View from Inside Fukushima Prefecture: Vastly Different from Govt. Pronouncements

Hiromichi Ugaya, a renowned photojournalist born in Kyoto City, Japan in 1963, has shed light on the effects of one of the world’s most devastating disasters. Ugaya, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Kyoto National University and a master’s degree from Columbia University, has experience in both Japan and the United States. On May 22nd 2015, he was interviewed about his observations in the aftermath of the disaster. 

However, Japan’s new secrecy law has cast a shadow over journalism in the country, making it difficult to uncover the truth. Despite this, brave individuals like Ugaya are still coming forward to share their stories.

Naïveté of Public

Hiromichi Ugaya has made nearly fifty visits to Fukushima since the disaster occurred two weeks prior. He has undertaken this personal mission as the tragedy has not received adequate media coverage, with few journalists covering the aftermath, television in Japan losing interest, and the public becoming blasé and dangerously naïve. The mainstream media in Japan has largely ignored the impact of the aftermath, leading to a news blackout. This could be due to the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108, which widens the range of what can be considered confidential and allows bureaucrats and politicians to “designate state secrets to their liking”. Those who leak state secrets face up to ten years in prison. 

In response to the public apathy, Hiromichi Ugaya composed a photo book, Portrait of Fukushima: 2011-2015: Life After Meltdown, which contains over two hundred unpublished photos, telling the story from the beginning to the present. The areas affected by the disaster remain ghostlike, with the streets virtually empty and littered with garbage and debris. Michael Okwu, from Aljazeera America, described the area as “eerily silent and frozen in time at the moment residents fled the quaking earth and incoming sea.” This tragedy is an example of the long-term consequences of nuclear accidents, with nearly one million dead, according to Alexey V. Yablokov from the Center for Russian Environmental Policy.

An Insider’s Story- the interview

The government’s initial response to the Fukushima disaster has been widely criticized. Hiromichi, a local resident, believes authorities should have been more transparent and provided more information to the public, leading to a delay in evacuation and unnecessary radiation exposure. He believes the authorities were likely concerned about public panic, but this may have long-term consequences. Already, 107 cases of thyroid cancer have been confirmed, and Hiromichi suspects an outbreak of thyroid cancer in the years to come. 

The Japanese people are not well informed of the danger, and many are in denial of the potential health risks. It is likely that the effects of radiation will spread beyond the limits of Fukushima Prefecture, as the plume of radiation traveled to Tokyo in the immediate aftermath of the explosions. Families have been divided over issues of whether to evacuate, and many have experienced depression, headaches, and vomiting. 

Hiromichi’s story highlights the recklessness of nuclear power generation and the consequences of its use. More people have died from stress-related causes than from the initial disasters in Fukushima, and it is almost certain that cancer-related complications will arise in the years to come. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 serves as a reminder of the long-term effects of nuclear power, with deformed children and babies born with genetic mutations still present in the contaminated villages and towns of Ukraine and Belarus.

The Health Impact

Green Cross International, a non-profit organization committed to phasing out nuclear energy worldwide, released a report on March 9th, 2015 titled Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant Disaster: How Many People Were Affected? 2015 Report. According to Adam Koniuszewski, Chief Operating Officer of Green Cross International, the organization has a first-hand experience of the human and environmental consequences of nuclear disasters. This was echoed by Mikhail Gorbachev, former Communist Party General Secretary and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who formed Green Cross International in 1993. Gorbachev stated that “We are facing a global environmental crisis, a conflict between man and nature” (Alexei Yablokov, Heroes of the Environment, Time Magazine, October 17, 2007). 

Green Cross International estimates that 80% of the radiation released from the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant disaster was deposited in the ocean, while the remaining 20% dispersed within a 50km radius. This has caused an increased risk of cancer, particularly for children, over time. The report also found that approximately 32 million people in Japan have been affected by the radioactive fallout from the nuclear disaster, and that the number of deaths attributed to stress, fatigue and hardship of living as evacuees is estimated to be around 1,700. 

The long-term effects of the disaster are yet to be seen, as the gestation period for radiation exposure can range from 5 to 40 years. Furthermore, the melted core of the Fukushima Power Plant is still unaccounted for, posing an enormous and potentially everlasting danger to the environment and humanity. Despite this, Japan has continued to restart nuclear power plants, raising questions as to why the country is willing to risk another disaster of the same magnitude.

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