We know that the people in India are facing many issues too. The problem of nuclear power has no borders.We stand together with the people in the world who have the same desire as us.In order to pull out all fuel rods in the world, make our environment once more a place where everyone can live a healthy live, break the rotten structure of nuclear power and make our society a healthy one as soon as possible, let’s unite!

With respect,

A prayer from Fukushima,

From KATSUKO　ARIMA　　　～FUKUSHIMA

(Leader of the Network to protect children of Fukushima from Radiation)

I am a farmer who lives in a place in Fukushima 65 kilometers away from the Daiichi power plant. I have 5 children, from age 1st year junior high through 27 years old.14 years ago I opened a small restaurant serving cereal and vegetable based foods, aiming to achieve a sustainable lifestyle and we were basically self sufficient, using the food we grew ourselves. I and my friends have always been interested in environmental issues.

Through an NGO, I was very shocked to learn that the mining of uranium, which fueled our supposedly clean and safe nuclear reactors, promoted as national policy, was causing terrible suffering of indigenous people in Australia and America, from whose lands it was mined.

After Three Mile Island and Chernobyl I was worried that there would be another nuclear accident somewhere in the world, but I never for a moment thought it would be right in our backyards. Just as radioactive fallout is being scattered throughout the world, the name of FUKUSHIMA has become infamous. Even though it was a power plant built to send electricity to people in the cities, not even for the people of Fukushima themselves.

One of my friends said: ‘this nuclear accident is the worst thing that could possibly happen, but at least now all the nuclear power plants will be shut down.’

Even now the reactors are still leaking radiation and nobody even knows what sort of condition the radioactive fuel that melted through the containment vessel is in.

In order to graduate from nuclear power, we do everything we can—we make petitions to the government, collect signatures, have demonstrations and protests and so on. Despite all that the Japanese government has restarted some reactors and is trying to export them overseas. (They haven’t even been able to end this disaster, so there is no way they can say this technology is safe!)

There are children and adults who are living in areas that are outside those legally designated as radiated areas, but have much higher levels of radiation. They are living human experiments, without receiving any help, without even being aware of the facts. Others have evacuated on their own, without any compensation, to unknown places.

I’ve heard that the Indian government is eager to build new nuclear power plants, saying: “Japanese people are living normally despite all the radiation.”

This is truly terrifying.

Children can no longer play outside. Farmers can’t sell their vegetables or rice, the land, which is more important than anything else, has been contaminated, and people are losing hope. There are many families whose land is highly contaminated, but the compensation has not come through, yet they can’t go home.

Radiation contamination has also prevented recovery work from the earthquake and tsunami. Facts which should have been told to us, come out well after the events. We have lost all trust in the government and the electricity companies. As we live in such anxiety, confirmation of thyroid gland abnormalities in children has begun. I guess if we continue at this rate, there will be many sacrifices in our communities, including children.

Even now there is no place for the spent fuel to go and no way to dispose of it. If we continue with nuclear power it is obvious that the danger and the costs to us will only increase. How many more sacrifices do we have to make beyond this in order to get electricity from nuclear power plants?

Ever since the accident happened, the government has repeated the phrase ‘no immediate effects on health’ and now most people have realized that this actually means that there will be an effect on health in the long-term.

We won’t know if everything is OK for another 5 or 10 years, maybe even longer. So how can we be assured of peace of mind? Until then we have to live with further exposure to radiation and suffering.

And that’s precisely why we must not give up, why we must continue to raise our voices and tell the world what is happening to us.

Without technology that allows rapid clean up in case of a nuclear accident,

Without a proper way of disposing of spent fuel,

Without the will to make life the most important priority,

It is absolutely wrong to restart the nuclear reactors.

We must not make the economy and convenience more important than life itself.

We must stop damaging the earth so far that she will never be able to recover.

We must stop squandering resources and shift immediately to sustainable energy.

We must protect or perhaps return to a life which is in balance and which is spiritually rich.

I believe that we can rebuild our lives like this.

I really hope that our words will reach your heart. Thank you for this opportunity…I am very grateful.

<translated by Keito Hirabayashi>

Nukes and humans cannot coexist. Nevertheless, greedy, warphilic circles of Japan have ever chased nukes. They plotted to make, though failed, A-bombs of their own in advance of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, fiercely promoted atomic energy developments in the past half century and writes in a governmental paper `keeping opponents aware Japan has the great potentiality for nuke-armed makes the pillar of our diplomcy’. Indeed Japan has summed up its amount of Plutonium of dozens of thousand times more than Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is said to do so far. Such radioactive substances accumlated out from nuclear reactors humankind can never deal with except for making into the end use of horrendous arsenals.

Let us now together abolish all nuclear weapons, get our world free from nuke energy and leave it for the generations to come!

Peace!

March 11, 2013

Hitosada Yoshitake(Japan)

Messages From Japan to India

Messages From Japan to India on Fukushima anniversary by Sundaram Pugwash