Goshi Hosono Short on Facts on Debris-Peddling Commercial

The Ministry of the Environment has a 2-minute-long commercial featuring Minister Goshi Hosono, aka disaster debris pusher, in front of the mountains of disaster debris in Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture.

Just about every single sentence he utters is short on facts and accuracy and full of misrepresentation.

From the Ministry of the Environment commercial below, translated and captioned by Tokyo Brown Tabby:

Hosono: As you can see, this is a huge mountain of debris.

Fact: Debris is actually neatly piled up, because it has been removed from the immediate coastal areas hit by the tsunami and is being stored there, as you can see at 0:26 into the video. But the disaster debris wide-area processing is being sold on the perception that the tsunami debris is still littering the streets and people's backyards after one year.

Hosono: Ishinomaki City cannot complete the disposal alone.

Fact: In fact, the city can. The debris are being stored on the landfill on the bay, not bothering anyone nearby. The city has budgeted nearly 200 billion yen (US$2.4 billion) to do the debris disposal, building 5 new incineration plants on the landfill and in the process creating 1,250 jobs. None of the sister cities of Ishinomaki City has been asked to take the debris.

Hosono: The debris is the remnants of people's lives.

Fact: Yes it is. So? Is that the reason to spread it all over Japan? Wouldn't the pieces of lives of people in Ishinomaki want to remain in Ishinomaki?

Hosono: There are people in the city who are discouraged to see the debris in front of them...

Fact: The debris is on the landfill, removed from the areas where people live and work. It is not in front of them.

Hosono: Please assist the nation-wide disposal...

Fact: Ishinomaki has 6 million tonnes of debris. Of that, 10 to 20% of the debris is what the Ministry of the Environment wants to spread to the rest of Japan because "Ishinomaki cannot do it alone". It doesn't add up. It may lengthen the time it takes to dispose of the debris by 20% at most. It may take 6 years instead of 5. Or 12 years instead of 10. It doesn't seem like such a vast difference.

Hosono: See, we measure radiation ... (using a survey meter that measures only gamma ray radiation)

Fact: You cannot measure the contamination on the debris by a survey meter unless the contamination is in the order of tens of thousands of becquerels per kilogram.

Hosono: I ask your cooperation of nation-wide disposal of safe debris...

Fact: No one trusts the "safety" standards of the national government, particularly those set by the Ministry of the Environment.

And the ultimate fact is that this wide-area disposal of the disaster debris was decided in May when the radiation contamination was thought (by the government) to be occurring in Fukushima Prefecture alone. Everything was set to go, with the heavy support from the big businesses, when radioactive materials started to be detected outside Fukushima. So what do you do when the situation changes? As far as the Japanese government goes (as with most governments in the world), keep pushing no matter what. Big money is at stake.

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