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    May 08, 2012

In Japan, Evacuation-Aid Pleas Dismissed

   Steve Herman | Seoul
   Japanese evacuees await brief return to their homes near crippled
   Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, May 10, 2011.
   Photo: Reuters
   Japanese evacuees await brief return to their homes near crippled
   Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, May 10, 2011.

   In Japan this past year, there has been a passionate argument about the
   effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that has played out on
   Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
   Anti-nuclear activists have joined skeptics of the government's safety
   pledges in alleging a conspiracy of lies and cover-ups about the danger
   posed by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
   Environmental group Greenpeace International says Japanese authorities
   have 'consistently appeared to underestimate both the risks and extent
   of radioactive contamination.' But the group has not reported any cases
   of radiation poisoning.
   This week one American family in Japan became caught up in the
   controversy after its appeal on an online fundraising site raised
   $7,500 in funds for their evacuation.
   Carol Swift, of Overland Park, Kansas, the mother of Joshua Swift of
   Inzai, Japan, on YouCaring.com [1]had set a goal of raising $25,000 by
   August 31 because her three grandchildren "are sick from radiation
   poisoning and the food source has been compromised" as a result of the
   2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
   The online appeal listed various medical ailments affecting the family
   including autoimmune diseases affecting all three children.
   The family's evacuation plea sparked a flurry of comments on social
   media sites. While some sympathized with the Swifts, other were less
   charitable calling them naïve alarmists or con artists.
   "It was probably a mistake putting that on the Internet," says Joshua
   Swift, who now is appealing to the online detractors to "just leave us
   alone and let us go."
   The appeal on YouCaring.com was delisted Monday following the criticism
   on social media and other online sites, and the [2]appeal remains
   archived.
   Swift says the Internet appeal was not intended to be public and claims
   that all of the money raised came solely from "family and friends." He
   said it was not possible for the family to immediately evacuate because
   he wanted to continue to make mortgage payments on his home in Inzai, a
   city of 90,000 people, in Chiba Prefecture.
   Physicist-turned historian Spencer Weart is not surprised by heightened
   fears about low-level radiation.
   Weart, whose latest book 'The Rise of Nuclear Fear' was published in
   March, blames the Japanese government's flawed assurances of the safety
   of its nuclear plants and denial of problems by regulators for creating
   a situation 'where most Japanese distrust anything they [officials]
   say.'
   The Swifts' claim of radiation poisoning quickly triggered a flurry of
   comments on Twitter after it was noted and analyzed on a blog site,
   [3]Japan Probe.
   Swift acknowledges no physician has diagnosed the children as being
   sickened by radiation. He said no doctor in Japan "would be allowed
   to," alluding to a supposed cover-up of the health effects resulting
   from one of the world's worst nuclear accidents.
   Another American living in Inzai is not worried.
   'I've had independent [radiation] readings taken by Safecast and
   Hakette.jp. There is no danger in Inzai with radiation sickness,' says
   Mark Alan Williams, an international business coordinator with a
   Japanese corporation. 'There are new homes being built in my
   neighborhood and a Costco [warehouse store] is planned for Inzai too. I
   have no immediate sense of danger at all.'
   Chiba Prefecture ordered the halt of shipments of shiitake mushrooms
   grown in Inzai on February 23 of this year, a day after 993
   becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium, exceeding the national provisional
   limit of 500 becquerels/kg, was detected on the mushrooms.
   Weart, the former director of the Center for History of Physics of the
   American Institute of Physics, says extensive measurements by both
   governmental and independent entities show that except for a small
   region in Fukushima Prefecture, living in Japan and eating Japanese
   food 'do not pose big health problems. The medical problems the [Swift]
   family has are not the kind that is usually traced to radiation."
   There has been no credible scientific evidence presented that any
   humans have been sickened by radiation in Japan following the March
   2011 reactor meltdowns. Japan's government also says no one has been
   harmed by radiation exposure because of the accident.
   Japan on Saturday took the last of its 50 commercial working reactors
   offline for routine maintenance amid a safety drive following last
   year's disaster triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting
   tsunami. It is the first time the country is without nuclear power
   since 1970.
   _____
   VOA Correspondent Steve Herman has reported extensively from Fukushima
   since the nuclear disaster in March, 2011.

References

   1. http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=2328&url=bringtheswiftfamilyhomefund
   2. http://megalodon.jp/2012-0507-1819-46/www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=2328&tab=3
   3. http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/05/06/american-claims-children-in-chiba-are-sick-from-radiation-poisoning-raises-thousands-of-dollars-online/