Mommy, don't let me die!

I live just 110 km from the crippled nuclear power station in Japan.

I few months ago, I decided to visit the town of Minamisoma, which is about 24 km from the nuclear plant – half the town is a no-go zone.

I left my house early, driving through the paddy fields where the farmers were harvesting the rice – a telltale sign that the unbearable summer heat would soon flee and a much more pleasant autumn would take its place.

I drove through villages that had been evacuated.  The once fertile farmland was now 

lined with blue sacks, filled with radioactive topsoil that had been removed in the naive hope of decontaminating the area.

Everything in Minamisoma looked normal.  A mother was pushing her baby in a stroller.  A man was out cycling.  Young people were milling around the Seven Eleven.

I visited the house of one of the town politicians.  He had evacuated his wife and two daughters to another prefecture and was living alone.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“We are living in a nuclear nightmare,” he replied.

“What is the government doing about it?”

He looked at me a long moment and then shrugged. “Not much ... it’s still spewing out 10,000,000Bq of radiation every hour.  Best we go indoors."

We had a long talk about how bad nuclear energy was and what the government should be doing.  I won’t bore you with those fruitless words.

Later he took me to the house of an old couple.  They had prepared a beautiful lunch – fish, rice, salad and fruit.  I thought it rude to ask where it came from – so I didn’t.

After lunch I had a chance to ask a few questions.

“Do you feel the government and Power Company are compensating you adequately?”

“No way!" the wife snapped.

“Calm down!” her husband said.

“What do you mean?' she turned on him.  “People have a right to know what is really happening!"

A tense silence followed.

“She’s right,' her husband said at last.  “We've been abandoned.”

“Worse than that,' his wife added.  'We're being treated like damn guinea pigs!”

“Why don’t you leave?” I asked.

"We've got nowhere to go.  We've lived here all our lives.  We're farmers.  The land is our lifeblood."

“Has the decontamination work been effective?” I asked.

“No!  They take off the topsoil and the wind blows in more.  I've not had a good night’s sleep since the accident.  The power station is just over the hill.  It could release 30 times more radiation than Chernobyl.”

She slid the door open and a hot breeze blew in.

“The Number Four reactor building is badly damaged.  It’s leaning to the side.  Engineers say it will collapse if there is another 6.5 quake.  The spent fuel pool will drain and catch fire.”

I felt a sense of panic.  “Are you kidding?”

“No, if that happ –”

There was a sudden rumble and the ground trembled.  I leapt from my chair and raced to the door.  A jolt of energy hit the house and I stumbled to the side – then it was over.

“About a 5.5,” said the wife calmly.

“Yeah,” I said, staggering back.

“As I was saying,' she continued, 'if the Number Four fuel pool catches fire, no one can survive in the plant for more than a few minutes.  There are six more spent fuel pools.  When their cooling systems fail, they will ignite and make Chernobyl look like a children's picnic.  The entire planet will be poisoned.”

“What are they doing about it?”

“Not much,” her husband said.  “They tell us no one has died.  That's all lies.  People are dying of leukemia, heart disease and lung cancer.  You can see with your own eyes."

That was a challenge.

I agreed to go to a neighbor's house.  It was in darkness.  A couple, in their mid-thirties, bowed politely and ushered me into a small bedroom where their teenage daughter sat next to a bed stroking her younger sister’s bald head.

“Cancer,” said the mother.

I moved closer and saw a frail body – no more than skeleton covered by skin.  Next to her bed was a pencil sketch of hills and flowers – a spring scene I guessed – at the top was written, Mommy Don’t Let Me Die.

“She’s sleeping,” said her sister.

We went back to the living room and sat there.

“I will never get married!” the sister blurted.  “No one will marry a girl from Fukushima!”

No one spoke.

“Even if I get married, I would never have a baby.  I would never put a child through what has happened to my sister.  Why doesn’t anyone do something about it?"

I left Minamisoma at sunset.  The sky was awash with the warm glow of dusk.  The hills were a vibrant green.  The countryside was so beautiful – but toxic with an invisible poison.

I’m back in Australia now – and you know what?

I feel guilty! I feel like I've abandoned the kids of Fukushima.

I'm going back next month to see if there is anything I can do.  As an individual, I can't do much.  But individual contributions add up and I'll work on the principle that every little bit helps.

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