Decontamination work and Yakuza

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

 

“ The Aichi prefectural police office said yesterday that

they decided to arrest a man of 49 year old who is a real manager of a construction company in Aich prefecture

because he forced a 15 years-old boy to do decontamination work in Fukushima.

This real manager used to be gang member,

and the prefectural police office will check the chain of command and money flow.

According to the prefectural police,

they doubt that this man had known the boy‘s age,

but forced this boy to remove the contaminated plant and soil from a large commercial facility in Fukushima last July.

This boy lived in Kita-nagoya, Aichi Prefecture.

The Law of Labor Criteria prohibits workers under 18 years old from decontamination work

and stipulates that they will be punished by imprisonment with work for six months or a fine of up to 300,000 yen.

The boy’s work site was located about 60 kilo meters northwest of the Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant,

and the man was in charge of the decontamination work site and of labor management.

He forced the boy to say his age was 18 years old. “

( source : Japanese new paper Asahi Shinbun’s article 18th 2015 )

 

In January of 2015,

I heard of a man’s talking in a room of a hotel in Iwaki of Fukushima.

The man facing me at that time was a security guard of decontamination work.

He accompanied himself with the decontamination work done around the Fukushima’s nuclear power plant

and the evacuation ordered area.

He belonged to the same company as the decontamination workers and worked with them.

He was standing next to the decontamination workers to keep cars in order.

So he had been always on the spot from where he could look at the actual decontamination work.

I don’t mind to say that he was almost a decontamination worker.

At that time,

a filmmaker working in the United States offered me to film my interviews to the residents of Fukushima.

I permitted her to accompany with me.

In front of her video camera,

he revealed his name and face and repeated what he had told me over and over again.

 

“One of the most impressive things for me was a 19-years-old boy.

He was taken to a golf course in Nihonmatsu,

lynched and thrown out in front of Iwaki station.

He was covered with blood.

It was morning.

So I talked to him and took him to the city hall together.

Then they said to us that they would rent money as train fee to only the next administrative district.

So he got down there again, went to the next city hall and borrowed some money again.

Then he could come back to his home.

Since his parents were in Yokohama. ”

 

He told stories about the rough men he had seen after the Fukushima accident.

The story was about a young man who came to Fukushima to work as a decontamination worker.

He complained to the company that wages were unfairly low,

then he got beaten by guys in the company.

The young man fainted,

his money was taken away and he was thrown away where the security guard’s eye could reach.

There was an police box just near from the place.

But he said any police men were not involved at all.

When he had come to Fukushima in 2012, 2013

he had witnessed many such violences there.

However,

he said police had never come to any cases.

“ -Out of the law! ”

When he told me this story at first,

he said like vomiting with grief and anger.

 

 

For people in countries where nuclear accidents have not yet occurred,

the word “decontamination” is probably a the word a little far from understanding.

First of all,

an radiation accident occurs.

Huge amount of damages to every layers of society, every details of every places, and every individuals occur.

The next step is this cleanup work.

Even after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident,

scientists repeatedly demonstrated how to reduce radiation levels from each environment.

However,

as a result,

the decontamination work after the Chernobyl accident and the decontamination work in Japan after 3.11 are completely different.

Environmental pollution caused by radioactivity can be analogous to that a chemical substance adheres to the skin and burns.

There are places where the substance is heavily attached and deep burn occurs,

and places where relatively mild burn occurs around.

The area of deeply burnt must be treated intensively.

Light burnt areas also should be handled.

In any case,

it is required to remove the attached chemical materials.

This kind of burn image comes to my mind when I looks at the information on decontamination activities

that Fukushima municipal governments have made public so far.

This was not something that happened to people’s skin,

but rather something that happened in a wide area of each cities, each towns and villages of Fukushima

(including around prefectures also).

In Japan,

decontamination work involves wiping off radioactive materials that have fallen onto the surface of the environment,

stripping off weeds and soil on the surface,

and moving contaminants to another location.

Very simple work.

It’s something anyone can do,

but it’s not a single house,

so it requires a lot of manpower.

Japanese government used the decontamination work as a public bidding project with a high salary.

