Looking radiant.

 

Here we will have a break from normal transmission to broadcast some rather interesting Japanese blog posts I came across today. I took the time to translate them properly because machine translations, as were posted on Enenews, weren’t quite up to scratch. They allege that many more workers have died at the Fukushima No. 1 plant than TEPCO, the government or the media are letting on. The figure in the latter article – 4,300 people – seems ridiculously high and I doubt that many people could die and it not become news, even with large amounts of bribery money being paid.

I don’t endorse what is being said in these posts at all, but I thought I would publish them as an example of the discussions that go on in the Japanese blogosphere and rarely make it into the English-language one. They’re food for thought, at least: TEPCO denied that a worker who died of leukaemia after working at the plant contracted leukaemia as a result of working there, and have admitted that they “fell out of contact” with 143 plant workers. It’s possible there’s more, and also possible that working in a place with such high radiation exposure has already caused them health problems. How many, and in what way, perhaps we will never know.

The first one can be found in the original Japanese at http://ameblo.jp/pochifx/entry-11064892387.html. The author does not give their name.

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“Hi everyone,

Sorry for not logging in for so long and causing you to worry.

I’m going to jump straight into the main topic.

TEPCO has reported that a few workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are “missing”, but that’s a lie.

The truth is that they were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation when disposing of radioactive material, and they suffered heart complications and then died. What’s more, their bodies are now being thoroughly examined by the Fukushima Radiation Research Center (Houshasen Shougai Kenkyuu-you Kentai).

Of course, if TEPCO were found to have killed some of its employees, it would be a major issue. That’s why they’re hiding the fact that the number of employees has fallen, and have put forward the “missing” line instead.

They’re paying the families of those “missing” employees enormous amounts of money to stay quiet. That’s why no one is reporting this. That’s a kind of threat, I think. I thought about releasing this on mixi [a popular Japanese social networking service like Facebook]. But I wondered whether it was my role to let people know about this.

I think if I did, my diary will be quickly erased, and some restrictions would be put on me.

However, if I yield to censorship and am complicit in covering up information, the situation won’t get any better.  So I’m going to continue updating things here, but I might start to write more metaphorically. If you don’t understand what I’m trying to say then I will explain in more detail.

/end.”

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The second one can be found at http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/chikako_5155/7006995.html, and the author gives their name as Chika Muragi.

“TEPCO is honestly terrifying. Today, I heard this from someone in Fukushima who has a lot of personal connections, and so is quite aware of what’s going on.

Hearing it, I realised that my original thoughts and expectations were wildly optimistic.

Today I heard from someone on the inside that “Several hundred TEPCO workers have died and their bodies are being kept in the Fukushima Medical College’s Radiation Research Unit. TEPCO is lying and saying that they’re ‘missing’.”

That’s what Professor Seto told me, in earnest. But the truth is even worse.

Apparently, 4300 workers have died. 300 million yen worth of bribes have been paid to families to keep them quiet- if anyone speaks out they get their compensation taken away.

So there’s someone who has agree to pay 300 million yen. The number of workers who have worked at the plant until now are about 100,000, so 4% have died. Most of them haven’t died at the plant, but after their work finished, and they died later with their families of heart attacks and so on. Because the families are being bribed they don’t hold funerals.

This hasn’t come out on the net or in the media because I think people are scared about losing their ‘compensation’ money. After a few months of working at the plant, the workers go a bit crazy and start getting black bruises on their bodies. Their internal and external injuries are from being exposed to 500 millisieverts. Plutonium is in their lungs. The limit they could be exposed to used to be 50 millisieverts, but that was raised to 250.

The ridiculous 250 mSv limit was decided by the government and TEPCO. But the workers weren’t at No.1 in the beginning, they were at reactors 3 and 4 when they exploded, meaning that they were exposed to 500 millisieverts of radiation. One said “I don’t have long to left.” And now 4300 people don’t have any time left and it’s simple to imagine that many more people will die. Does the country [government?] realise this? If they do, then it’s a national crime against the very laws they created.

Moreover, I’ve also heard that 64 of the Self Defense Forces and 300 police have died. When I went to Kawauchimura in April, there was a police station about 20km away, and many more around the nuclear plant. They were getting a special rate of 30,000 yen a day to be there. And if they finished their duties, they were promised that they’d get moved elsewhere. All the police I saw were under 25- young. Where were the older police? Also, none of them wore masks.

The point is, being given high salaries and promised transfers, is a sign that the organization [the police] are going to let these young people with a future die. 300 people? If so, why aren’t they changing the way they’re doing things? That’s going to be reported to the government- the police are a national organization, after all.

In July deformed babies, such as ones with only one hand, began to be born (I heard this directly from a doctor at the hospital). Yet if you search on Google there’s nothing about it.

What’s coming out is, on yesterday’s news about a “critical” event at the second reactor, that several workers have died.

Then we have Twitter, which is honestly hopeless. All you get on it are scholars beholden to the government who debate back and forth about the definition of ‘meltdown’ and ‘criticality’. The ones who insist “The rumors are false” are really just stubborn, self-styled scholars.

Over the past 50 years, they’ve been telling us that nuclear power is completely safe, and yet over just a six month period when they’re telling us that they’ve stopped needing to cool the reactor, it begins reacting again, 4300 workers are dead (and doubtlessly more to come), they’re paying 1.3 trillion yen in compensation, they’ve got 54 reactors but have plunged 9.5 trillion yen into just 11 of them while the others generate no power, it’s going to take 20 billion yen a year, and ten years to completely close them down… Those who say “But where would the economy be without nuclear,” should go and work in nuclear and get the money from there. Haha.

One more thing. How many earthquakes over M5 occurred in the past 30 years?

UK – 0

France and Germany – 2

America-  322

Japan-  3954!

Why on earth did we start with nuclear power?! Come on. Let’s stop speaking like Americans. They’re not human.”