2016/03/03

on the occasion of the Fukushima anniversary

Japanfocus.org has high-level, but short essays each week.
Here is one about the 5th anniversary of the triple disaster, centering on N.E. Japan
http://apjjf.org/2016/05/Jacobs.html

[excerpt from the text]
...People whose suffering-at no fault of their own-is becoming invisible. Soon when we talk about Fukushima we will reduce the human impact to a quibbling over numbers: how many cases of thyroid cancer, how many confirmed illnesses. Lost-hidden-forgotten will be the hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, in many cases permanently, and try to rebuild their shattered lives. Public relations professionals and industry scientists will say that these people did this to themselves (see here, and here). And the curtain will draw ever downward as we forget them.

This is the tradition of nuclear forgetting.
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Recommended citation: Robert Jacobs, "On Forgetting Fukushima", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 5, No. 1, March 1, 2016.

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