Mother’s milk

(oil painting on wood panel, collage. 117×91cm × 3 pieces. 2017)
　

An exhibition at Art space Tetra located in Hakata of Fukuoka (south part of Japan) became a chance to meet a woman for me.

She was the representative of the “Kitakyushu Project” which had accepted refugees and migrants from Fukushima and around Fukushima after 3.11 in Kita-kyushu.

She talked about her experience to me.

- Her organization established a radioactive material inspection system in her group collaborated with specialists.

Then a woman who had emigrated from a part of Kanto region to her group asked to check her mother’s milk.

She had so much paid attention to what she ate as she had a tiny baby.

Nevertheless,

cesium was detected from her breast milk.

The detection revealed that she had let her baby drink cesium directly through her breast milk.

Realizing this she bursted into tears on the spot.

She said that she had lined up for the public distribution of water before she left After the nuclear accident.

I remember that when she told this story, the woman who represented the organization could not hold back her tears too.

A mother.

Other represent of a organizations in Kyushu also told me that they watched many divorces among evacuees.

There was a wide gap between mother’s sense of crisis for exposure and her husband’s one.

It has been also in a shadow that how many couples have broken in total after Fukushima.

 

 

In March 2017,

Fukushima prefectural government decided to discontinue providing housing fee for evafree of charge.

The reason they showed was that amount of radiation got decreasing to the safe level for daily life in most parts of Fukushima.

The free housing support system under the low of Disaster Relief Act is implemented usually in the event of a natural disaster such as a big earthquake or tsunami, typhoon.

The situation like the Fukushima’s nuclear accident is not assumed as a condition of it’s operation.

However,

as an exceptional way the system was adopted to deal with Fukushima’s case,

environmental pollution by radioactive material proliferation.

For six years after the accident,

housing had been offered for free to evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture.

The government also decided to terminate this case after getting questioning the problem of continuing to implement exceptional operations from around.

Many evacuees included mother with children no father.

Because of financial reasons,

father remained in Fukushima to keep earning certain money.

In this case father had to cover the split-up families financially.

Some of mothers who had children included off course tiny infants.

These mothers were unable to work.

Therefore after the subsidized housing fee were eliminated,

suddenly they became difficult to keep maintaining their living conditions.

Only two ways were left for these mothers.

 

Going back to Fukushima?

or Leaving the residence but keep staying in this place?

Fukushima prefectural government had switched to providing up to 30,000 yen in subsidies to households that could not earn a monthly income 210,000 yen.

And the other hand they transferred 100 thousand yen to households who decided to come back to Fukushima by March 2017.

 

< We want you to come back to Fukushima. >

 

We can see real intention of public officers in the gap of money.

They wanted to prevent from population decreasing in Fukushima.

 

Once I heard from a mother of Fukushima about how she had evacuated actually.

When she thought to evacuate,

her husband, grand mother and grand father never allowed her to go saying

 

‘ Other mothers doesn’t escape. Why just only you think to leave? ‘

 

So there was no way for her.

She decided to evacuate by only herself,

forced her children to ride on the car and drove the car in crying to outside of Fukushima.

 

I already wrote about mothers who choose to divorce disgusting to husband like above in this text.

For this kind of mothers it had became difficult to return to Fukushima.

 

And areas in Fukushima Prefecture,

even though decontamination had finished,

there have been still danger level contamination remained.

2016 summer, a radiation-control specialist who used to work for TEPCO very in Fukushima once measured contamination level of soil and showed it to me actually.

Before the accident,

this place’s contamination level made warning alarm sounded in the TEPCO’s internal regulations, and needed workers to use oxygen bomb.

And in Fukushima Prefecture,

the number of children with thyroid cancer is still increasing.

 

Going back?

To Where?

 

 

As of 2018,

there are mothers who are struggling to choose whether they lose place to live or not.

On April 11, 2017,

the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced the data of bullying which were done to evacuees children in Japanese schools after the accident.

They learned that 199 cases of bullying had occurred.

On March 8th 2017,

a boy who was one of bullied evacuating children (the Yokohama case) published the full text of his diary.

He had wrote it secretly when he was a sixth grader in elementary school.

It showed that he got bullied,

snatched subsidization money,

violated,

teachers never paid attention to him in the school though they noticed

and had thought to commit suicide.

 

August 29, 2014.

at the press conference held at the second Fukushima group evacuation trial,

four women sat next to the organizers.

They each had an elementary school girl and boy together.

The mothers were all wearing masks.

Children too.

When the interview began,

a media guy from France held up his camera and tried to take the women’s faces,

then a woman who supported the trial said,

“ No. No cameras. Stop it. “

All of them worried to be identified in Fukushima.

The number of people who have evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture.

According to government statistics, 62,808 people were the largest number on Jan. 26, 2012,

and since then, the number of evacuees has decreased gradually.

