Fukushima: thousands have died, thousands more will die via The Ecologist

Posted on 2015/08/18 by

By Ian Fairlie

[…]
Mental health consequences

It is necessary to include the mental health consequences of radiation exposures and evacuations. For example, Becky Martin has stated her PhD research at Southampton University in the UK shows that “the most significant impacts of radiation emergencies are often in our minds.”
[…]
t is likely that these fears, anxieties, and stresses will act to magnify the effects of evacuations, resulting in even more old people dying or people committing suicide.

Such considerations should not be taken as arguments against evacuations, however. They are an important, life-saving strategy. But, as argued by Becky Martin,

“We need to provide greatly improved social support following resettlement and extensive long-term psychological care to all radiation emergency survivors, to improve their health outcomes and preserve their futures.”
Untoward pregnancy outcomes

Dr Alfred Körblein from Nuremburg in Germany recently noticed and reported on a 15% drop (statistically speaking, highly significant) in the numbers of live births in Fukushima Prefecture in December 2011, nine months after the accident.

This might point to higher rates of early spontaneous abortions. He also observed a (statistically significant) 20% increase in the infant mortality rate in 2012, relative to the long-term trend in Fukushima Prefecture plus six surrounding prefectures, which he attributes to the consumption of radioactive food:

“The fact that infant mortality peaks in May 2012, more than one year after the Fukushima accident, suggests that the increase is an effect of internal rather than external radiation exposure.

“In Germany [after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster] perinatal mortality peaks followed peaks of cesium burden in pregnant women with a time-lag of seven months. May 2012 minus seven months is October 2011, the end of the harvesting season. Thus, consumption of contaminated foodstuff during autumn 2011 could be an explanation for the excess of infant mortality in the Fukushima region in 2012.”
[…]
Cancer and other late effects from radioactive fallout
[…]
The Japanese Government, its advisors, and most radiation scientists in Japan (with some honourable exceptions) minimise the risks of radiation. The official widely-observed policy is that small amounts of radiation are harmless: scientifically speaking this is untenable.

For example, the Japanese Government is attempting to increase the public limit for radiation in Japan from 1 mSv to 20 mSv per year. Its scientists are trying to force the ICRP to accept this large increase. This is not only unscientific, it is also unconscionable.
[…]
But, as observed by Spycher et al (2015), some scientists “a priori exclude the possibility that low dose radiation could increase the risk of cancer. They will therefore not accept studies that challenge their foregone conclusion.”

One reason why such scientists refuse to accept radiation’s stochastic effects (cancers, strokes, CVS diseases, hereditary effects, etc) is that they only appear after long latency periods – often decades for solid cancers. For the Japanese Government and its radiation advisors, it seems out-of-sight means out-of-mind.

[…]
It is notable that Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the USSR at the time of Chernobyl and Naoto Kan, Prime Minister of Japan at the time of Fukushima have both expressed their opposition to nuclear power. Indeed Kan has called for all nuclear power to be abolished.
[…]

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＜避難解除問う＞家屋の裏は別世界 via 河北新報

Posted on 2015/08/18 by yukimiyamotodepaul

「この現状で帰れと言うのか？」。東京電力福島第１原発事故の被災地の避難指示を２０１７年３月に解除する－との政府方針に、全村避難中の福島県飯舘村か ら疑問の声が上がっている。地元の要望に沿わない除染と下がらぬ放射線量、集落消滅の危機にある共同体の再生、撤去時期未定のまま農地を占める仮々置き 場。問題山積の中で帰村を迫られる住民の問いを、同村比曽地区から伝える。（編集委員・寺島英弥）

（略）

＜「傾向は明白」＞
比曽は飯舘村南部、村唯一の帰還困難区域である長泥に隣接する。村内に１５地区ある居住制限区域の一つだが「ここは高線量地区なんだ」と菅野さん。
村の定点測定（宅地）の空間線量は、原発事故後の２０１１年４月の８．４５マイクロシーベルト毎時から、ことし４月に２．５４マイクロシーベルトに減った。が、政府の避難指示解除要件の年間２０ミリシーベルト（毎時単純換算で２．２８マイクロシーベルト）をなお超える。
菅野さんはこの日の測定後、岩瀬さんと自宅に戻って、初めてそろった地区全体の数値をパソコンで見渡した。「傾向は一目瞭然だな」。家屋除染を終えた大半 の家で、玄関側の線量は１マイクロシーベルト前後に下がったが、居久根（屋敷林）や山林に面した裏手を見ると、３～４マイクロシーベルト強の数値が並ぶ。 同じ家でも別世界の様相だ。

＜実情に対応を＞
「原発事故から４年たった今も、木立に付いた放射性物質の影響が強い」と岩瀬さんは話す。環境省の除染では、家の居久根や裏山について林床の落ち葉など堆積物を除去するのみで、はぎ取りを行っていない。
防風林を研究し、比曽で居久根を調査する辻修帯広畜産大教授は「落ち葉が林床で分解すると、放射性物質が葉から離れ、雨水で腐葉土層の下まで浸透する。表面の堆積物除去だけでは足りない」と分析した。
比曽行政区は昨春、役員や元区長らの除染協議会を設け「高線量地区の実情に応じ、はぎ取りを」と環境省福島再生事務所に要望を重ねる。「比曽は農家が大半。家にこもっては生きられない。居久根も生活圏なんだ」と、除染協議会メンバーの菅野さんは言う。
１２年９月、自宅の居久根の除染実験を自ら行った。農閑期の土木工事で重機を操った腕で、林床を深さ十数センチはぎ取り、高さ約１０メートルまで枝を切 り、線量を９マイクロシーベルトから２マイクロシーベルトまで下げた。「俺たちが確かめたやり方で、再除染をしてほしい。１７年３月の期限と住民の安全、 どちらが大事なのか」

［メ　モ］政府の避難指示解除要件の一つは、空間被ばく線量が年間積算で２０ミリシーベルト以下になるのが確実なこと。福島第１原発事故後に採った暫定基 準。長期的に「年間１ミリシーベルト（毎時０．２３マイクロシーベルト）以下を目指す」とする。チェルノブイリ原発事故の５年後にできたチェルノブイリ法 は、年間５ミリシーベルトを移住義務の一線とする。

全文は＜避難解除問う＞家屋の裏は別世界

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福島第１原発：汚染雨水が流出　一部センサー作動せず via 毎日新聞

Posted on 2015/08/18 by yukimiyamotodepaul

（抜粋）

東電によると１７日午後９時２４分から４分間、排水路の水があふれて海に流出するのを監視カメラで確認。流出量は不明。排水路の水には、セシウムが １リットル当たり３４０ベクレル、ストロンチウムなどベータ線を出す放射性物質が同４２０ベクレル含まれ、いずれも東電が同原発の地下水を海に流す際の基 準値を超えていた。

ポンプ８台のうち、高さ６５センチ以上の水位で動くよう設定された２台のポンプのセンサーが、急激に降った雨で水面が揺らいだため反応せず、高さ７０センチのせきから水があふれた。

全文は福島第１原発：汚染雨水が流出　一部センサー作動せず

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桜島の噴火警報から、海外メディアが注目する原発問題 via NewSphere

Posted on 2015/08/18 by yukimiyamotodepaul

(抜粋）

他の海外メディアでもこのニュースを、再稼働が始まったばかりの川内原発と絡めて報じる例が目立つ。それらの記事は、川内原発の再稼働に対して、 火山対策の面からも懸念の声があることを伝えている。一方、インターナショナル・ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙（INYT）は、環境・原子力問題の専門家によ る「日本のプルトニウム問題」と題する論説を掲載した。

◆「原発に近い火山」。川内原発には火山噴火のリスクが？
ブルームバーグは、桜島を「原発に近い火山」、ロイターは「原発から遠くない火山」だと報じた。どちらも記事中で、川内原発から約50キロメートル離れた場所にあることを伝えている。

各メディアは、川内原発の再稼働に関して、火山災害の危険の観点からも、反対の声があることを伝えている。AFPは、再稼働された川内原発は、自 然災害による危険にさらされている、との批判があると伝えている。ロイター（15日）は、かねてより反対派が、川内原発は5つの巨大なカルデラの近くにあ ることを指摘している、と伝える。

（略）

ブルームバーグは、2月に発行された国際環境NGOグリーンピースの委託レポート「川内原発と火山灰のリ スク」の中で、執筆者であるイギリスの原子力コンサルタント、ジョン・ラージ氏が警告していることを伝える。噴火が起こった場合は、火山岩と火山灰により 輸送路が断たれ、川内原発の職員は発電所からの避難に駆り立てられるかもしれない。その際は原発の運転が危険にさらされる、というものだ。

