Fukushima and atomic bombs
This letter is in response to articles about the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan and the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
According to the articles: “The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.”
Where have people heard this before? It never fails to amaze me that change always has to be the result of catastrophe. Whether it be Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsunami or the nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, no government officials are ever held accountable for what can only be described as criminal negligence.
It is somewhat satisfying to see that three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company are set to face trial. The same needs to happen in the US, especially as it pertains to the financial meltdown that occurred in 2008.
In his 1762 treatise The Social Contract, philosopher, writer and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that “individuals unite into a society by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by certain rules and to accept duties to protect one another from violence, fraud, or negligence.”
Hence the existence of government with its number one priority being the protection of its citizens.
Sadly, this is happening less and less to the point where governments are compromising, and hence forfeiting, the right to govern. The question for Japanese is: Did your government fail to act in your best interests or was it compromised by self-interest? Why must it be accepted that this is “business as usual” and “the way things are done”? When did governing stop including responsibility as a part of its makeup? Perhaps Japanese need to re-examine the character, or lack thereof, of its governing officials and put systems in place that prevent this type of negligence from continuing to occur.
It is obvious from revolutions sweeping the Arab nations that leaders chose to squeeze everything they could from their citizens until it was too late.
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must all be executed — like former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi — for crimes against humanity. Japan, now it is your turn to make change. Enough with FUK-U-SHIMA.
As for the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it was fully justified. Japanese had become so barbaric in nature that only a Sodom and Gomorrah type blast could shake Emperor Hirohito to order the military to surrender.
After Nagasaki, the next target was Tokyo.
Hirohito spoke wisely when he said: “If we don’t surrender now, they [the US] will obliterate us from the Earth.”
According to Wikipedia, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is “a 2003 US documentary film about the life and times of former US secretary of defense Robert McNamara, illustrating his observations of the nature of modern warfare.”
In that documentary, McNamara says that the wood supporting Japanese pagoda homes was so dry that when the US Army Air Corps dropped incendiary bombs, the fires were so great that far more Japanese died than from the two atomic bombs combined.
Further, it is clear from reading Japanese history that the people did not object to the mass invasions, pillaging, murders and rapes of those in China, Korea and the Philippines, among other places. Those same people would not have been crying for the citizens of the US had they developed the bomb first and dropped it on New York — and yes, they most certainly would have. Those same people thought nothing of the US prisoners of war who were tortured so badly to see how long it would take them to die from the pain inflicted.
Yes, former US president Harry Truman made the right decision to drop the atomic bomb to defeat an evil menace that had become out of control.
Japanese should be grateful that their military was defeated and their country was not exterminated from the Earth. The Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster clearly illustrates that Japan has no real interest in protecting its people from nuclear radiation. Not much has changed in 70 years, has it?
Joe Bialek
Cleveland, Ohio
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs