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Indybay Feature

On 11th Anniversary of Fukushima No Nukes, No War, US Military Out Of Japan & Okinawa

sm_no_war_international.jpg
Date:
Friday, March 11, 2022
Time:
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
No Nukes Action
Location Details:
San Francisco Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/California St.

3/11/22 Friday 100th Action Against The Nukes
On The 11th Anniversary of Fukushima
No NUKES, No WAR, US Military Out Of Japan & Okinawa
Rally At San Francisco Japanese Consulate


Friday March 11, 2022 3:00 PM
San Francisco Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/California St.
San Francisco
Sponsored by No Nukes Action



Join the Rally and Speak Out/Music/Poetry/Voices

On the 11th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear explosions, the government has still not removed the melted nuclear rods at the broken plants. There has been no decontamination and TEPCO which has been taken over by the government is plannng to release more than 1 million tons of radioactive water In tanks surrounding the reactors.
The government continues to pressurize the refugees who left the area to return despite the fact that it still remains contaminated and dangerous. There are still tens of thousands of bags of radioactive waste that continue to remain throughout the prefecture with no place to go.
On this 11tth anniversary the Japanese government along with the US government are spending billions for preparation of war and a clear violation of Article 9 of the Constitution which forbids offensive wars and yet this is what the governnment is now violating.
The US with the support of the Japanese government is continuing to build bases in Okinawa and terrorizing the poplulation with jet and helicopter noise pollution, spread of covid by US military personell and rapes and attacks on Okinawan people.
WE demand that there be no restarting of nuclear plants in Japan, full compensation for the refugees and for government officials to be held accountable for this dangerous condition still facing the Japanese people and the world.


Speak-out In Stop The Restarting Of The Nuke Plants
Defend The Refugees of Fukushima
Don’t Dump The Radioactive Water In The Pacific Ocean
No NUKES, No WAR, US Military Out Of Japan & Okinawa

Friday March 11, 2022 3PM
San Francisco Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/California St.
San Francisco
No Nukes Action
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/

Evening On Line Event 3/11/22


Mothers For Peace

March 11, 2022, marks the 11th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster.
Join our webinar on March 11, 6-7pm PST

Fukushima: 11 years after the triple meltdown

Our featured speaker is Japanese journalist Hiroko Aihara who will be speaking
on the current state of the Fukushima evacuees, the government’s plan to
release irradiated water into the ocean, and what actions we can take.

Please register in advance for this event:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcudequqz0oGdNnRbckyKXrAM4mu
PQqioCt

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Added to the calendar on Wed, Mar 2, 2022 10:05AM
sm_no_war_international.jpg
Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/Calfornia
San Francisco

3/11/22 Friday 100th Action Against The Nukes
On The 11th Anniversary of Fukushima
No NUKES, No WAR, US Military Out Of Japan & Okinawa
Rally At San Francisco Japaese Consulate


Friday March 11, 2022 3:00 PM
San Francisco Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/California St.
San Francisco
Sponsored by No Nukes Action
Join the Rally and Speak Out

On the 11th anniversary of the Fukusihma nuclear explosions, the government has still not removed the
melted nuclear rods at the broken plants. There has been no decontamination and TEPCO which has
been taken over by the government is planninng to release more than 1 million tons of radiocative water
In tanks surrounding the reactors.
The government continues to pressurize the refugees who left the area to return despite the fact that it
still remains contaminated and dangerous. There are still tens of thousands of bags of radioactive waste that continue
to remain throughout the prefecture with no place to go.
On this 11tth anniversary the Japanese government along with the US government are spending billions
for preparation of war and a clear violation of Article 9 of the Constitution which forbids offensive wars and
yet this is what the governnment is now violating.
The US with the support of the Japanese government is continuing to build bases in Okinawa and terrorizing
the poplulation with jet and helicopter noise pollution, spread of covid by US military personel and rapes and
attacks on Okinawan people.
WE demand that there be no restarting of nuclear plants in Japan, full compensation for the refugees and for
government officials to be held accounntable for this dangerous condition still facing the Japanese people and
the world.

Speak-out In Stop The Restarting Of The Nuke Plants
Defend The Refugees of Fukushima
Don’t Dump The Radioactive Water In The Pacific Ocean
No NUKES, No WAR, US Military Out Of Japan & Okinawa

Friday March 11, 2022 3PM
San Francisco Japanese Consulate
275 Battery St/California St.
San Francisco
No Nukes Action
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/

Evening On Line Event 3/11/22


Mothers For Peace

March 11, 2022, marks the 11th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster.
Join our webinar on March 11, 6-7pm PST

Fukushima: 11 years after the triple meltdown

Our featured speaker is Japanese journalist Hiroko Aihara who will be speaking
on the current state of the Fukushima evacuees, the government’s plan to
release irradiated water into the ocean, and what actions we can take.

