Through the failed initial response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the Kan administration’s shutdown of all nuclear plants, the confusion caused by evacuation policy, and comparisons with Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s post-atomic recovery, this essay harshly questions the grave responsibility of the Democratic Party government.
It examines misunderstandings and fear surrounding radiation damage and highlights the scale of the economic and social losses inflicted on Japan.

2019-06-19
Hiroshima has many rivers, and a large volume of water exposed to radiation flowed into Hiroshima Bay.
That is a famous oyster-producing area.
Yet from that very year, everyone kept eating the oysters.
And nothing at all has happened.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Unforgivable Crime of the Democratic Party Government.
At the time of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, then-Prime Minister Kan, perhaps because of his pride in being a graduate of Tokyo Institute of Technology, went straight to the site the day after the earthquake.
If the Prime Minister comes, the site will be thrown into confusion.
Moreover, he did nothing but shout angrily.
It must be said that the failure of the initial response to that accident was largely the responsibility of the Prime Minister.
A further great mistake committed by the Kan administration was that it hastily ordered evacuations.
Certainly, the tsunami brought enormous damage, with more than 20,000 dead or missing.
But in the Fukushima nuclear accident, there was not a single death, nor a single sick person.
There have still been no reports of anyone likely to become ill because of radiation.
However, because people were forcibly evacuated, stress increased, and there were people who died in nursing homes and elsewhere.
Most of the deaths were caused by stress, and by no means by radiation.
Prime Minister Kan came from a citizen activist background, so he was probably opposed to nuclear power from the beginning.
However, when he formed his cabinet, he did not touch at all on the issue of nuclear power, which in effect was supplying one-third of Japan’s electricity.
Yet once an accident occurred, he declared his opposition to nuclear power with an air of delight, and stopped all nuclear plants, including those with absolutely no problem.
This was truly foolish.
It is now clear that not a single nuclear plant had its reactor destroyed by the great earthquake itself.
There was absolutely no problem even at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant in Miyagi Prefecture, which was closer to the epicenter than Fukushima.
At Fukushima Daiichi, the tsunami covered the plant with water, the power supply stopped, and that caused the hydrogen explosion.
There are even people involved who say that this too was an accident that could have been prevented, and that a sufficient response could have been made, had Naoto Kan not come for an “inspection.”
Nevertheless, the Kan administration panicked and shut down all nuclear plants.
As a result, 90 percent of Japan’s electricity came to depend on thermal power generation.
All of its fuel came from abroad.
As a result, Japan’s fuel costs increased by a full 10 billion yen per day, and Japan’s trade balance, which had remained in the black for decades, immediately fell into deficit.
Recently, because fuel costs suddenly declined, it returned to a modest surplus.
The Kan administration inflicted enormous economic damage on Japan.
Ten billion yen a day may not immediately register, but to give one example, the second Abe administration sought to increase defense spending by 100 billion yen in order to deal with the Senkaku issue, but because of fiscal difficulty it was reduced to around 40 billion yen.
The budget available for the indispensable Senkaku issue in terms of national defense amounted to a mere four days’ worth of the fuel that Japan was forced to buy additionally from abroad because the nuclear plants had been stopped.
It is an unforgivable crime of the Democratic Party that Japan was made to bear waste on such a gigantic scale.
No matter how many times this is pointed out, it is not enough, but in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where atomic bombs were dropped, residents began returning after roughly three months, and after the war those cities achieved dramatic development.
Yet in Fukushima, residents still cannot return, and it even appears to be deteriorating further.
Why do they not follow the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
In Kono Ko o Nokoshite by Dr. Takashi Nagai, a professor at Nagasaki Medical College, there is a highly suggestive passage.
When the atomic bomb was dropped, a rumor spread that “No one will be able to live in Nagasaki for the next seventy-five years, and no grass or trees will grow.”
Dr. Nagai, himself an atomic bomb victim and a radiation specialist, thought that could hardly be the case, but since it was humanity’s first such experience, he remained at the hypocenter and continued his research.
Then, three weeks later, he discovered a line of ants.
After three months, earthworms had appeared.
If such tiny insects were completely unharmed, then there could be no way that radiation was affecting human bodies, which are thousands of times larger, and after discussing this with other scholars, three months later he called on the evacuated people to return to Nagasaki.
In that way, Nagasaki achieved a recovery so remarkable as to be almost unrecognizable.
Likewise in Hiroshima, residents had returned after three months.
Deaths caused by the radiation of the atomic bomb itself were extremely few, and most were caused by burns.
This is still misunderstood today, but keloids are burn scars, not something caused by radiation.
In Hiroshima, an international institution called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation has followed atomic bomb victims for many decades.
According to that investigation, there have been extremely important results showing that cancer incidence is lower among the exposed and that the birth rate of malformed children is not higher.
The same is true in Nagasaki.
Furthermore, regarding the radiation dose, there is a view that the Fukushima nuclear accident amounted to 1/175,000 of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Therefore, it is nothing serious even if people live there.
Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki underwent decontamination, so why is it necessary in Fukushima?
Hiroshima has many rivers, and a large volume of water exposed to radiation flowed into Hiroshima Bay.
That is a famous oyster-producing area.
Yet from that very year, everyone kept eating the oysters.
And nothing at all has happened.
There were no foolish people trying to measure becquerels in the Seto Inland Sea.
Moreover, beyond Fukushima lies the Kuroshio Current of the Pacific Ocean.
As for contaminated water, there would be nothing to it if it were released each time.
It would be like pouring a single ear-pickful of garbage into the Sumida River.
But because it was stored up, it became a problem.
This too was because the initial response was entirely inadequate.
It can truly be said to be a national crisis created by the Democratic Party government.