新規性基準が2011年の東京電力福島第一原発事故を踏まえて策定された。各メディアは、川内原発は、新規制基準に基づいて再稼働が行われた最初 の原発であると伝えている。ロイター（17日）は、原発業界内で新たな安全対策は、特に川内原発のような発電所に対しては不十分なものだ、との批判の存在 を指摘。ジョン・ラージ氏が、原子力規制委員会の火山噴火への事前対策は、多くの重要な点で欠けていて国際基準を満たしていないと語った、と伝えている。

◆火山活動は桜島だけではない
ロイター（17日）は、安倍首相および日本の産業界の大部分は、燃料費を削減するために原発再稼働を望んでいる。しかし、世論調査によれば原発事故が、 地震と津波によって引き起こされたことから、国民の過半数が再稼働に反対している、と伝える。そして、川内原発から約50キロメートルのところにある桜島 の大規模な噴火の可能性は、110の活火山がある日本の不安定な地質学的特徴を思い出させるものだ、と語り、問題の焦点を日本全土に拡大している。

各メディアは、日本が「環太平洋火山帯」に位置していること、火山活動が活発であることを伝えている。そして、5月の鹿児島県口永良部島（くちのえらぶじま）や、昨年9月の長野県御嶽山での噴火災害を伝えている。

◆日本のプルトニウム保有問題への提言
INYTは17日、「日本のプルトニウム問題」と題する論説を掲載した。オックスフォード大学地理・環境学部の客員上席研究員を務めるピーター・ウィ ン・カービー博士が著者である。カービー博士は、日本が大量のプルトニウムを保有していることを問題視している。日本には地震の不安定さがあり、その上テ ロリストによる盗難の危険もある。プルトニウムは高放射性で非常に有毒な物質であると博士は述べる。このプルトニウムは原発でウラン燃料を燃焼させた際に 生じたものだ。

プルトニウム処理の圧倒的に最良の方法は、地中の長期保管所で安全に保管することだ、と博士は主張する。しかし、日本の多くのぜい弱性、特に地震 活動を考えると、核廃棄物を日本に長期間保管するべきではない、としている。そこで、日本政府は、最も親密な同盟国である国々にお金を払って、自国のプル トニウムを永久に持ち去ってもらうべきだ、としている。

全文は 桜島の噴火警報から、海外メディアが注目する原発問題

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脱原発に必要な抑止力とは via Newsweek

Posted on 2015/08/18 by yukimiyamotodepaul

原発を取り巻く「想定外」脱却に向けたリアルな視点

(略）

現在は規制緩和の議論はあるものの、国立・国定公園では地熱発電の開発は制限されている。火山国の日本にとって「地下の自然ボイラー」である地熱こそ、大きな潜在力を持つ。同じ火山国のニュージーランドでは、地熱発電が発電設備容量全体の約５％を占めている。

休耕田に太陽光発電パネルを敷き詰めれば、発電と農村の経済振興策が一度にできる。

自己目的化する原発再開

一方、廃棄コストなどを勘案すると、原発は実は割高なエネルギー源だ。廃炉にすれば、原発の立地する自治体への補助金等が減って（完全に撤去する まで数十年。その間補助金はあまり減らないのだが）、地方の経済・政治構造が揺らぐ。しかし、原発が海岸に立地していることを利用して、石炭・天然ガス発 電所、あるいは海上輸送を活用した工場に衣替えしていけば、この面での悪影響は限定できる。

（略）

原発は、原爆と切っても切れない関係にある。原発を持っているだけで、核武装能力ありと思われ、核保有国も注意を持って接する。日本の周囲ではロシアだけでなく、中国、北朝鮮が核兵器を保有し、韓国も保有への野心をのぞかせる。

この環境で日本が原発を全廃するには、サウジアラビアがパキスタンと合意しているといわれるような有事の原爆「融通」の約束か、原爆に代わる抑止 力を整備しないといけない。ミサイルを撃破できるだけでなく、日本に核テロを仕掛けようとする国に対しては、同等の被害を与える報復能力も備えなければい けない。他方、核の研究・利用は人類にとって絶対必要なので、量子コンピューター開発、常温核融合技術の開発などで専門家を維持していけばいい。