The decontamination project, which was originally scheduled to end in 2016, has not yet to be completed even in 2018.

So far, 4.2 trillion yen has been spent on the decontamination work.

For example,

to highly polluted municipality to which the government ordered to evacuate,

tens of billions yen were paid for each area’s decontamination project.

 

And billions of yen were paid for surrounding areas where evacuation instructions were not issued.

With this huge sum of money, almost all of the construction companies in Japan flocked together,

then the decontaminating operations in Japan started to be carried out.

 

Again,

it’s a very simple task, but it requires a lot of manpower.

And it is work which anyone can do it,

but they don’t want to do.

Huge amount of money is poured into the work by the government.

If the company or individual can collect and dispatch workers to this work,

they will be able to enter into this big business.

If Sending men as workers they can get a share of this huge sum.

The Japanese government has created such a structure.

 

 

The guard man highlighted the fact that

the decontamination work in Fukushima had the side of the Gold Rush and the appearance of a desolate and barbaric world.

I’ve heard that story over and over again since I met him.

However,

the major Japanese media did not report such devastation.

Whether his talking was true or not?

Actually I did have a little doubts.

But after a while,

such barbaric stories started to be reported in news paper’s tiny articles as police arrests incidents.

 

“ A boss of Yakuza organizations affiliated with the Inagawa-Kai ( one of big Yakuza organization in Japan )

supplied their employees to construction companies as workers engaged in decontamination operations

without any statutory exclusion reason. “

(June, Hokkaido)

 

This text is an excerpt from “ State of Organized Crime in 2016 ” published by the National Police Agency in March 2017.

This report outlines organized crime by Yakuza groups.

In this report a chapter named

“ changes in the number of arrestees of a gang member due to violation of the Worker Dispatching Act “

show the next.

Until a year ago from 3.11 the number of arrestee due to this crime was 17 in the maximum.

But from 2012 this number became about doubled to 30 and this increasing had been kept its tendency until 2014.

This number taken from all of Japanese 48 prefectures.

And 2012 was the year when decontamination work in Fukushima started to be conducted by Japanese private sector.

Watching these facts,

we can feel shadow of the Fukushima’s radiation accident behind this rapid increasing of the crime.

 

Strange to say,

there is a site that summarizes the incidents of Japanese gangsters.

When I put the word “decontamination” in it and search for it,

I found a lot of news reports concerning this.

“ The Aichi prefectural police arrested two guys on 21th.

These guys are member of Yakuza group Yamaguchi-gumi

and they are suspected that they forced a man to work in Fukushima as decontamination worker

after Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant accident

and threatened him and snatch 5.4 million yen from this man’s salary.

“I don’t want to say about this now,”

the suspect said.

On July 3, 2014,

they violated a 60 years old man of Kounan city of Gifu Prefecture and said,

“Are you willing to pay back your debts?

If you will be decontamination worker you will be able to earn about 15,000 yen per day.”

Then they forced this man to work on decontamination operations in Fukushima Prefecture between September and April of the 2014

and snatched all of his payment.

According to the police office,

the man got sick and stopped decontamination work around April.”

( source : Japanese news distributing company Jiji- Tsuhin. September 21, 2016)

 

 

“ The Fukushima prefectural police re-arrested three men including 45 years old gangster Hikaru Ono,

a member of under groups of InagawaKai,

who is suspected of murder.

Prefectural police is investigating the route of obtaining gun, motives.

The dead man might have been acquaintance of them and have trouble with them about money.

Prefectural police didn’t say whether the three acknowledged or not.

The other two were Masaki Sato (43) of Tamura-cho,

Koriyama-shi, Fukushima Prefecture

and Kenji Kusumi (28),

of same place, construction worker.

On the afternoon of August 13, 2011,

they are suspected to conspire to kill Toshiyuki Tutsumi (45) by shooting his head with a gun in the storage place for decontaminated waste

in Saigo Village.

The temporary storage area was later used as a farmland.

The three have been charged with abandoning Mr. Tsutsumi’s dead body at the place.’

