Friday, March 18, 2011

Mayor Bitter Over Fukushima Safety Risks

The voice on the phone was calm and dignified, as befitted a proud Japanese mayor, yet this somehow made his fury more forceful.

Hours after the tsunami struck, Katsunobu Sakurai told me, he had sought advice from the government on whether to evacuate the 71,000 people in his city, which is just 12 miles downwind of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

At first ministerial officials simply ignored his calls. When he did manage to speak to them, they assured him there was no cause for concern; a message he accepted and dutifully relayed.

He had toed the line because that is what Japan's civic leaders invariably do. But yesterday, far too late, the mayor of Minamisoma finally realised that he had been deceived, at best, and perhaps even lied to.

'Of course I am angry,' he told me through an interpreter yesterday. 'I was ignored and then badly misled, and as a result the people were abandoned here to die.

'But I was the one who told them it was safe to stay, and now I have decided that I must be the last person to leave this city. I have been in my office since last Friday, and I won't go until the last person has left safely.'

For a city mayor to voice such sentiments at a time when his countrymen are being urged to stand together in the face of Armageddon is tantamount to mutiny.

He may not be the last to turn on prime minister Naoto Kan and his government as their platitudes and misinformation test the admirable forbearance of the Japanese public to its limits.

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