August 18, 2020. This article examines how Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the so-called “Yoshida Testimony” concerning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident spread through The New York Times, the BBC, South Korean media and other outlets around the world. Through statements by journalist Ryusho Kadota, Yoshiko Sakurai and Rui Abiru, it addresses Masao Yoshida’s testimony, the evacuation to Fukushima Daini, the claim that workers had withdrawn in violation of orders, and the speakers’ comparison with Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the comfort-women issue.

August 18, 2020
Regarding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, Asahi Shimbun reported on May 20, 2014, on the basis of the government accident investigation committee’s interview record with plant manager Masao Yoshida—the so-called “Yoshida Testimony”—that approximately 90 percent of TEPCO personnel at Fukushima Daiichi had gone to Fukushima Daini in violation of the plant manager’s orders.
The story rapidly spread overseas and influenced international perceptions of Japan’s response to the nuclear accident.
The following is a record of a discussion in which Ryusho Kadota, Yoshiko Sakurai and Rui Abiru addressed the report, the contents of the Yoshida Testimony and its repercussions abroad.

Asahi Shimbun Also Disparaged Japan in Its Reporting on the Nuclear Accident

Kadota: The pattern is very similar to that of the comfort-women issue, and I would like to cite Asahi Shimbun’s campaign surrounding the Yoshida Testimony concerning TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
In its morning edition of May 20, Asahi reported that the “Yoshida Testimony,” obtained by the newspaper from the government accident investigation commission, had revealed that on the morning of March 15, 2011, 90 percent of TEPCO employees at Fukushima Daiichi had “violated the plant manager’s orders” and “withdrawn from the nuclear plant.”
I am the only journalist who conducted a lengthy interview with Yoshida.
Beyond interviewing Yoshida himself, I investigated what happened at Fukushima Daiichi during the accident and how the people at the site fought through the crisis.
Nearly one hundred people involved gave testimony under their real names, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan; Motohisa Ikeda, then head of the local nuclear emergency response headquarters and senior vice minister of economy, trade and industry; Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, who was involved in the accident response as a researcher; plant engineers who had worked under Yoshida; employees of cooperating companies; local reporters; and a former mayor.
I published their testimony in The Man Who Saw the Abyss of Death: Masao Yoshida and the 500 Days of Fukushima Daiichi (PHP).
When I saw Asahi’s initial report, I was astonished and immediately thought, “That did not happen.”
Yet Asahi’s reporting rapidly raced around the world.
The New York Times reported that in 2011, despite orders, panicked workers had fled the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Britain’s BBC also reported that Asahi Shimbun had said that roughly 90 percent of the Fukushima workers fled as the danger of a meltdown approached.
Some South Korean media reported that Japanese media organizations and intellectuals who had disparaged Korea over the Sewol ferry disaster—saying that it “arose from the selfish national character of Koreans” and “showed that Korea remained a backward country”—while praising Japan’s samurai spirit of sacrificing the individual for the group, were now deeply shocked.
Foreign media that until then had praised the courage displayed by Japanese people during the nuclear accident abruptly changed their attitude after the report.
The late Yoshida sincerely praised the subordinates who fought desperately against the worst possible circumstances.
Yet Asahi Shimbun reduced those people who had struggled to save Japan to objects of ridicule around the world.

The Yoshida Testimony Campaign and the Same Pattern as the Comfort-Women Reporting

