NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Last month we organized a forum at the University of Guam on nuclear dangers to Guam, both from the nuclear weapons of others, but also accidents involving the nuclear weapons kept on Guam by the US military or the nuclear-powered vehicles that are docked here. It was somewhat disappointing when in a room meant for close to 200 people at the UOG CLASS Lecture Hall, we only had about 40 people in attendance. As one of the speakers on the panel remarked, this is a critical issue, which few people seem to care about. That is one reason why it is so critical. It looms around us, as threats from others or dangers from within, but we don't seem to take it very seriously at all. Robert Underwood once said that living in a colony and not taking decolonization or colonialism seriously is like running a hospital without taking seriously issues of illness and treatment. I would argue a similar thing on Guam in terms of the dangers our heavily militarized existence presents. In 2010 I trav

When I was in Fukushima I saw a map of the areas around the nuclear power plant which were affected by radiation. There were different colors bleeding out, being darkest and reddest close to the plant, but becoming lighter and orange and yellow as it moved further northwest, until it became just white like the rest of the prefectures in the Tohoku region of Japan. It was interesting seeing the discourse change as conversation with people moved from one area to the other around that map. In Fukushima, where the radiation levels were considered safe enough that no one was evacuated, but dangerous enough that all the dirt in the city is being dug up and stuffed into trash bags, no one was evacuated. I visited Iitate Village, featured in the New York Times article below, where people were warned and evacuated a month after the earthquake and meltdown, and may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation during that delay. In Iitate people are allowed to return, but cannot stay over

I may have only been in Japan for a little less than a month, but it seems to me that Japan enjoys a heavy emphasis on instructions, signs and communicating properly. Perhaps because I can't read most of these signs as they are in Japanese and so because of that they are more visible and noticeable to me, whereas for others they simply fade into the background like visual cicadas. When walking by a construction site, signs are everywhere warning people to be safe, to not enter and even to apologize profusely for the inconvenience. Everywhere you go helpful and usually colorful mascots offer everything from advice, advertising and even just cheery, "hang in there!" messages. I'm used to walking into stores where I exchange less than ten words with a clerk, but here each employee is their own tenderu techa and every purchase offers their their own rosary or two about what I am buying, the money I am giving them and the importance of having a good day as I leave. Even

Japan is at an interesting crossroads at present, with regards to nuclear power. Prior to 2011 Japan had 54 nuclear reactors providing approximately 1/3 of all the electricity to Japan. After the March 11th earthquake and the subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant all of those reactors were shut down. The shutdown of these plants became a means for the power companies in Japan to obtain hardship subsidies from the government but also increase rates. There have been regular rumors of power outages and conservation, with the power companies all threatening that without nuclear power they cannot meet the needs of the country. The nuclear power issue has constantly popped up again and again as Japan, a nation which is strongly antinuclear in a sort of populist way, has a corporate that is eager to make money off of its nuclear power infrastructure. There have been pushes to restart these generators not just to begun feeding energy into the country again, but also as

Published on Sunday, January 12, 2014 by Common Dreams Toll of U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation Continues to Climb by Harvey Wasserman The roll call of U.S. sailors who say their health was devastated when they were  irradiated while delivering humanitarian help  near the stricken  Fukushima  nuke is continuing to soar. So many have come forward that the progress of their federal class action lawsuit has been delayed.   U.S. sailors irradiated while delivering humanitarian help near the stricken Fukushima nuke say their health has been devastated. Bay area lawyer Charles Bonner says a re-filing will wait until early February to accommodate a constant influx of sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other American ships. Within a day of Fukushima One’s March 11, 2011, melt-down, American “first responders” were drenched in radioactive fallout. In the midst of a dri