The figure is believed to be based on the number of people who applied for housing assistance under the Disaster Relief Act.

As other refugees were naturally present,

this is also a minimal number.

In 2012, the population of Fukushima Prefecture was about 1.98 million.

From that point of view,

the number of evacuees is only about three percent of the prefecture’s population.

Evacuees were minorities in Fukushima Prefecture.

And these mothers were too.

 

Back again,

the trial was brought on June 24, 2011.

The appeal wanted Koriyama city office to confirm the rights of children to be educated in a safe environment guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Fukushima District Court rejected the appeal at the first hearing.

And the high court in Sendai also rejected it.

The reasons for rejection at the first trial were that

acute damage caused from exposure to the children of Koriyama was not apparent at that time since June 2011 when the application was filed.

The plaintiffs were 14 junior high school students and their parents of Koriyama city.

They appealed to the high court after receiving a ruling to announce the rejection.

While this movement,

data about children’s tyroid gland condition in Fukushima was reported.

This survey was conducted by Fukushima Health Managing Survey Committee,

it revealed abnormalities of cysts and nodule emerging in thyroid gland.

This symptoms were never seen before in Fukushima’ and Japan.

So three judges who were in charge of the high court, therefore, needed an unusual long time consideration for the second trial of the application for provisional disposition.

However,

their decision on April 24, 2013 was also rejection.

The court’s ruling reveals the court’s anguish.

The following sentence was included in the ruling.

 

‘ Health damage caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident,

and the risk of developing a space dose rate in the city of Koriyama at present,

children are continuously exposed to low-dose radiation and their lives and bodies are affected.

This risk of exposure is not easily released unless they are moved from Koriyama City,

even in light of the effects of the decontamination work thus far. ‘

 

Although this was included,

the results were rejection.

Then the plaintiffs did not appeal to the Supreme Court,

but stopped demanding anymore.

The reason was that 13 of the 14 plaintiffs had already moved from Koriyama City voluntarily.

Koriyama city office did not interfere with it.

Nothing but evacuation, there is no other way to escape from the effects of exposure in Koriyama.

However,

the plaintiffs had already fled the city,

so the complaint itself couldn’t be filed.

There were two options for the plaintiffs.

 

Should they bring their children back to Fukushima again to appeal to the Supreme Court from where they had already been evacuated?

Or should they retain their escaping life from exposure and withdraw from the trial?

 

As the judge said, 13 out of 14 people had already left Koriyama.

And the plaintiffs actually chose the latter of the choices.

Therefore,

the first trial of the evasive trial has disappeared.

 

“-Please tell me why you wanted to join the plaintiffs in this trial.”

 

A media reporter at the press desk asked masked mothers about their motives.

The plaintiffs in the first trial were parents, including 14 junior high school students.

This time, there were 24 parents and children living in not only Koriyama but also in many municipalities in Fukushima.

The plaintiffs in masks sitting in front of us did not participate in the first trial.

The basis of their appeal was unchanged from that of the first trial.

 

<To make public offices recognize that children have the right to be educated in a safe environment>

 

and one more was added to it.

 

<Demand for compensation to Japan country and prefectures due to they failed to take measures to protect children from exposure>.

 

The plaintiffs had demanded 100,000 for each of them.

Why did they want to join the plaintiffs again three years after the nuclear accident?

That was a question that I felt too.

In answer,

they said not about the damage they suffered in more than three and a half years after the accident,

but just after the 2011 accident.

 

It was child’s nose bleeding.

 

 

Mothers on the platform started to talk about health disorders occurred after the accident in 2011,

mainly nose bleeding, including children and sometimes parents.

In fact,

on the bus bound to Fukushima, I had talked with a female face-to-face.

She was also another plaintiff mother.

She also told me about nasal bleeding.

Shortly after the accident,

she evacuated with her child to a certain location in a Kanto area,

and after a while she returned to Koriyama in the summer of 2011,

but at Koriyama city her child began to so much nose bleed and there was a rash on the child’s body.

The same symptom appeared on the woman too.

So she had decided to move.

Concerning this a famous Japanese comic book treated.

What happened when this cartoon was released in Japan was,

rather than directly respecting the issue,

the people who were introduced “ specialists “ on medias and repeated to say that

it was impossible to have a nosebleed basing on studies for dose simulation in Fukushima.

It was the same for TV,

newspapers and magazines.

This problem was treated as a problem that could not exist,

and information doubting about the reliability of this cartoon was circulated in Japanese society.

However,

in this shadow,

the plaintiff mothers actually experienced the child’s nosebleed.

I also listened to the stories from many other mothers of Fukushima.

For these women,

it was more important than the killing of a manga that Japanese society tried to put their children in a shadow.

That’s why she became a plaintiff to admit his existence.