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原発停止をテーマとする「天空の蜂」を読む via BLOGOS

Posted on 2015/08/18 by yukimiyamotodepaul

東野圭吾の「天空の蜂」を読んだ。自衛隊の巨大ヘリコプターが奪取され、高速増殖炉の真上でホバリングを続ける中、犯人が全国の原発の停止を要求するという内容。

内容もさることながら、この本が福島原発事故のはるか以前の1995年に出版されていた事に驚いた。総力を挙げて取材して執筆した著者の自信作 であったが、出版当時はほとんど無視されたという。原子力ムラにとっては原子炉の危険性をテーマとする好ましくない本であり、話題になってほしくない本 だったから、マスコミ関係者もほとんど取り上げなかったようだ。

しかし、福島原発事故以後は原子力ムラの神通力も落ちてきたようで、映画化されて近く公開されるという。講談社のイブニングにも連載されているという。

続きは原発停止をテーマとする「天空の蜂」を読む

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Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivors Pass Their Stories to a New Generation via The New York Times

Posted on 2015/08/17 by

HIROSHIMA, Japan — Hiromi Hasai was being trained to make machine gun bullets when the flash from the atomic bomb that destroyed his city lit up the already bright morning sky. Just 14, he had been pulled from school a week before to help Japan’s failing war effort.

Mr. Hasai, now 84, has often talked publicly of his experiences that day, 70 years ago Thursday, when the first of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war ultimately killed more than 100,000 people. The victims included hundreds of his classmates, who were still at their school near the blast’s epicenter. The bullet factory, 10 miles out of town, was paradoxically a haven.

On Sept. 8, 1945, about a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the United States, an Allied correspondent stood in the rubble in front of the shell of a building that was once an exhibition center and government office in Hiroshima, Japan.Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revives Debate Over the Atomic BombAUG. 5, 2015
Yet the things that Mr. Hasai saw and felt that day are not recounted by him alone. The person who knows his story best, after Mr. Hasai himself, is Ritsuko Kinoshita, a woman 25 years his junior who is serving as his “denshosha” — the designated transmitter of his memories. It is part of an unusual and highly personal project to preserve and pass on the experiences of atomic bomb survivors, whose numbers are dwindling rapidly.
Mr. Hasai, a retired university physics researcher with a quick and infectious laugh, is still healthy, as are many of the survivors. But the object for Ms. Kinoshita and roughly 50 other volunteer denshosha is to keep telling the stories they have inherited once the witnesses become too frail to do so, to keep alive memories of a traumatic event that has anchored the pacifist sentiment that has pervaded the country ever since.
[…]
Professor Kawanishi called the denshosha project, supported by the city-funded museum, an attempt to preserve some of the moral and emotional influences wielded by those with direct experience of the bomb. Although many survivors have left records of their experiences in memoirs and documentaries, which are widely available to the public, they often end up treated as dry historical records.

[…]
So far that experiment is a small one. Ms. Kinoshita, a former tour guide, has known Mr. Hasai for nearly 20 years, since she began giving volunteer tours at the Peace Memorial Museum in her spare time. But the museum did not start recruiting formal denshosha until 2011. So far 13 bomb survivors have agreed to be paired with one or more denshosha, who are required to spend at least three years shadowing and meeting with the survivor before telling their stories in public. One of the survivors has since died.

Ms. Kinoshita and Mr. Hasai say they have faced criticism from survivors not involved in the project, who question whether someone who did not experience the bomb directly can claim to speak for those who did. Others say such a role should be reserved for family members. Some denshosha are children of the survivors, but many are not, and children are not always willing or able to be public representatives of their parents’ suffering.

“I’ve been told more than once that I have no right to tell their stories,” Ms. Kinoshita said, before leaving to guide a group of high school students around the Atomic Bomb Dome, armed with Mr. Hasai’s memories. When she speaks to groups in the museum’s lecture halls, she says, she shows them a PowerPoint presentation based largely on his recollections.

[…]
“There are all kinds of records, but how many people actually seek them out?” he said. “The freshest memories are stuck in an archive.”

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Peace Activists Descend on Los Alamos, but Residents Remain Indifferent via The New York Times

Posted on 2015/08/17 by

[…]
“All roads lead to Los Alamos,” Father Dear said. “This is the place that taught us that we can destroy one another, destroy the world, and it’s really important for us to understand how our history feeds our violence.”

