A nuclear power plant worker died in 8.22 2012

(oil painting on wood panel. 117×91cm × 3 pieces. 2014)

sold　to Yuko Yanagisawa（Japan） at 1,000,000 yen 2019.

 

“ The worst thing I thought was that,

when I took a break, I slept with a lot of workers and ate a meal in same place.

We took a rest with our heads and legs glued together.

There wasn’t any improvement to this.

And a worker got died,

I think that man might be a doctor from Fukushima Medical College or some hospital, a doctor came to check the situation.

From him we couldn’t listen to warm words.

Really I doubt that doctor regarded us as human being.

“That’s stupid.” “ This guy is disturbing.”

The doctor said.

That’s the most impressive one.

Listening to his saying then workers around me all changed their faces.”

( former nuclear plant worker. January 2015, )

 

As of April 29th, 2017,

TEPCO has announced 17 worker’s death in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the accident,

including former manager of this power plant Masao Yoshida’s death.

3 workers got died in 2011.

2 workers got died in 2012.

2 workers got died in 2013.

2 workers got died in 2014.

6 workers got died in 2015.

1 worker got died in 2016.

1 worker got died until April 2017.

Concerning death of workers,

if you read publications and the press by Tokyo Electronic Power Company you’ll miss the important element.

In these paper it has never been referred to.

The element is,

< to which layer’s subcontract company each dead workers had belonged to in the multiplexing subcontracting structure? >.

( : daily report about the situation of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant 2012.2.28 by TEPCO)

 

Since 2014,

I have met and listened to a former nuclear power plant worker .

He started working in 2012,

and he belonged to a sixth-layer subcontracting company,

this company paid to him 6,000 yen per day on hand.

There were so many workers around him,

some of them belonged to further down below companies.

Some of them belonged to the seventh, eighth, and ninth contractors.

All of them were engaged in the same work with him for a ridiculous wage,

their salaries were also very different from each other.

He was ordered by the boss to keep his mouth shut about his salary,

because same jobs and different wages must call frustration among workers and became big problem.

August 22, 2012,

while he was resting in the resting place of Fukushima-daiichi,

a worker was found in motionless.

The people around him noticed it and this no move guy was transported to a hospital.

But it was already too late,

this guy’s heart and lungs had stopped.

It was also written in the daily report of TEPCO August 22, 2012 ,

but I don’t know what kind of subcontract the worker got,

or how much money had been paid to this dead guy a day.

 

( : report about the situation of died worker at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant 2012.8.22 by TEPCO)

The former worker who spoke to me said that he came from outside of Fukushima prefecture,

and after the accident,

he met a man who gathered workers to Fukushima and this man said,

“ 34,000 yen per day you can get. “

So he decided to come to Fukushima believing that.

There were many people who got gathered in this same way around him

and some of them had borrowed money believing to get much money later like him.

However,

when he comes to Fukushima,

he was forced to wait.

“ It will start next week “, “ the next week “, “ the next month,” and “ three months later.”

His company kept saying to him,

so he couldn’t engage in work in Fukushima even though he had been registered.

As he couldn’t get any payment,

eventually he started to lose his savings and had to take a rest in his car at a parking near a station to save money.

At the time of 2012,

dozens of such people were existed around him.

Then started working at the Fukushima nuclear plant,

“ the salary will pay to you the next month 30th after the calculating close 30th of this month.”

As the structure of subcontractors had become so multilayered,

so the calculation of the salary got delayed in response to this.

As a result,

he had to stay more for two months without payment.

No money came to him.

It was inevitable for him to start borrowing money from the boss to live there.

At the time,

the boss got grip on his weakness.

In the name of pre-borrowing,

food fee, transportation fee and living expenses,

the money was deducted from his salary.

That was the world of nuclear workers of Fukushima.

Originally the workers wrote down the names of their companies on the chest and back of a white garment called Tiebeck,

I wrote down the words he told me actually.

 

I visited a cave in Matsushiro Daihonei, Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture, with the introduction of Mr. Ken Awazu.