( source : Japanese news paper Sankei Shinbun. April 22, 2017 )

 

“ January 21th,

Kagawa Police Department’s anti-group criminal division re-arrested Kokugen Kwanishi (62)

due to violate the law of Organized Crime Punishment by transferring daily payment

which paid for workers to another’s bank account.

Kokugen managed dispatching company in Takatsu town of Kagawa prefecture

and lived in Neyagawa of Osaka.

These workers worked in Fukushima as decontamination worker.

It was done to hide his illegal dispatching worker to decontamination work brought by Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant accident.

And Kagawa Police Department also re-arrested Tomohide Kawanishi (37),

son of Genkoku and was the represent of the dispatching company and lived in Marukame of Kagawa prefecture.

Kokugen and Tomohide are suspected to violate the low of Labors Dispatching.

They admitted the charges.

According to the section,

since November 2011,

they employed about 30 no-jobed men and dispatched them to decontamination work around Fukushima’s Nuke reactors.

Dispatching to decontamination work is prohibited under the law of Labor Dispatching.

In June and September,

arrested two are suspected to allegedly conspire to transfer 15.6 million yen a day to his former wife’s Shinkin bank account.

This money was earned by three workers in decontamination work.

( source : Japanese news paper Sankei Shinbun. October 22, 2014 )

 

“ The case of re-arrest of six people on suspicion of robbery and murder in the incident of the abandonment the dead body at Iwaki, Fukushima.

Six men,

including the former president of Musashi Construction Co.,

who had already been arrested due to abandon the dead body were rearrested u

nder suspicion of robbery and murder on Tuesday by Fukushima Prefectural Police office.

The suspect is that,

they allegedly conspired to violate Hidekazu Tanaka (46) who lived in Kawamae of Iwaki city, non-jobed

and killed Tanaka and snatched 400 thousands yen and two cash card from him in the company’s office in early September last year.

Some of the suspects have denied it.

According to investigators,

some of the suspects have testified about violence,

and the headquarters will investigate the role of six people and their involvement in the attack.

The suspects were arrested again,

including Daizou Hyu-gaji (35),

a former president of the company but he introduces him as non-jobed, lived in Taira - NakaKamiya of Iwaki City.

Tanaka has often visited the company, and all six of them were acquaintances.”

( source : Japanese news paper Sankei Shinbun. July 2, 2016)

 

I drew these incidents.

The story of a 19 years old man whom the guard man told me about has not been reported either in the media or in the police release.

The informations on the crimes I show you here thus is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

By 2017,

the number of dead decontamination workers announced by the Fukushima Labour Office is nine.

Five of them’s ashes has been stored in the Buddhist temple named Shinsyuu Daikoku-ha Betsuin located in Minamisoma of Fukushima Prefecture.

They were brought from outside Fukushima Prefecture and worked as decontamination workers and died in working.

They were non-jobed and had no relatives.

The Buddhist journalism Chugai Nippou treated this 5 worker’s bones in the title

“ fifth Spring to the Great East Japan Earthquake, temple’s memories for the nuclear accident. “

 

In March 2018,

the existence of Vietnamese technical interns who had been deceived

and forced to work in Fukushima as also decontaminating worker.

He was in his twenties.

A work that nobody wants to do.

Anything anyone can do.

If you have men,

you can make money.

A man sells men.

Japanese government has never tried to correct this structure.

They want to show that they can recover even if a nuclear power plant accident occurred.

They’ve been working hard to realize this ideal.

But behind this ideal

what emerged actually was these kind of violent world.

It seemed strange to me that this structure began to move immediately after the accident.

I felt that they already had some precedent and the Japanese government looked re-using it.

I tried to look into this model because I thought that it was done in the Japanese government’s former compulsory labor system during the war.

Then I learned a list of companies that used to adopt a system of forced labor.

In the list many number of companies that are involved in decontamination operations exist.

 

One of them is TEPCO,

which was operating the Fukushima’s nuclear power plant.

 

The path which the Japanese government used to tread has emerged again in Japan.

I afraid of it.Seeing my painting on streets or many places sometimes Japanese asked me :

 

”-Are these true?”

Many Japanese people doesn’t notice what’s going on in the dark.

This is how the 3.11 nuclear accident has been progressing.

( text : Akira Tsuboi )