While residents here seemed to understand, and tolerate, the protest, none of them joined. Some watched with indifferent curiosity, ignoring the message even as it condemned the laboratory that is their town’s lifeblood — and where research today reaches far beyond nuclear weapons, into fields like climate change, geothermal energies and cancer treatment.

Near the protesters sat Margie Lane, 89, who vividly recalled the news of the bombings and “that feeling,” she said, “that the world was no longer safe.”

Her perspective on Los Alamos and its laboratory was decidedly benign. Mrs. Lane has lived here for 38 years and her husband, now dead, worked as a mechanical engineer at the lab, a job that paid the bills and gave him purpose. “He built the gadgets the scientists conceived,” she said.

Jeff Casados, 65, a lifelong resident, said his father was one of the lab’s early scientists, doing some type of classified work, and he worked there too, on an accelerator of subatomic particles used in certain forms of cancer therapy. He said it was easy to condemn the lab when all one knows about it is its “crazy history.”

“We’re not all pro-nukes and pro-bombs,” said Mr. Casados, who retired two years ago and had come to observe the protest. “I worked to save lives, and I’m very proud of that.”
[…]
New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the country, is heavily reliant on its military bases and government research centers. Los Alamos and the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque are among the top 10 employers in the state, which received $27.5 billion in federal money in 2013, according to a recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. About a quarter of the money paid for contracts, many of them for defense work developed at the labs.

But the relationship has come at a price. For years, lab workers used bunkers and canyons around Los Alamos as dumping grounds for radioactive materials — and trace amounts are still embedded in rocks and soil despite millions of dollars in cleanups.
[…]
Last year, plutonium waste leaked from a drum stored at the laboratory. In April, the federal Energy Department agreed to spend $73 million to improve transportation of nuclear waste from Los Alamos to the nation’s only permanent underground repository for such materials, in southeastern New Mexico, where a leak exposed 17 employees to radiation.

In announcing the agreement, Gov. Susana Martinez described Los Alamos and the repository known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as “critical assets to our nation’s security, our state’s economy, and the communities in which they operate.”

[…]

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Japan’s Plutonium Problem via The New York Times

Posted on 2015/08/17 by yukimiyamotodepaul

[…]

For this, one can thank a powerful network of utility companies, conservative politicians and bureaucrats in Japan, who peddle the notion that plutonium constitutes a sort of thermodynamic elixir. A byproduct of burning uranium, plutonium itself can be processed in so-called fast-breeder reactors to produce more energy. That step also yields more plutonium, and so in theory this production chain is self-sustaining — a kind of virtuous nuclear-energy cycle.

In practice, however, fast-breeder technology has been extremely difficult to implement. It is notoriously faulty and astronomically expensive, and it creates more hazardous waste. By the 1990s, many countries that experimented with fast-breeder reactors, including the United States, had phased them out.

But Japan doubled down. The government invested heavily in Monju, a prototype fast-breeder reactor, and the nuclear industry went on a charm offensive. It introduced Mr. Pluto, a puckish animated character, who claimed plutonium was safe enough to drink. It set up so-called PR centers next to nuclear plants: An exhibit at the one near Monju declared that the reactor was “necessary because plutonium can be used for thousands of years.”

The exhibit did not say Monju was a failure. The reactor became operational in 1994, but was shut down the next year after a leak caused a coolant to catch fire. Then came a botched cover-up, more than a decade of repairs, a failed restart and another accident. Monju has cost about $12.5 billion so far and produced only a tiny amount of energy.

In 1993 Japan also started spending a fortune on a reprocessing facility at Rokkasho, which would transform nuclear waste into fuel by separating plutonium and usable uranium from other waste. The process also is extremely expensive, and it, too, creates huge amounts of waste. Scheduled to begin operations in 2016, the plant could add as many as eight tons of plutonium to Japan’s stockpile each year.

While Japan’s record with nuclear waste is abysmal, no other state has found a safe or economically sustainable way to reuse such substances, especially not plutonium. Britain has announced it will abandon its costly and highly toxic reprocessing efforts by around 2020. The United States has a program to recycle nuclear byproducts into a mixed-oxide fuel known as MOx, a blend of uranium and plutonium. But the Obama administration has put it on stand-by because of ballooning costs.

