Evacuation of nuclear power plant accident 1. Cruel contrast, the first person to escape

(oil painting on wood panel, collage. 117×91cm × 3 pieces. 2016)

 

““Why had they prepared buses for just only them already ?

It was right after the accident.

Telling nothing to us they ran away.

Though they had lived next door to me.

I got on bad terms with them after I evacuated.

Why didn’t they say anything?”

(In Fukushima Prefecture, at a temporary housing of Okuma. February 2016)

Words I introduced above were spoken by a old female of Okuma.

She and other Okuma’s people had lived in a temporary housing when I visited in February 2016.

Okuma,

in this tiny town Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant exists.

The radioactive materials spread from this plant did not decreased

when I visited to this place with residents who also lived in temporarily housing for the next year 2017.

Due to the degree of high pollution,

Okuma’s people were allowed to take temporary returning buses which was planned once a month or two months,

and staying time in their home town was also limited for only two hours.

 

(Okuma,2016 Feb with a inhabitant. 3μSv/h, 1700CPM detected from my covered sole in 2 hours.)

Although the subject is missing in female talking above,

it was the family of Tokyo Electric Power Company high class workers who used to work at Fukushima Daiichi at the time,

And the family of Toshiba and Hitachi’s engineer employees were also included.

As I listened to them in a temporary house of Okuma, they said,

“ I can’t get rid of it even after five years.”

 

Many residents of this place began evacuation from the next day morning of March 12, 2011.

However,

under the circumstances,

the regional office men told them to just only take evacuation buses without telling the reason to do so.

Until they saw the TV in the another village’s evacuation place,

they could not realize that the nuclear power plant was in a seriously critical situation.

 

Some people of this town said to me that in five years they had not returned even one time.

‘ To watch breaking my home makes me so depressed ‘.

Also I had heard about this first escaping story from a young guy.

The guy was also one of inhabitants of Okuma too and used to be a nuclear power plant worker until very March 11th 2011.

He introduced himself as well experienced worker and said that almost all of places of Fukushima’s nuclear power plant he had entered into.

There was a network of these kind of workers.

He also told me the story with bitter smile.

Right after March 11th accident occurred,

engineers noticed that the pressure of the reactor pressure vessel of the reactor No.1 increased and didn’t drop,

realizing possibility of explosion they made just only their families evacuate first.

They escaped to Niigata prefecture beyond mountains from Fukushima, taking Ibaraki traffic company buses.

Cruel, contrasting.

A man of this town also told me the story in his childhood.

A child of a power company’s high class worker and a child of a subcontractor stayed in same elementary school before this accident.

He also said that sometimes this cruel vertical structure emerged in his school life.

This was a story of a child’s fight, I think that the bus lines will cause a cruel separation with these children also.

 

The Japanese National Diet Research Report did not mention to the fact.

 

( text : Akira Tsuboi )