Kadota: If you actually investigated the site, you could immediately see that a withdrawal in violation of orders was inconceivable.
I was not alone in thinking that.
Reporters and journalists at NHK and Kyodo News who had close access to the site immediately understood, in my view, that the Asahi report was false.
Naturally, the people who had actually been there understood this as well.
When I met and spoke with them directly, many people connected to the site said the same thing: they did not want to talk to Asahi.
In other words, Kyodo and NHK—both of which take a severe line in their anti-nuclear-power reporting—would at least listen to the facts and to their testimony.
But they said they knew from the outset that Asahi Shimbun would not report them properly, and therefore they were afraid of Asahi reporters and did not want to meet them.
I thought, “This is the same as the alleged forced recruitment in the ‘military comfort women’ issue.”
Sakurai: The Sankei Shimbun reported on the Yoshida Testimony in its August 18 morning edition.
It rejected Asahi’s report that 90 percent of the employees had fled to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station, or 2F, in violation of Yoshida’s orders.
Kadota: Nowhere is there testimony that 90 percent of the employees withdrew in defiance of his orders.
On the contrary, Yoshida repeatedly said things such as, “Who said withdrawal?” and, “I don’t use a word like withdrawal.”
He also said, “I merely said that people who were not involved should be evacuated,” “I arranged buses so they could be evacuated as far as 2F,” and “We evacuated them by bus toward 2F.”
He repeatedly said that he had sent them to 2F on his own instructions.
That makes clear, in my view, that the story that they went to 2F in violation of his orders was fabricated.
Abiru: Yes.
The structure is no different from the comfort-women issue.
Sakurai: I have to agree.
Abiru: Mr. Kadota, what puzzled me was that in its explanatory articles accompanying the “Yoshida Testimony” campaign, Asahi demanded that the Yoshida Testimony be “released in full.”
After reading the testimony that we obtained, I felt that Asahi itself might be in trouble if the entire document were made public.
If everything were disclosed in detail, people could challenge them from every direction: “You concealed this,” or “You failed to report that.”
What did they intend when they demanded “full disclosure”?
Kadota: I think Asahi deliberately demanded disclosure because it knew that the government could not, and probably would not, release it.
Asahi itself had made no promise to Mr. Yoshida.
It had not promised to keep the document confidential.
So Asahi itself could release it immediately.
Yet it pressured the government, which had promised Yoshida that it would not disclose the testimony and therefore absolutely could not release it, by demanding full disclosure.
Conversely, when I said, “Release the entire Yoshida Testimony. Asahi could do it tomorrow,” Asahi stopped saying anything.
Abiru: In other words, “Then do it yourself.”
Kadota: They could not do it themselves, because if they did, people would see how they had constructed the article and how deliberately it had been put together.
I suspect that they would actually have been in trouble if the entire document had been released.
Sakurai: The same applied to the comfort-women testimony.
I think Asahi Shimbun felt able to speak confidently of forced recruitment precisely because the Japanese and South Korean governments had agreed that the testimony would remain confidential.
The same applies here, does it not?
The government could not release it.
If it had done so, it would have broken its promise to Mr. Yoshida.
Kadota: They knew it could not be done, yet demanded it anyway.
That is truly troubling.
Yoshiko Sakurai graduated from the Department of History at the University of Hawaii.
After working as a television news anchor at Nippon Television, she became a freelance journalist.
She has received the 26th Soichi Oya Nonfiction Award, the 46th Kikuchi Kan Prize and the 26th Seiron Grand Prize.
In 2007, she founded the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and became its president.
Her books include The Qualifications of a Prime Minister, Japan’s Trials, Revive, Japan, and Portraits of the People of Meiji, among many others.
Ryusho Kadota was born in Kochi Prefecture in 1958.
He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Chuo University.
A journalist, he has worked across a broad range of subjects including politics, economics, history, the judiciary and major incidents.
His books include The Final Testimonies of the Pacific War (Shueisha), A Testament to Koshien (Kodansha), and The Man Who Saw the Abyss of Death: Masao Yoshida and the 500 Days of Fukushima Daiichi (PHP).
Rui Abiru was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1966.
After graduating from the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, he joined Sankei Shimbun in 1990.
After assignments at the Sendai bureau and in the culture and social affairs departments, he moved to the political news department.
He served as chief correspondent at the Prime Minister’s Office and covered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other political assignments, and at the time of the original text was an editorial writer in the political news department.