TOKYO — Amid growing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of recovery, Japan marked the second anniversary Monday of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left nearly 19,000 people dead or missing and has displaced more than 300,000.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the government intends to make "visible" reconstruction progress and accelerate resettlement of those left homeless by streamlining legal and administrative procedures many blame for the delays.
"I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said at a somber memorial service at Tokyo's National Theater.
At observances in Tokyo and in still barren towns along the northeastern coast, those gathered bowed their heads in a moment of silence marking the moment, at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake – the strongest recorded in Japan's history – struck off the coast.
Japan has struggled to rebuild communities and to clean up radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, whose reactors melted down after its cooling systems were disabled by the tsunami. The government has yet to devise a new energy strategy – a central issue for its struggling economy with all but two of the country's nuclear reactors offline.
About half of those displaced are evacuees from areas near the nuclear plant. Hundreds of them filed a lawsuit Monday demanding compensation from the government and the now-defunct plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, for their suffering and losses.
"Two years after the disasters, neither the government nor TEPCO has clearly acknowledged their responsibility, nor have they provided sufficient support to cover the damages," said Izutaro Managi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
Throughout the disaster zone, the tens of thousands of survivors living in temporary housing are impatient to get resettled, a process that could take up to a decade, officials say.
"What I really want is to once again have a `my home,' " said Migaku Suzuki, a 69-year-old farm worker in Rikuzentakata, who lost the house he had just finished building in the disaster. Suzuki also lost a son in the tsunami, which obliterated much of the city.
Further south, in Fukushima prefecture, some 160,000 evacuees are uncertain if they will ever be able to return to homes around the nuclear power plant, where the meltdowns in three reactors spewed radiation into the surrounding soil and water.
The lawsuit filed by a group of 800 people in Fukushima demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades. Another 900 plan similar cases in Tokyo and elsewhere. Managi said he and fellow lawyers hope to get 10,000 to join the lawsuits.
Evacuees are anxious to return home but worried about the potential, still uncertain risks from exposure to the radiation from the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.
While there have been no clear cases of cancer linked to radiation from the plant, the upheaval in people's lives, uncertainty about the future and long-term health concerns, especially for children, have taken an immense psychological toll on thousands of residents.
"I don't trust the government on anything related to health anymore," said Masaaki Watanabe, 42, who fled the nearby town of Minami-Soma and doesn't plan to return.
Yuko Endo, village chief in Kawauchi, said many residents might not go back if they are kept waiting too long. Restrictions on access are gradually being lifted as workers remove debris and wipe down roofs by hand.
"If I were told to wait for two more years, I might explode," said Endo, who is determined to revive his town of mostly empty houses and overgrown fields.
A change of government late last year has raised hopes that authorities might move more quickly with the cleanup and reconstruction.
Since taking office in late December, Abe has made a point of frequently visiting the disaster zone, promising faster action and plans to raise the long-term reconstruction budget to 25 trillion yen ($262 billion) from 19 trillion yen (about $200 billion).
"We cannot turn away from the harsh reality of the affected areas. The Great East Japan Earthquake still is an ongoing event," Abe said at the memorial gathering in Tokyo. "Many of those hit by the disaster are still facing uncertainty over their futures."
The struggles to rebuild and to cope with the nuclear disaster are only the most immediate issues Japan is grappling with as it searches for new drivers for growth as its export manufacturing lags, its society ages and its huge national debt grows ever bigger.
Those broader issues are also hindering the reconstruction. Towns want to rebuild, but they face the stark reality of dwindling, aging populations that are shrinking further as residents give up on ever finding new jobs. The tsunami and nuclear crisis devastated local fish processing and tourism industries, accelerating a decline that began decades before.
Meanwhile, the costly decommissioning the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant could take 40 years as its operator works on finding and removing melted nuclear fuel from inside, disposing the spent fuel rods and treating the many tons of contaminated wastewater used to cool the reactors.
Following the Fukushima disaster, Japan's 50 still viable nuclear reactors were shut down for regular inspections and then for special tests to check their disaster preparedness. Two were restarted last summer to help meet power shortages, but most Japanese remain opposed to restarting more plants.
The government, though, looks likely to back away from a decision to phase out nuclear power by the 2030s. Abe says it may take a decade to decide on what Japan's energy mix should be.
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Associated Press writers Malcolm Foster and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Emily Wang in Kesennuma, Japan, contributed to this report.
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So sad, good info. Like the TV magazine news tonight, there is no mention of the horrible symptoms growing in kids from Fukushima to Kanto. The radiation was massive and now 56% of kids are showing up with thyroid nodules, far away from Fukushima. The girls get sick first and the babies, oh my. If you get a chance check out the Fuku Symposium on the medical implications of Fuku and 70 years of radiation exposure we've created in the industry. I heard on the same TV news that there are 300,000 people still in temporary housing, separated from their families, getting ongoing fallout, and eating radiated food. I feel so sorry for them- :( There's a Youtube of all the animal deformities and they are not pretty. Unlike natural selection mutations by radiation are 99.9% unsurvivable over generations. It's easier to see how devastating the accumulation is in tiny animal and bird and butterfly and cicada bodies with their short longevity. Humans not so easy to see the effects until later. Sweden noted long after Chernobyl that all the babies in utero at the time were born with lower IQ's (it really screws up math abilities too). Chernobyl fallout symptoms didn't really increase until 4 years later while Fuku kids got thyroid nodules in less than a year. How long will it take for the West Coaster's to show up with early cataracts (uh, count me in on that one already!) and heart, stomach and lungs, then bladder and kidney problems (the latter making it harder to get rid of the radiation). Truly getting people to realize that there is some mitigation you can do is like telling kids there is no Santa Claus- :o
There was a chart on one of the Symposium vids that shows the body accumulation of eating 10 becquerels per kg., per day, for three years, of Cesium 137 (200 isotopes but they pick the longest lasting one) compared to a one-shot exposure. The one-shot is taken up in the body and that's it, depending on dosage of course, while the 3 year daily accumulation equates to 1400 becquerels ingested. For a baby 50 becquerels is equal to permanent heart damage. The comparisons they make in the medical section of the Symposium are very useful to hear.
