I would like to extend my special thanks to Kyodo News that have covered me on 10 Year After Fukushima Accident. (Maybe the first time I was covered by a Japanese media company after the ETHOS case.)
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/03/4f4dce2cf53d-feature-fukushima-nuclear-crisis-evacuees-face-unresolved-issues-10-years-on.html
There were several interviewees in the article.
I really appreciate the reporter's excellent work!
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Below is the draft article of my interview. (This version is a bit longer than the actual article.)
Freelance journalist and translator Mari Takenouchi, who has long held strong anti-nuclear views, fled to Okinawa with her infant son just days after the disaster. She says she picked the island prefecture as it is one of the few places in Japan free of nuclear power plants.
"If (the government) doesn't shut down its nuclear power plants and take measures for dry storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level liquid waste, it is dangerous to live in the mainland," she said. “Japan is on the border of four (tectonic) plates, and 20 percent of the world's major earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater occur here.”
Since moving to Okinawa, Takenouchi has worked tirelessly to create greater awareness about the effects of radiation on children and fetuses by disseminating and[MT1] translating the work of Dr. Yury Bandazhevsky, an exiled medical scientist from Belarus famous for his research on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
"I was outside in Tokyo on March 15 from 10 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., the time when the radioactive cloud was the thickest, and I am most concerned about radiation exposure through inhalation. Both my son and I were sick for three months," Takenouchi said, recounting the day she left the capital in 2011.
While she said her son is fine now for the most part, Takenouchi herself has continued health problems, including tumors on her thyroid gland among other things.[MT2] Her outspoken views on how the government has downplayed and stifled reporting on the extent of the radiation have also landed her in hot water in the past.
In 2014, the head of the nongovernment organization Ethos lodged a criminal complaint against her for tweeting that it was conducting "human experiments" by encouraging families to continue to live in contaminated areas in Fukushima.
Although the case was subsequently suspended, she was severely harassed and threatened for years after by not only anonymous users but also some academics, renowned intellectuals, and even lawyers[MT3] , according to Takenouchi.
“The situation after the Fukushima accident have not become better, but worse. Considering the occasional earthquakes, all of us are still at great risks,” she said. Mari Takenouchi, 54
[MT1]I was mainly disseminating his work after the accident, and only for the past year or so, I have been actually translating his work.
[MT2]I am not writing in details here but I have other health problems maybe greater than thyroid tumors, so I feel this expression would fit my situation.
[MT3]There was only a single president of a small company. Meanwhile, there were many academics and even some known intellectuals (Bunka-jin) who were mocking over my ETHOS criticism.