Fukushima heartbreak
.jpg?w=728)
By Kim Mi-kyoung
Nothing has changed at the Fukushima nuclear power plant since 3/11 of 2011.
The damaged plants continue to exude odorless and colorless lethal fumes into the air, and radiation-contaminated cooling water continues to leak into the adjacent land and sea.
The poisonous nuclear fallout is travelling across the borderless ocean and atmosphere, deeply violating our sense of security and safety.
And yet, a most troubling side of the disaster involves human tragedy. About 20,000 Fukushima residents continue to live in temporary housing evocative of container cargo yards, while others try to settle in unfamiliar and occasionally inhospitable environments.
The disaster claimed about 3,000 lives in the Tohoku region, of which the 1,671 Fukushima residents who died represented a majority.
The physical confinement, social isolation, abrupt changes in lifestyle and despair of their experiences constitute a form of post trauma stress disorder (PSPD).
The socially disadvantaged population, the elderly and children in particular remain the most vulnerable to the radical rupture in their life environment as manifested by the unnatural and premature deaths, as well as a dramatic rise in thyroid cancer.
The discourse about Fukushima has been changing for the past three years, from that of awe and admiration, to empowerment and consciousness-raising, to despair and distrust.
Immediately after the disaster, the international community was taken aback by the high sense of order, calmness and the cool-mindedness of the disaster victims.
The general atmosphere was charged and intense, for sure, and yet the people knew the best way to manage and control the damage was to remain calm and cool.
Maintaining normalcy was a priority, it seemed, for the government, media, victims and the rest of the society.
It was soon followed by the activation of a social movement in support of the victims and anti-nuclear reforms.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens gathered near the Japanese Diet, Imperial Palace and prime minister’s residence to render their support to the victims and to reassess the dangerous and misleading myth of “clean and cheap nuclear energy.’’
The optimists saw the positive sides of the disaster in the citizens’ empowerment and consciousness-raising.
The current state of affairs, however, reveals a drastic departure from the initial admiration and optimism.
A recent poll, for instance, shows that a majority of the victims, 57 percent, think the reconstruction process has not even started yet. And another poll reveals the deepening despair and distrust among the displaced victims.
An increasing number of relocated Fukushima victims are giving up on their hopes to return to their hometown, the only place they know. It is heartbreaking.
The Japanese society has shown deep compassion for the Fukushima victims. Public cynicism toward the Tokyo Electric and Petroleum Company is rampant in the form of cultural parody. Takada Wataru’s 1968 anti-war song, “Let’s Join Self-Defense Force,” for example, has re-emerged as “Let’s Join TEPCO.”
A part of its lyrics reads: “Those of you who promote nuclear power generation/ Please gather beneath a nuclear power reactor/ Nothing immediately affects your health/ Fine if you shower in and wash it away with/ Nuclear power plants mean clean energy/ Plutonium isn’t such a scary thing/ It may emit radioactivity/ But its half-life is only four times 20,000 years.”
Several other song parodies like Takada’s are circulating over the Internet. The popular pop singer, Saito Kazuyoshi, also remade his 2010 hit single, “I Always Loved You,” into “It Was Always Lies,” which received hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube and other Internet sites.
The relocated Fukushima residents are shunned as “contaminated bodies” being subject to social isolation and stigma. Imagined compassion and tangible acts of assistance can be two different things in reality.
The Fukushima children are bullied at their new schools. The same bullying took place against Hiroshima residents after the 1945 atomic bombing there.
And, most of the unaffected regions refuse to house the radioactive garbage and debris from Fukushima. It is a typical “not in my backyard (NIMBY)’’ response, just like everywhere else in the world.
Compassion entails obvious limits: moral support is offered as long as no harm is inflicted on the benefactor. With the weak safety network and rising social isolation, the call for national unity can exist mostly on the lips and partly on the purse.
The “fighting spirit” of ganbarism, a unique Japanese cultural and behavioral mode, can divide Japan’s national community where the victims, the contaminated, are kept at arm’s length from the rest of the population.
Another heartbreak lies with the weak support system which deepens the victims’ socio-economic isolation, while the cultural code of ganbarism pressures them to “make it” against all the odds. Tragedy often favors the strong and punishes the weak. This paradox regards pursuing justice in an utterly unjust context.
The Abe administration has taken steps to restart the country’s stalled nuclear energy program and the memories of the Fukushima tragedy are fading away in this fast-forward political milieu.
Kim Mi-kyoung is an associate professor at Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute. She can be reached at mkkim_33@hotmail.com.