Please register in advance for this event:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcudequqz0oGdNnRbckyKXrAM4mu
PQqioCt

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information
about joining the meeting.

Fukushima man returning home wants to tell sons about his ‘error’
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14538699
By KEITARO FUKUCHI/ Staff Writer
February 14, 2022 at 07:00 JST


Yuji Onuma, left, plants flowers with his wife and sons outside his home in Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, on Jan. 29. (Shigetaka Kodama)

FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture--The town where Yuji Onuma in his youth dreamed up a slogan promoting the "bright future" that nuclear power promised remains deserted and a shell of its former self.

But Onuma, 45, is now hoping to pass along a different message to his sons of the dangers of nuclear power, as he plans to continue visiting his former home after more than a decade away.

Evacuees from this town, cohost to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, are being allowed to stay overnight at their homes for the first time in 11 years since the nuclear disaster.

The temporary stays are ahead of a full return envisaged in the limited area of Futaba in summer this year. Futaba is the only municipality where all residents remain evacuated.

OVERNIGHT STAY REKINDLES MEMORIES

An Asahi Shimbun reporter accompanied Onuma, his wife and their two sons as they returned home from Jan. 29 through 30 on a “preparatory overnight stay” program that started on Jan. 20.

Around noon on Jan. 29, Onuma was in the Konokusa district of Futaba, 6 kilometers to the northwest of the nuclear plant, with his wife and two sons.

The district is designated a “difficult-to-return” zone, where an evacuation order remains in place because of the high levels of radiation from the triple meltdown at the plant, and is outside the area for the preparatory stay program.

Houses in the district were seen with entrances closed off with barricades.

“Damage from the nuclear disaster is not always easy to see, but I still want you to know something about it,” he told his family as they walked along a street.

Onuma pointed to a barbershop that he used to go to as a young boy. He also pointed to the home of a classmate and a road he would take to go to a driving school.

“There were people’s livelihoods in every single one of these houses before we were evacuated,” he told his family members in the midst of the totally deserted landscape.

“Oh!”

The abrupt shout came from Yusei, the oldest of Onuma’s sons. Right before the eyes of the 10-year-old was a house that was flattened by the massive tremor of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which triggered a tsunami and the nuclear disaster, on March 11, 2011.

A rainwater drainage pipe covered with moss was seen lying on the ground. A tree was spotted growing through an opening between the tiles of the house’s roof.

Difficult-to-return zones account for more than 90 percent of the landmass of Futaba, where no one has yet returned to live. Ties with fellow townspeople have grown so thin that Onuma learned about the deaths of his neighbors and a classmate only through an information bulletin of the town government.

“It’s so sad,” Onuma said. “I could have offered incense for them if only it had not been for the nuclear disaster.”

The preparatory overnight stay program started in the area designated a "specified reconstruction and revitalization base," where the evacuation order is expected to be lifted in June.

In the designated area, many houses have been demolished. Onuma’s home stands alone, surrounded by empty lots.

Onuma also had planned to have his home demolished, as no elementary school or junior high school was likely to be reopened any time soon.

What the youngest of his sons said changed his mind. Onuma quoted 8-year-old Yusho as saying, when the family was visiting Futaba last March, “I like Futaba. I want to come to Futaba again.”

Encouraged by his son’s remarks, Onuma in April began improving the living conditions at his home, including tidying it up and decontaminating it.

He said he hopes to keep returning here with his family during summer vacations and on other occasions so he can see how the community will continue changing in the future.

ARCHITECT OF FUTABA’S ONCE PROUD SLOGAN

An overhead signboard once greeted visitors to a central shopping street in Futaba’s downtown area. It carried a slogan saying, “Nuclear power is the energy of a bright future,” which Onuma submitted when he was an elementary school pupil to win a local competition.

Being the author of the iconic slogan was, for some time following the nuclear disaster, a source of distress for Onuma.

He once thought that atomic energy could be entrusted to provide people's power needs for the future. However, in the twinkling of an eye, the nuclear accident changed the lives of so many people.

Onuma said he has a different view of nuclear power now.

“I have to tell my children everything, including my own ‘error,’ so the same thing will never be repeated,” Onuma said.

He planted pansies, which can mean “remembrance” in the language of flowers, on a flower bed outside his home.

“I hope to convey pre-disaster remembrances of Futaba to my children,” he said. “And I also hope to go on creating new ‘remembrances’ in this town, where the clocks have stood still for 10 years and 10 months and counting.”

EVACUATION ORDER MAY BE LIFTED IN JUNE

Futaba was home to 7,140 residents when the quake and tsunami struck. The town remains totally evacuated due to the nuclear disaster that resulted, and its residents are taking shelter across 42 of Japan's 47 prefectures.

