Christmas in the Radiation Zone
http://counterpunch.com/
It’s the first thing you notice. Electric orange, ripe and luscious hoshigaki hang from every bough. As we drive through the country and over the glittering, snow-specked mountain range from Fukushima city to Soma on the northeast coast of Japan, we pass many persimmon trees dotting the landscape, all laden with fruit, ready for harvesting. But this year, the persimmons of Fukushima prefecture will remain untouched. Bounty only for microbial decomposers, they are a silent reminder of the slow-burning, far-reaching menace of a nuclear accident.
Since March 11, local people, long skilled in farming this verdant and fertile region, have added expert knowledge in radiation to their library of stored knowledge, and the persimmons are deemed unsafe; irradiated by the releases from the stricken nuclear plant at Fukushima-Daiichi, 25km south of here. I am told the dried fruit, until now a local specialty, has particularly high levels of radioactive contamination.
As we drove through the glistening mountains I watched the readings of the omnipresent dosimeter dangling casually from the rearview mirror of Hiroyuki’s car first oscillate, then grow alarmingly. Arriving in front of a children’s summer camp, and quietly handed a face-mask, an ominous beeping sound began as the readings peaked above 1 micro-sievert per hour, corroborated by a second dosimeter brought by Yuuki to check the calibration. We pass an old local incinerator at work burning refuse and the numbers spike again.
-snip-
On entering an apartment building in Fukushima city, in contrast to your usual artwork, neat hand-written columns of radiation levels are posted in the foyer. Data collected every seven days from the surrounding area shows fluctuating radiation levels; particularly high readings are circled in red.
-long snip of living in the radiation zone-
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the cows have been evacuated and the women of Fukushima are organized, active and have and will protest, again and again
my heart is with them