Japan's standard for max. food radiation is 100 Bq per Kg (although I heard that went up so I wondered if the presenters used any updated figures), while Canada's standard is 1000 Bq per kg, and U.S. standard is 1200 Bq per Kg!! We are all being pimped by the nuclear industry, made to eat radiation at the higher end of daily dose routines (using a gamma meter would be better than nothing or maybe those cheap passive dosimeters so at least you'll know when you reach 'fried,' LOL). It's a 'duh' why cancer is so prevalent in the U.S. Though radiation is not so hot for depop since it doesn't outright kill people quickly (due to our longer lifespan than most animals and bugs), radiation definitely will cause massive mutations that carry forward after the first generation born to parents who were exposed. What we are doing to ourselves is f'insane. Even if all the radioactive materials became inert due to shorter and shorter half lives, the life forms would carry it in their bodies forever, even into the ground by radioactive bones. Please don't scatter my ashes- :P
Everyone wants the Japanese and R.O.W. to forget about what happened, as though, 'chin up' and hidy ho, off we go, back online at the nuclear plants again. The US is the one pushing Japan to go back online. I heard a KQED guy actually say today that Japan didn't have any other energy resources. What a stupid lie that is and on KQED!! Maybe he's never heard of geothermal energy?? The journalists say things these days that are bad English and NOT researched. What a joke journalism has become, so pathetic. A Japanese PR representative said that at first everyone was scared but now they think they have to keep some nuclear plants going while they work on alternative energy (ya right, add insult to injury, great idea). Meanwhile they are all dying while stories about Tepco acting like real thugs circulate and all the int'l nuclearcrats say, hey it's not thaaaat baaaad when you've been wantonly dosed for the last twenty years and didn't know it. One worker said, everyone knows know that Tepco lies and lies and lies. So, why did the US believe them? I am positive the US knew what was happening and also knows there wasn't much to be done. I guess my denial shows by blaming the US and int'l community for not saying, step aside turkeys, we're going in... Considering the quakes and releases from this one plant, lately, things are still not looking good for ANY fix. Tonight I noticed two low flying helicopters again over N. Bay and I thought to myself, yaaaa, we're on our way. Also saw that the cameras on the sea lions yesterday are showing huge 'glint's' of red and green, almost pixellated, especially on their shiny noses, poor things. I don't really know what's causing the camera to pick up differently or maybe it's a tad of oil from the tanker that was parked nearby.
Atom Boy lives forever and humans, well, they've 'peaked.' So many families with kids want to leave and can't. I wonder if we told them that when people are totally irradiated for the short run of health, that they need to be made to stay in their location. If they've had catastrophic radiation poisoning, I think we even have a directive to shoot them to prevent them from leaving and spreading the contamination. Radiation is like a burning fly paper you can't get off your shoes, LOL. If I was in the street with severe radiation poisoning I would hope someone would put me out of my misery. It's different amassing symptoms and dying slowly. I have a bad feeing about Japan and the West Coast, it's just too soon to see the effects yet. Getting my mother and I out of here for somewhere else, that may be impossible.
All the studies will prob. come out twenty years from now on what we are being exposed to daily. Bottom fish and fresh water fish are now NO NO's! Papers well vetted on the real statistics of radiation impact on food and environment were refused to be published by universities and labs were told not to do tests in the U.S. and Canada. Now they say, don't worry, the rad levels are going down--that is a big fat lie! No people or their kids were told about rad Iodine sweeping close to ground up and down the west coast. We're being had just like Japan and continuing but why? I mean, what we got exposed to, it's ours, so no one expects the gov to DO something about our personal exposure. Ya know, living's been good on the West Coast, until now- :) A Japanese official said he thought the US gov wasn't telling the truth because they didn't want to call attention to all the 30 or so BWR reactors like Japan's we have here! Whatever their reason for not telling, not talking, not informing, not caring much, I can only think the worse of them. Then again, they've been doing that for every rad event at a plant or bomb test, sugar coating the nuclear elephant in the room, for the last 50 years, so GO FIGURE. I don't speak 'mushroom' language or I'd string some pearls of unkind language for what's happened to everyone and those who continue to think 'it's really okay, just meditate a while and change the radiation.' Oh Ok, maybe I can eat a few tiny rad rocks (pop rocks for real!) to get my body accustomed to radiation, like the Irradia couple from Russia. Oh wait, I'm already doing that... Ultimately, the nuclear cover-up story is one of human betrayal and very primitive, behavior and belief patterns.
I do wish there was some place the Japanese people with kids could go for rehab and relaxation while their lives take whatever fateful (or not) turn, like the Russians did with the kids to improve their health (like an experimental SPA). Much was learned back then of how to help them survive (not really well but survive they did except those who would not stop eating sugar!), but applied to a massive population, there would have to be a miracle and the right resources to put such a Fuku detox SPA in place. I can dream anyway. Meanwhile I'm learning how to channel my anger into something positive, with whatever time I have left! God help me- :)
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