Fukushima Anniversary Events

We have been busy with local community events for the anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima disaster. I thought I would share some recordings we did with their transcripts here.

Here is my husband's recording:
http://dataharmonics.dyndns.org/ivan_stout20120306.wav

and transcript:
It is funny the things you remember the most when a chapter of your life closes that you can no longer return to. Such is our life in Japan:

• Cherry blossom picnics
• Hot summer festivals
• Chilly morning commutes
• The pride of my mother-in-law when she talked of the house her daughter and her daughter's husband had built for her and them and how young we had been to do such a thing.
• The crushing sad realization that we would have to leave everything behind, and the stoic resolve that we must do whatever it took to protect our 3-year-old son.

My wife and I met in the US as freshmen in college. We put each other through school while plotting to one day go back to Japan and build a house there where we could live with her mother who was living all by herself. After several years of hard work the day came for our journey to Japan. Life was harder in Japan. Working hours were longer, but we persevered and eventually built a house about an hour North of Tokyo. It took me years, but I finally found a position in Tokyo that leveraged my strengths and paid accordingly. It was at that time that my wife and I decided to have a child.

2011 started as a great year, the best we had had so far. I received a huge raise at work and payed off the separate loan we had for the land for our house, and my wife was preparing to go back to school. And then, suddenly, all that we had worked so hard for seemed insignificant to the cascading events of March 11th.

My boss and good friend called me on the morning of the 15th. We decided to work remotely from west Japan. We were a two-man team which accommodated such a decision. In less than two hours my wife and I decided what we would take with us. We have not been back to our house since then.

My wife's mother helped us get to west Japan by car, but felt obligated to return to the only home she had ever known the next day and has stayed there ever since. After 3 weeks of the news only getting worse, we decided to leave Japan after 7 years. I signed a transition agreement with my company. 

I remember the rest of 2011 as having to remind myself every time I woke up the events that had taken place. We had moved out of a house that no one was willing to buy, I had gone from a well paid employee with rising prospects to someone who was unemployed and thousands of miles away from his professional network. The peaks and valleys of 2011 seemed far too great for one little family to bear. 

However, in the beginning of 2012 I started a new job . . . a job I love. If 2011 was our year of loss, 2012 is our year of thankfulness and the beginning of our life long duty to let our story be known, as repayment for our good fortune and to all those loved ones we left behind.

And so, I present our lessons learned the hard way:

• A technology you cannot clean-up the mess of is a technology you have not yet earned the right to use. Right now, nuclear power is such a technology.
• Never trust anyone who claims to know the future or believes the future obeys bell-curves.
• The future cannot be engineered. Black swans will happen. Build robust systems. Dismantle frail ones.
• Most people want to believe what is most convenient to believe and people in authority tend to tell only the convenient half-truths.
• It is not enough to work hard on your own life. Everything you have earned in your life can disappear, in some cases, in less than two hours. Be a good citizen and think about the unpleasant scenarios no one wants to think about.
• Right now, there are people too afraid to let their children outside to play and rightfully so. Clean air, land, and water are a right worth fighting for.
• No matter how justified you feel, you will always regret leaving people behind. The only cure for the guilt is to become an advocate for their cause. 
• No one should have to decide between financial ruin and the safety of their family.
• No one should have to leave behind loved ones without saying goodbye. 
• As hard as it is to convince people with strong beliefs, it is harder to convince people who simply don't care. Care about everything, but prioritize what is worth fighting for. 

Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to our story.


Here is my recording:
http://dataharmonics.dyndns.org/chiaki_kasahara20120306.wav

and transcript:
The following is a life changing lesson I have had to learn.

• When an earthquake occurs, they will tell you that they are looking into the nuclear plants but everything is alright. 
• When it is apparent that power has been lost to a nuclear plant, they will say it will be restored soon so there is nothing to worry about.
• When they are having trouble restoring power, they will say that no matter what happens, no radioactive contamination will ever occur.
• When there are explosions, they will say that they were simply hydrogen explosions and very little radioactive contamination will occur. They will say the wind is blowing the contamination away to the ocean.
• When the wind direction changes and monitoring stations start reporting high radiation levels, they will say there is no immediate risk to your body. They will make false comparisons like eating abanana or flying in an airplane. Just for precaution, though, they will tell you to stay inside and not put your laundry out to dry.
• And when people eventual get ill with cancer, they will say there is no proof that it is caused by their nuclear plant. 

They will deny and deny, until every last one of us is too ill to ask anymore questions.

The reason they continue to lie and deny is because Japan does not just use nuclear power, but it supplies the world with modern reactor cores. The longer they can deny and postpone the horrendous truth behind Fukushima, the more money the industry pulls in.

After Fukushima, a new hidden cost was added to nuclear power. This cost is in the form of the lies being told to those around Fukushima and will be borne over the decades by the deteriorating  health of regular people completely innocent of any wrong doing. People like the neighborhood children our son used to play with.

The only way to stop the lies and the damage being inflicted on the Japanese public is to stop the money going to nuclear power. Only then will Japan be able to move on and will the rest of the world will be able live with clear conscience.

Thank you for listening. I hope you can learn from my experience without having to go through this same scenario yourself.

The more we talk about our experience, the easier it is to talk about.

Here is the site it was posted on: www.NukeFreeTexas.org