nuclear-news

Amy Goodman gets behind the truth of the now empty town of Futaba (Fukushima)

17 January 2014

On our final day of our special broadcast from Tokyo, we speak with a Japanese resident from the town that housed part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant who is participating in weekly protests against the resumption of nuclear power in her country. “We couldn’t bring anything from our houses. We didn’t have a toothbrush, we didn’t have a blanket. We didn’t have towels. We had nothing. It was truly hell, and we thought it would be much better to die. But now, we are here, and we can’t really give up. We want to fight for this cause,” Yukiko Kameya said as she attended a demonstration outside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe‘s official residence. “We told the prime minister many times, every week here, that we are against the re-opening of the nuclear facilities, but it doesn’t seem that he gets it. He just does whatever he wants to do anyway.”

We speak with Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba where part of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear disaster. We ask him what went through his mind after the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11, 2011. “It was a huge surprise, and at the time I was just hoping nothing that had happened at the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately there was in fact an accident there,” Idogawa recalls. He made a decision to evacuate his town before the Japanese government told people to leave. “If I had made that decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being exposed to radiation.” For years he encouraged nuclear power development in the area; now he has become a vocal critic.

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January 17, 2014 - Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized