There's a newspaper published by a citizen group in Soma City, Fukushima, urging the former residents, particularly mothers with children, to return to the city. Soma City is located just north of Minami Soma City where the "black dust" was first reported by Assemblyman Ooyama.
It turns out (no real surprise, but...) that Soma City also has "black dust" with very high radiation. The newspaper that urges mothers to come back has this article in its May 2012 issue:
It says:
Please be careful!
On the roads and near the side drains by the side walks in Minami Soma City and Soma City, we've started to see the black substance that looks like dirt. There has been some media report on this substance, and it is said to be a certain kind of bacteria that has dried out. It has been known to have very high radiation levels, and there is a possibility that it affects human bodies. Please do not go near it. We placed the survey meter on the substance in the photo. The survey meter shows 56.3 microsieverts/hour. Young children in particular should pay attention.
Again, the group wants mothers with children who evacuated from the city to come back. The reason why the group is publishing the newspaper is, according to the website:
子どもたちを守りたい。
未来に希望を残したい。
そのためにわたしたちは生き方を「変える」。
まちをゲンキに「変える」。
We want to protect our children.
We want to keep hope for the future.
TO do that, we will "change" our way of life.
We will "change" the city into a healthy city.
How are they going to achieve that? By measuring radiation, as far as I could tell from their newspaper.
Sorry to say it but the "bamboo spear" spirit seems to be alive and well in Japan, even after 67 years.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
Tokyo Time
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
15 comments:
I live in Narita, Chiba. In a few places I can find dirt at the curb that is as high as 0.80 microsieverts/hour, and I sometimes think I'm a fool to stay here - but then I read this. Absolutely incredible to ask children to come back and live around this level of contamination. It darkens a cynic's view of humanity.
Just saw these videos of a Safecast event kinda meeting where the audience can ask questions, the dood from TKR is on the panel too..
http://blog.safecast.org/2012/04/日本語-event-announcement-decontamination-and-food-safety-is-enough-being-done/
interesting
...
Most of The Japansese are already brain dead, so it's just a small step to the next level anyway...
What I wonder is, why the h-ll is it still called things like "黒い物質," "the black substance," "black dust," etc.? We are supposed to believe that NOBODY has analyzed it and knows exactly what it is?!
@anon 12:13, I agree. This is nonsense. This being said, northern Chiba is not a place for kids. It is all over the place but not to the degree it is in Fukushima. I have two more months until I leave regardless.
"Started to see", huh... they're a little late. How long has it been since we first heard about it here and on Fukushima Diary? A few months at the very least.
I read the rest of the post and I'm confused. They want mothers to protect their children by going back and changing the city? Why don't they do it themselves, since they were so eager to stay. They can give us a call when they're done removing all the radiation... in a couple hundred/thousand years.
I don't understand the logic at work here.
Formerly it seemed the argument was "the contamination is not bad, so there is no need to evacuate."
If I understand correctly, the argument is now "the contamination is indeed bad, so there is no need to evacuate."
More like, "the contamination is bad, so we need you to come back and clean it up."
Yeah, good luck with that.
It boggles the mind that any one would want mothers and children to live with such high levels of radiation. I don't understand this mindset. I am currently reading the book "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral history of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich translation by Keith Gessen. This is a very hard read but reading about what people experienced and still experience after Chernobyl explains so much of what is happening in Japan. Fukushima is a repeat of Chernobyl.
Fukushima doesn't come close to Chernobyl. If you read the book you know that the exposure that the firefighters faced was magnitudes greater than anything in Fukushima. You know that the contamination on the ground in Pripyat was far higher than anything in Fukushima.
chernoble, burning nuclear fuel out in the open,
fukushima, same thing but looooooots more, lots.
no containment ok, it melted through=out in the open, if not so bad, go to reactor 1 2 or 3 or dainii, or onagawa or tokai and get us some pictures inside you COWARD.
The book I mentioned "Voices from Chernobyl" is from the point of view of the people that experienced the disaster. They talk about how the government lied to them. How the seriousness of the situation was covered up. They speak of the fact that people cannot see the radiation after a nuclear disaster, the trees, the sky, the fields, the soil look the same but nothing is the same.They speak of how a war is something obvious -- you can see the bombs and the soldiers. But a nuclear disaster is something that is incomprehensible but there none the less. They speak of how many old people refused to leave their homes after the disaster. They speak of what it means to leave your home and your land without having the chance to say goodbye. They speak of discrimination against the survivors of Chernobyl. They speak of being worried about what foods to eat. They speak of being concerned about giving birth to their children. They speak of removing several layers of top soil from the land to clean things up. I see many similarities here.
It really boggles my mind that there still seems to be no official investigation into this hazard dust phenomenon.
@anon at 8:18PM, who are you talking to?
Is this newspaper sponsored by Tepco? or by local real estate owners, shopkeepers or anyone else who has vested interests into people returning now and nothing to lose if they get sick later?
If I were a parent in Soma I would not care that Pripyat was worse; 56.3 uSv/hr means that the source is probably in the range of millions of Bequerel and I would do my best to relocate in Kyushu.
Post a Comment