It was a cave dug by people from the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.

in which they dug out the bedrock of a mountain by dynamite blasting and excavating.

In the name of having to deal with the defeat.

the plan to transfer key functions of the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Printing Bureau, and the country was hidden.

The local people were not informed of anything.

Construction materials were brought in one day and the men spoke Korean came .

Nothing was known, but the sound of a blasting sound was heard.

At the entrance of the cave,

there was a library to tell the character of the cave, and there was a woman standing there.

What she spoke of was a structure that was inseparable from the world of the nuclear worker.

 

They were the Kashima and Nishimatsu teams of those days.

"you can get a good job in Japan,"

Men of the Korean Peninsula, who had been paid money from Nishimatsu and Kashima, gathered workers.

Believing in the word,

dynamite The engineers who had been there and the men who carried the rocks produced by the blasting applied and came to Matsushiro.

However,

the only place they were waiting for was the roof, where a log was placed as a pillow and slept together.

In order to live in the cheap place,

the people who brought them told their workers that they were going to pay for their meals, living fee....

and their payment got taken.

There was only a small amount of money left in worker's hands.

The Japanese didn't give a hand.

The man who brought them, the man who manages them violently so that they don't get violent.

They were of the Korean peninsula.

In the dark, where the Japanese police were not involved.

The war has deteriorated;

And eventually people who did't have any expertise started to deal with dynamite.

The harshness was accelerating.

In the situation ,

One of them dies.

 

He seemed to have been a man;

Nishimatsu-gumi asked a temple near the cave to keep his ashes as an unrelated dead.

At first the temple seemed to have refused.

The temple 's refusing was overwhelmed by the eagerness of the people of Nishimatsu-gumi.

The man's bones came to sleep in the cemetery of the temple near the mountains of Matsushiro.

The tomb was engraved with the name Nakano.

But it's not his real name.

It was only the Japanese name that was renamed under Japanese occupation.

When he was born,

His father and his mother would have given Korean name to him with some thought,

but now his Korean name is unknown.

Why?

When defeatingin the war had come,

Nishimatsu-gumi and Kashima-gumi burned the list with names of their workers.

And

The Japanese government has not been working on the issue until now to follow him up.

I heard this at the information desk.

That's why I don't know his real name.

How many people worked?

No information.

How much money they could earn?

No information.

We can just know is that they worked.

Abusing, deprivation, discrimination, and concealment.

These were all mixed together.

 

The way emerged and worked after Fukushima's accident.

The movement of people who secretly started to gather people in order to converge the accident at nuclear power plants,

Organization moves, institutional moves.

I could not see that this was made aftert the accident 2011.

I felt this way had origin in before 2011

as it's movement was too quickly and so smoothly as it was used to.

 

There is a museum in Busan, South Korea, about forced labor under the rule of the Empire of Japan.

When I was invited to an exhibition featuring the nuclear power plant issue in Busan, I asked my collaborators to go there.

One of the things I saw there was a short trailer.

A monitor was placed in the passage at the end of the exhibition.

It was a list of names of Japanese companies.

The monitor showed list of names of Japanese companies

which used the forced labor force.

Until 2018 it has been revealed by research of South Korea and Japan in the past.

there's something going on.

 

Seasonal publication: War Responsibility Research 51 (Spring 2006).

Yasuto Takeuchi's writing, published there, entitled "Preparing the National List of Korean Forced Labor Workers."

After that, I began to look into Japanese society during the war.

and had collected this booklet and treatise.

A part of the list is included in this paper.

 

 

If you look at the different parts of the article,

in the <power sector>,

there are many major electric power companies in Japan in this era.

off course,

Tokyo Electric Power Co.

was included.

I became aware of that,

the system was used in Fukushima nuclear accidents

is the way of the empire that once existed.

 

 

Almost of Japanese seems not to aware.

I feel a bit scared by the lack of people to pursue it.

 

 

( text : Akira Tsuboi )