Interview with Mr. Katsunobu Sakurai, Mayor of Minamisoma City (next to the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor), April 10, 2011
On April 4th, 2011, IWJ went to Fukushima and interviewed Katsunobu Sakurai, mayor of Minamisoma.
On March 11 when the earthquake brought a tsunami to the Northeastern part of Japan, the water came in as far as 2 kilometers in Minamisoma, causing catastrophic damage to the town. It suffered a second blow when the nuclear accident at Fukishima Daiichi caused it to be officially categorized as an area where it was safer to stay indoors, upon which they began to run out of emergency provisions of food and fuel.
Katsunobu Sakurai caused a sensation when he put an English-subtitled video on Youtube, appealing to the whole world by telling of the town’s inability to obtain resources.
In the interview conducted by IWJ on April 19, Mayor Sakurai talked about the lack of consistency among national, local, and Red Cross methods of distribution of donation money. He said the media were the first to flee, only doing interviews by phone.
As you know, our hope is conclusion of the nuclear plant accident. I can talk now with members of Cabinet, with Edano or with Fukuyama, but there is no consistency in what they say.
As a result of what the nuclear power plant has caused in our town, both the temporary shelters, as well as industry, are at the level of being pulled apart, but destroyed completely, which is not taken into account, I think.
City Hall officials have been forced to work on the problems every day and services are such that cannot be restored to their original conditions.
If you consider just revenue management, it is a most unlikely situation in which to expect tax revenue. Asking for a tax burden within the 20 km forbidden zone is an unlikely story because we have asked everyone to evacuate and no one is there. Most of the residents within the 30km zone too, where indoors -standby is ordered, evacuated once, though they are coming back.Just now a Toho Bank employee was here who said that Toho is finally going to start business from today. 77 Bank will open from tomorrow perhaps. We demanded this firmly, it might have been due to the help of P.M. Kamei, it could have been so, we could not have done it by ourselves. Home delivery has not come yet so naturally newspapers are not being delivered, which means that the social infrastructure has been torn.
The nuclear disaster prevention in Japan is as good as nothing.They might have developed the technical part of the power supply but the disaster prevention for this kind of situation, and the education for residents about radioactivity are almost nothing, I think . Of course there are specialists, but their information is not provided to the level of local government. Naturally citizens can not get information from us and they act on speculation. This time, when the vapor explosion occurred once, people fled just driven by fear.
An overwhelming majority evacuated to protect themselves when Reactor No.2 and No.3 exploded,and honestly speaking,it was unavoidable. In terms of telling us information, the government and TEPCO have neglected us. It might sound rude but I think that they weighed the relative merits of human life living there against economical considerations, considering the previous issue of Reactor No.3 explosion. As for No.3, it wouldn’t have gotten as bad as this,if they had proceeded from the beginning on the assumption of decommissioning it.
It is said that they refused some American aid,because they weren’t all that determined to gain control over the nuclear accident.
Among other speculation,Naoto Kan said that residents cannot go back 10-20 years, and someone informed me that Mr.Omae commented in the weekly magazine Post that it would take 5 years to cool down and 10 -15 years to get under control completely. It’s easy for them to say. For the sensibilities of the people living there, I feel that I have no more to say about it. They don’t consider the people living there. There should have been someone in the position of power supply standing on the resident’s side. First and foremost they worry about power supply to the metropolitan area, and they don’t have consider Fukushima, the source of that power, nor about the stricken areas. They would be ridiculed by people not only living here but also all over the world.
I have talked with various politicians and a political decision is very important. We could say that we are also in the political arena, but political decisions that affect policies of the country are significant. Politicians have to commit themselves with conviction and consistency, we cannot trust empty talk. If you do not recognize what is simply right, it is meaningless being engaged in politics.
Every day, I am keenly aware of it, going where I go. From the stance of the prefecture and that of various departments of government, there are few individual bad people, but what they decide systematically becomes more and more strange. Setting 20 km 30 km as the first “stay indoors” limit was also playing catch-up.
They set up measures for convenience and then play catch-up after having learned our distress through our complaints. Without clear indication such as eliminating things that go wrong, or expanding in response to really bad situations, people living here become anxious as their feelings are affected by the minute, by every word.
We received various information from shelters after more than a month now, and it is overwhelmingly said that information from Minamisoma is lacking more than anything else. What we are we saying on the site now? Can residents go back? Can’t they? Can they get donations? How to apply? They do not know the process at all, They don’t see the state of Minamisoma . Those opinions are sent to us. In other words, many people were forced to flee this town.
Having seen today’s commercial broadcasting, we found donations of 50,000 yen distributed indiscriminately. I don’t know how it compares to Futaba, but depending on the municipality in the prefecture, we see a different order of magnitude. Minamisoma got serious damage. People scattered and were forced to evacuate.We want to aggregate shelters as much as possible.
The farther you go, for example Niigata, the more anxious your get about life. From now,they will be provided prefectural housing,or municipal housing leaving shelters. In that case, they will split up and it is getting difficult to aggregate. That kind of frustration has been expressed. I want the government to take responsibility for it.
The local government officials have gotten exhausted. It happens to come out in quarrels among staff. A difference in business comes out between departments. Such being the case, we wonder how we do the personnel allocation and we are still confused yet after a month. Paperwork is growing and if you think just of the donations, business has been getting complicated, depending upon the problems such as the way to distribute prefectual donations,the Red Cross donations, the provisional guarantee of one million yen, the guarantee outside and within 30 km evacuate zone and the planting issue. What it’s like on the ground has not been considered. More than 100 staff are assigned at the shelters but are decreasing.
These are the last things we would have expected. The same thing will be repeated unless the national government and prefectual government think about methods of logistical support. A person who had been Sendai told me earlier, ” Home delivery is not available here. In Sendai, delivery is available at all shelters.” This situation is unthinkable for them but we take it for granted. From the begining, they have taken measures not to enter due to the nuclear power plant.The way even the press not to enter. Such a reality should be conveyed.
（It is said that people in the media were the first to flee. ）
The media fled. The people who should report on the spot escaped and they only answered phone calls. They thought they could see our situation over the phone. On the other hand, overseas media walked directly into the field having seen news including YouTube. There is a great gap between them.
A wretched condition, naturally. You have to enter the spot if you want to know our situation. We have to reconstruct this destroyed site and we need great energy for the reconstruction. People like you, who come and grasp the situation, that make us powerful.
Since I’m going to leave for the field, please ask one of the staff. The staff has been going through hardships.
People say anything they like on the phone. I don’t even know if they are local residents, saying they’re calling from a shelter, without giving their name, yelling at the staff.
“What are you doing now? City hall hasn’t done anything.” The staff has a lot of trouble. Death threats about me.
You end up only thinking about yourself. When you get driven to it, you know?I also see these people’s feelings, but now, is a time we for cooperation.
(Translation: Shizuka Tatsuta, Jeremy Harley)
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