Brave older Japanese work at Fukushima, and tell the truth

In Post-Fukushima Japan, Civil Society Turns up Heat on Officials Global Issues, by Kim-Jenna Jurriaans (United Nations), November 27, 2012
Inter Press Service
– For the former industrial engineer Yastel Yamada, retirement has not meant he can finally stop working. Instead, the 73-year-old and about 700 other skilled seniors across Japan have volunteered to tackle the most dangerous part of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant cleanup and spare a younger generation from the effects of extreme radiation.

Yamada and his army of radiation Samaritans are among a growing number of civil society groups across Japan that are taking measures to inform the public about the lingering dangers of radiation and advocate for a stronger government response to the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

“By the time we develop cancer, we will be dead anyways,” Yamada told IPS, following a recent tour through the United States to promote the efforts of his organisation, the Skilled Veterans Corps for Fukushima (SVCF).

One of SVCF’s goals is to build international political pressure to force the Japanese government to take charge of the disaster and bring global experts into the plant recovery process, which will take an estimated 20 years of ongoing cleanup and monitoring for up to 40.
“Chernobyl was bigger, but much less complicated,” Yamada noted.

So far, however, responsibility for the plant remains in the hands of the privately owned Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) – a management company with little expertise in cleanup, Yamada worried.

About 400 companies currently perform various cleanup tasks at Fukushima Dai-ichi, according to the engineer, who explained that the elaborate, multi-layered subcontracting structure is standing in the way of the veterans’ efforts to work on the site.

Yamada blames the cosy relationship between the Japanese government and the business sector for the government’s refusal to remove the cleanup process from TEPCO’s control – cleanup whose success or failure will affect future generations around the globe.
Mistrust abounds

Close ties with the industry, changing, safety information, dubious radiation counting and conflicting updates about the status of Fukushima Dai-ichi are contributing to growing mistrust in the Japanese government’s willingness to protect its own citizens.

As doctors continue to dismiss emerging health issues and top researchers refuse to attribute abnormalities to radiation, the Japanese medical establishment, too, has lost the trust of an increasingly savvy sector of the Japanese population.

In a recent example, this month the Fukushima prefecture presented the findings of its latest Health Survey, which showed that over 42 percent of the 47,000 children examined have thyroid nodules or cysts – far above the 1.6 percent measured in the only other study of its kind conducted in Nagasaki in 2001.

Yet when asked about a link to radiation exposure, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, a researcher at Fukushima Medical University and who headed the survey, suggested to German TV channel ZDF that the findings may instead reflect Japanese children’s seafood-rich diet. “Suzuki is lying to the Japanese people,” Dr. Yurika Hashimoto, a pediatrician with 15 years’ experience, told IPS. “People are not believing them anymore.”…… http://www.globalissues.org/news/2012/11/27/15359