen to the
power plant? What if the reactor is damaged? What if the water leaks?
What will the city do? What am I to do as mayor?’"
Once
in his office, Idogawa looked out the window and was confronted by
what he described as “a
terrifying sight.”
“Usually you couldn’t
see the sea from there, but that time I could see it just 300-500m
away,”
he said.
It
was at that point that the mayor realized that the nuclear power
plant had probably suffered some sort of damage. After spending the
night watching news reports on television, the only source of
information since even mobile phones were not working, Idogawa
announced an emergency evacuation early the next morning. Not all of
the residents, however, heard the emergency broadcast.
“Later,
I learned that not all Futaba residents heard my announcement. I feel
guilty about that…I found out that the Fukushima prefecture hadn’t
given me all the information in a timely fashion. And now the
government isn’t taking any steps to ensure people’s safety from
radiation, and isn’t monitoring the implementation of evacuation
procedures.”
Beyond
nuclear energy
Katsutaka
Idogawa believes a transformation to a cleaner, safer form of energy
source for Japan would require a willingness to change the country’s
laws.
“There
are many laws in Japan, perhaps too many. There are laws about rivers
and the ways they’re used. We could change laws regarding
agricultural water use and start using rivers to produce electricity.
Changing just this law alone will allow us to produce a lot of
energy.”
All
of this could be accomplished “without
contaminating our planet.”
However,
such bold proposals do not “appeal
to big companies, because you don’t need big investments, you don’t
need to build big power plants. It’s not that profitable for
investors, for capitalists.”
But
for the former mayor of a devastated Japanese town, lost to nuclear
radiation, Idogawa senses a sea change forming in public opinion.
The
Japanese people are beginning to “realize that we need to avert
nuclear disasters, so 60-70 percent of the population is in favor of
using natural energy.”
“It
took us a long time, but one day we’ll follow the example of
Europe, of Germany.”
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