France, which is at the forefront of MOx conversion efforts, has also struggled and is expected to phase out its MOx program by 2019. Instead, it has announced plans to start building in 2020 a new kind of fast-breeder reactor, known as ASTRID. This reactor is designed to generate energy by converting high-level nuclear waste into less dangerous residues, which require storage for several hundred years rather than many thousands of years, as is the case with plutonium. But this project has been delayed until at least 2030.

By far the best way to handle plutonium is to store it in secure long-term repositories underground. Having long banked on conversion, neither France nor Britain has permanent facilities; they keep plutonium in interim storage at reprocessing plants. Only two states have begun building viable long-term storage. Finland is constructing a vast facility blasted out of granite, which should be usable as of 2020. In the United States, underground chambers that can accommodate 12 metric tons of plutonium have been dug in New Mexico.

[…]

Britain already holds about 20 tons of Japan’s plutonium, and France, about 16 tons, under contracts to reprocess it into usable fuel. Under current arrangements, this fuel, plus all byproducts (including plutonium), are to be sent back to Japan by 2020. Instead, Japan should pay, and generously, for that plutonium to stay where it is, in secure interim storage. And it should help fund the construction of secure permanent storage in Britain and France.

The Japanese government should also pay the United States to take the nearly 11 tons of plutonium currently in Japan. This proposal will seem controversial to some Americans, but the two states already have arrangements for the exchange of nuclear material. (With Finland, however, the proposition is a political nonstarter.) But it will take many years to build additional permanent storage in the United States — and overcome likely opposition in Congress — so in the meantime, Japan’s plutonium should be stored in interim facilities at American plants.

Read more at Japan’s Plutonium Problem

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How 5 People Survived Nagasaki’s Nuclear Hell via National Geographic

Posted on 2015/08/17 by yukimiyamotodepaul

Three days after Hiroshima, an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. A new book tells stories of those who lived through horror.

Seventy years ago this Sunday, on August 9, 1945, an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, obliterating much of it and killing 74,000 people, mostly civilians. It was only the second time in history an atomic bomb had been used as a weapon. (Read about Hiroshima, the first target of an atomic bomb, 50 years later.)

In Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, Susan Southard follows the lives of five hibakusha (survivors) who escaped the firestorm and through extraordinary courage and resilience went on to live happy, fulfilled lives.

Speaking from her home in Arizona, she talks about the battle for the truth over what happened in Nagasaki; how square dancing helped heal the wounds of war; and why the survivors no longer harbor feelings of animosity towards Americans.

[…]

One was direct denial of any radiation effects by key U.S. military leaders like General Leslie Groves, General Thomas Farrell  and the U.S. War Department. During the U.S. occupation of Japan, which lasted from 1945 to 1952, General Douglas MacArthur also instituted a strict press code banning “false or destructive criticism” of the Allied powers out of concern that too much anger could put the thousands of U.S. troops in Japan at risk.

General Groves and others promoted the idea that the Japanese were using the effects of the bomb as anti-American propaganda. So, the people of Japan, other than the people in the cities directly affected, didn’t know for years what was happening in their own country. There was medical censorship as well. Physicians working with the survivors weren’t allowed to publish studies or findings of what was happening.

They also didn’t want the decision to use the bombs to be challenged in the U.S., by books like John Hersey’s Hiroshima. So President Truman and the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, made a concerted effort to publish articles justifying the use of the bombs, excluding any information about what happened to the people beneath the atomic clouds.

The justifications were so airtight that they became the dominant way of perceiving the decision to use the bombs on Japan: that the two bombs ended the war and saved a million American lives.

[…]

One of the more bizarre actions taken by the Americans after the bombing was to introduce square dancing. What was that all about?

It’s so crazy! And quite lovely in the end. It began in Nagasaki. The people assigned to lead the occupation efforts in Nagasaki were very sympathetic toward the suffering of the survivors and tried to find ways to help them. One night, the director for the U.S. occupation in Nagasaki, Winfield Niblo was at a dinner party with Japanese educators.

Afterwards there was a presentation of Japanese folk dancing. Niblo decided to present some American square dancing to add to the festivities. It caught on nationally to become a post-war American contribution to Japanese life.

Read more at How 5 People Survived Nagasaki’s Nuclear Hell

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