Part of Futaba’s difficult-to-return zones has been designated a specified reconstruction and revitalization base. The town government is hoping to have the evacuation order lifted in the reconstruction base area in June.

The preparatory overnight stay program, which allows evacuees who want to return to spend the night at their homes in advance to prepare for their lives there, started in Futaba on Jan. 20.

Many townspeople of Futaba, in the meantime, have rebuilt their lives in other communities to which they have evacuated. Only 19 individuals from 13 households had applied for a preparatory overnight stay by Jan. 27, with Onuma’s two sons being the only minors among them.

The town government has set the goal of having 2,000 residents, including new settlers, five years after the evacuation order is lifted.

When parties including the Reconstruction Agency and the town government took a survey last year, however, some 60 percent of Futaba’s residents said they had decided against returning, and only about 10 percent said they wished to return.
§Japanese Protest Against Restarting NUKE Plants
by No Nukes Action
japan_nuclear_power_protest.jpg_1718483346.jpg
The majority of people in Japan are against restarting the nuclear plants in Jpana.
§No Bases Anywhere
by No Nukes Action
okinawa_protest-no_base_anywhere.jpg
Okinawan people want the US bases shut down and no bases anywhere.
§Fukushima Never Again
by No Nukes Action
fukushima_never_again.jpg
We cannot let anther Fukushima happen yet Japan continues to re-open nuclear plants

Comments (Hide Comments)
fukushima_contaminate_bags_of_earth.jpg
Fukushima Radioactive waste stuck at 830 sites with nowhere to go

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 3, 2022 at 18:55 JST
Photo/Illutration
A temporary storage site for contaminated soil resulting from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The bags of radioactive waste are due to be shipped to an interim storage facility. The photo was taken in February. (Yukiko Sakamoto)
Vast quantities of topsoil collected during decontamination work after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster are stuck in limbo at hundreds of sites with no early prospect of being shipped to interim storage facilities ahead of a government-set deadline.

The soil is being kept “temporarily” at 830 locations in six municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture.

The city of Koriyama has 582 sites containing about 6,000 cubic meters of waste, followed by Fukushima with about 2,000 cubic meters at 200 locations.

Significant delays are expected in shipping the soil even though the government had planned to complete the operation by the end of this month as required by law.

The volume of contaminated soil and other radioactive materials awaiting shipment totals 8,460 cubic meters, which is the equivalent of 130 trucks each weighing 10 tons.

A key reason for the delay is that new houses were built on land where contaminated soil was buried as negotiations over storage sites in many communities dragged on. This accounts for about 50 percent of the cases cited by municipalities in a survey by the prefectural government last September.

About 30 percent of cases resulted from the refusal of landowners to bear the transportation costs, while about 10 percent are due to an inability by the authorities to contact the landowners.

As time passed, ownership of land tracts changed due to sales transactions and inheritance issues. Some landowners had no idea their plots contained radioactive material.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, shouldered the cost of the cleanup.

But the owners of the homes in question are obliged to pick up the tab for relocating so that the buried waste can be removed, according to the Environment Ministry.

Officials in the six local governments said the radiation levels at the 830 sites pose no health hazard as the readings were below 0.23 microsieverts per hour, the threshold for the need to decontaminate.

Decontamination work in affected communities in the prefecture wound up by March 2018.

The waste from those operations is required by law to be shipped outside the prefecture for final disposal by 2045.

Until then, the interim storage facility is all that is available.

The central government and Fukushima prefectural authorities have been locked in talks for the past 18 months on what to do with contaminated soil that cannot be moved any time soon.

The Environment Ministry called on local governments to continue managing contaminated soil that is deemed difficult to move in line with a directive issued in December 2020 that made it their responsibility.

The special measures law concerning the handling of radioactive materials stipulates that municipalities, which oversaw the cleanup, are responsible for managing the contaminated materials.

But the ministry’s directive upset local governments, which operate with limited manpower and funds.

Officials with the Fukushima and Sukagawa city governments held informal talks with the ministry last October to request that the central government collect, manage and transport the contaminated soil.

“We cannot manage these sites forever as the number of our employees is dwindling,” one official said.

Kencho Kawatsu, who chairs a committee with oversight for the environmental safety of the interim storage facility, underlined the need for the central and Fukushima prefectural governments to share in the responsibility for managing the temporary storage sites with municipalities.

“If the radioactive soil is scattered, it could fuel rumors that prove harmful to Fukushima municipalities,” said Kawatsu, a guest professor of environmental policy and radiation science at Fukushima University.

He suggested centralizing data on the issue to prevent such an occurrence.
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