In June, 2012, I went to the Fukushima Forum at the Iwaki City in Fukushima, Japan where I was born in. I heard victims’ voices which were facing against the power and they were very smart and new. They accumulated their knowledge and experiences from the past experiences of Minamata disease and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the forum, one guy who had lived near Fukushima Daiichi insisted on the importance of self-decision among people’s distrust of everything including the government, the congress, bureaucrats, industries, and the media.
In late September of 2013, I interviewed Setsuko Kuroda who was a member of Women from Fukushima Against Nukes and appears on the documentary “Women of Fukushima.” I am sorry for a late report and my English skill.
Q: Please tell me about the beginning of the Women from Fukushima Against Nukes?
A: After the accident, everybody evacuated here and there and I also evacuated once. Then, I returned here (the Koriyama City in Fukushima). We wanted something to do by those who lived here. I called Ruiko Mutoh (the representative of The Complainants for Criminal Prosecution of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster) and Seiichi Nakate (the representative and mediator of Citizen’s Conference of the Support Child and Victims Law in The Nuclear Accident) to organize the meeting. At that time, radiation level in front of the Koriyama station was very high. It was the beginning that various movements were starting rapidly. So we did a protest meeting but there were sparse audiences in late April, 2011.
[…]
Q: Did you already know people were in initial radiation exposure including iodine?
A: Yes. There were no big movement yet so we were in gloom. We wanted to express our anger and sorrow in the appreciable way. We were discussing about a sit-in in front of the prefectural office or Tokyo where more people would see us all over the country. While doing this, members were increasing. At the time, the youth gathered and started the No Nukes Tent in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Then, we decided the Three Days Sit-In there. Women who were good at the Internet mailed to spread our event information, women who were good at designing handouts created a handout, and we were discussing what we would do. Women from Fukushima exceeded over a hundred in a twinkling. It was our passionate debut on 28 to 30th October, 2011.
[…]
Q: I interviewed Mr. Kohzen, the lawyer of the Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial. He said they could not gather plaintiffs in the Koriyama City and the Fukushima City in Fukushima, Japan. Why don’t people in both cities sue the administrator even though they have more cancer children than other cities in Fukushima?
A: There is an invisible pressure and is an oppressive atmosphere which encroaching on freedom of speech. We hardly say here is a very dangerous situation or it is good for children to evacuate. People like me are really the minority.
Q: What is an oppressive pressure?
A: See this scenery.(It was a beautiful, sunny, and peaceful pastoral landscape of suburb of the Koriyama City.) There is nothing bad in the scene and nobody mask here. Radiation is invisible and odorless which make us confuse. I rather hope if radiation is smelling bad everybody has a sense of crisis, but conversely the nation which is the base and the International atomic mafia seize that sense of crisis and mount a campaign which radiation is safe in various ways cleverly. They have money and use persons of title and their power is overwhelming.
Read more at Setsuko Kuroda: Talks about Women from Fukushima
