nuclear-news

America’s CIA helped to ‘con’ the Japanese public into accepting nuclear power

the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power

Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link, WSJ,  By Eleanor Warnock, June 1, 2012, “…….In the 15 months since the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan’s relationship with nuclear power has changed dramatically…….  all 50 of its plants remain offline. Restarting reactors — a step the government says is necessary to support the economy — is proving to be politically tricky as a skeptical public questions the safety of atomic energy.

Rewind almost 60 years and the government had a similar problem: how to persuade the public to support its ambition to become a nuclear nation only nine years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

According to one Japanese university professor, that ambition was achieved with help from an unlikely source: the CIA.  Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that
showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japan’s nascent nuclear industry.
Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the
Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan’s biggest-selling and most influential
newspaper) and the founder of both the country’s first commercial
broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known,
according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA
to promote nuclear power.

In 1954, Japan saw widespread anti-U.S. and anti-nuclear
demonstrations after Japanese fishermen were exposed to radiation due
to the U.S.’s testing of a hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll.

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according
to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr.
Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day
arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons,
according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a
chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

“Shoriki wasn’t alone in what he did. He just had the power and the
influence to bring together the U.S., the Japanese business community
and politicians, and he was a smooth talker,” Mr. Arima, who went on
to write two books about his findings, said in an interview with
JRT…… http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/

June 1, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties