This article is a reminder that this is the 10th Anniversary of the beginning of the ongoing Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima. It serves as a Fukushima Update. Therefore:
Saturday, March 13, 2021, 10 AM – Jun San and Peace Walkers will come to the gates of Indian Point for a Remembrance Ceremony. All are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Obviously we cannot have any of our usual program activities, but 10 years of “No going home” is something to observe and be reminded that this is what can happen here if anything went wrong with any of those Gas Pipelines that are Indian Point’s new BFF’s.
This is not a lengthy agenda item. There isn’t much to do unless anyone wants to make a sign or something. It’s just a thing to show up for and be together. If you opt to come on Saturday please consider bringing some sandwiches or fruit or other snacks for the Peace Walkers.
Thank you all for all you do, and for putting up with one another’s various quirks, complaints, demands, imperfections, and annoyances. We are all Bozos on this bus!
much love,
jeanne
“The Deeper Reach the Roots of Justice, the Further Fly the Wings of Peace.”
A Love Song of the Peace Crane – jdshaw, 4/27/17, WESPAC
Fukushima resident still can’t return home 10 years after nuclear disaster, March 3, 2021 (Mainichi Japan) FUKUSHIMA— Yasuko Sasaki’s house lies just 30 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where a meltdown took place following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. On Feb. 1, Sasaki temporarily returned to clean up leaves that had fallen on the grave at the back of the property.
Once a month, the 66-year-old visits her house in the Tsushima district in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Namie from the prefectural village of Otama — 50 kilometers away — where she is currently evacuated to. It has been almost 10 years since she became unable to live at her own residence.
Due to high radiation levels, Tsushima was designated a “difficult to return” zone, where restrictions for entering are in place, and people are barred from living there. Homes without their owners living in them have been ransacked by wild animals. While Sasaki has been away, wild animals chewed up stuffed turtle and bird specimens kept at her house. She continues to clean her house so that she “can return at any time.”…………
The Reconstruction Design Council in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, an advisory panel to the prime minister, deemed that “recovery from the devastating disaster will not be completed until Fukushima soil recovers.” The government has set up Specified Reconstruction and Revitalization Bases within difficult-to-return zones and is carrying out decontamination work and developing infrastructure so that people can reside in the area once again. It aims to lift evacuation orders for the bases in between 2022 and 2023.
However, the areas designated as reconstruction bases are limited. In the Tsushima district, a 153-hectare space surrounding the town hall’s Tsushima branch is designated — just 1.6% of the whole district. Of the 532 households in the district at the time of the disaster, 80% including Sasaki’s house are not included in the reconstruction base area, and there are no prospects for these people to be able to return to their homes.
Sasaki said, “Everything’s still the same, even 10 years after the (nuclear) disaster. I wonder for how many more years I’ll have to continue cleaning (my house).”
(Japanese original by Rikka Teramachi, Fukushima Bureau, Suyon Kimu, City News Department) https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210302/p2a/00m/0na/012000c