One of the four mothers on the platform introduced herself in the following words:

 

“ -This is often said commonly in Japan,I was one of the “no-voiced Fukushima residents. But decided to raise my voice. ”

SPEEDI,

which was managed by the Nuclear Safety and Technology Center under the Ministry of Education,

was built with over 12 billion yen in tax and

had been said that it would be used for ordinary people to avoid exposure if nuclear power plant accident would occur until 3.11.

However,

when an accident happened actually in March 2011 in Fukushima,

it was hidden from the Japanese people.

The data was obtained by the U.S. Military command in Japan at first.

Right after the accident The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was requested the provision of data related to the nuclear accident by the U.S. Military in Japan,

they sent the data of this forecasting system.

It started on March 14, 2011, the third day of the accident.

A Okinawa newspaper has verified that the data has been automatically erased as soon as it was sent to the U.S. Military in Japan.

The prime minister at the time reportedly did not be told the existence of this predictive system,

but it is still unclear in 2018.

Meanwhile,

data of the system was released to Japanese citizens 25 days after the accident.

No meaning it was.

 

Toshiso Kosako,

a former professor of nuclear engineering of at Tokyo University,

was appointed to the Cabinet Secretariat’s council after the accident, held a press conference on April 29 2011.

At this press conference he said to quit his job in crying.

The reason was that,

the government’s concealment of the data of the forecasting system after the accident and

additional exposure standards raised to 20 mmSv per year was too dangerous for children.

Kosako,

a second generation of atomic bomb explosion of Hiroshima,

was a scholar who had been invited to trials by Ministry of Health and Welfare

concerning compensation for late emerging health disorders among atomic bomb victims before the accident.

Based on the view that no health problems could be seen below 1 mmSv per year,

Kosako had been a one of hot-headed scientists,

who had tried to make the plaintiffs abandon their demands and also eager to proceed nuclear power plant policy.

The number that this man suffered emotional was 20 mmSv per year.

 

“ As one of scientist, I can not stand “

 

saying so.

He resigned as a member of the Cabinet Secretariat also in crying.

 

 

This mother,

cesium was detected from her mother’s milk might have not cry

if this predictive system had used actually as they said.

 

In April 2015,

the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Commission adopted the following policy.

Bashing on Japan Basic Plan for Disaster Prevention,

they deleted the description of the SPEEDI from the “ Nuclear Emergency Response Guidelines. ”

It means that money 120 billion yen just used for sending data to U.S. Military in Japan.

 

2018, March a incident reported.

A mother who had evacuated from Fukushima hang herself though she had daughter.

She had problem with family living in Fukushima concerning keep evacuation or not.

Stopping public support money for evacuators made her pretty suffer to get deep depression.

 

For your reference,

I think I will show my attitude toward the exposure that Japanese society had before the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred.

The above-mentioned action to reject the recognition of atomic bomb disease.

the defendant has been a Japanese national in several of these lawsuits.

In the past,

the government has lost 80 to 90 percent of trials on this issue.

In Japan,

where the state is less than 10 percent defeated in administrative litigation,

the lawsuit has become extremely unusual.

Looking at the previous sentences, the following is always written:

 

'In general,

various factors are associated with the process of disease development in a complex manner.

To solve the problem that it is difficult to find out one by one the mechanism

in which a specific disease occurs from a specific factor.

As for radiation,

although a consensus has been established regarding the possible causes of various diseases,

including cancer, there are not any diseases and symptoms specific to radiation.

Therefore,

the presence or absence of radioactive induction comprehensively considers scientific knowledge concerning

pathology, clinical medicine, radiology, and diseases.

There is no alternative but to make a judgment.

However,

there are certain limits to these scientific findings.

Therefore,

too strictly seeking the existence of scientific evidence does not conform to the purpose of the law aimed at rescuing people.

Ultimately,

a rational normal person can only make a decision from the standpoint

of whether there is sufficient evidence to determine that the cause of the disease is radiation.'

 

'In a reasonable ordinary person'And that's where we're going.

The values of the total DS86 and the probability of the cause are considered as one element of the overall judgment.

To solve the problem that radiation causality cannot be denied simply by a DS86 or a low value of a cause probability.

The above are also similar issues to consider in applying thresholds

in diseases that are not probabilistic but have a problem with deterministic effects,

and in determining diseases that are not recognized as radioactive causes in the course of examination at this stage.'

 

(In both cases, the Tokyo District Court's ruling dismissing the atomic bombing in March 2007 )

 

 

Fukushima nuclear accident.

I think the biggest tragedy is that

the Japanese are unaware of the social consensus of their country based on the outcome of the problem of exposure,

whether it was caused by the atomic bomb that they once suffered,

and the judicial decision they had made.

Three mile,

Chernobyl.

These experiences can be used as a reference to the problem of exposure,

although Japanese has more reliable at their hand.

 

Unvisible key in our hands.

 

( text : Akira Tsuboi )