SOS Again from Minamisoma, Fukushima
July 22nd, 2011Via: Time:
Another disgruntled Japanese official has taken to the interwebs to air his grievances about the inadequate attention being paid to the welfare of residents of Minamisoma, a town about 25 kilometers away from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Minamisoma last grabbed international headlines when the town’s mayor posted an earnest appeal for help on YouTube two weeks after the March 11 disasters, bringing him worldwide attention and a nomination as one of the most influential people of the year from TIME.
In a bit of social media jiujitsu, Koichi Ohyama, a city council member, uses the same tactic to take Sakurai to task for asking residents who voluntarily evacuated to come back home. Ohyama says the mayor and the central government have been rushing to repopulate the town, putting economic interests ahead of residents’ best interests. Selective spots in the 20-30 km band around the plant found to have high radiation levels were evacuated in the spring, but the mandatory order was never applied to Minamisoma.
Ohyama says he has been fielding concerns from residents who are scared to move back, worried about their drinking water and the schools, and says that there has never been a satisfactory answer from Tokyo as to where the large amounts of radioactive materials that the IAEA says were emitted in the first days of the Fukushima meltdown landed.
