I worry this is just one of many disclosures to come....
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Gov't secrecy can be murderous
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:47:15 -0700
From: Richard Knee <rak0408(a)earthlink.net>
To: Knee Richard A. <rak0408(a)earthlink.net>
From today's New York Times:
Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/norimitsu_onis…>
and MARTIN FACKLER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/martin_fackler…>
FUKUSHIMA, Japan — The day after a giant tsunami set off the continuing
disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, thousands of residents
at the nearby town of Namie gathered to evacuate.
Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north,
believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any
radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at
four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a
district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some
parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.
The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town
officials would learn two months later that a government computer system
designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing
just that.
But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo,
operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above
all, criticism. Japan’s political leaders at first did not know about
the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having
to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone — and acknowledge the
accident’s severity.
“From the 12th to the 15th we were in a location with one of the highest
levels of radiation,” said Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, which is
about five miles from the nuclear plant. He and thousands from Namie now
live in temporary housing in another town, Nihonmatsu. “We are extremely
worried about internal exposure to radiation.”
The withholding of information, he said, was akin to “murder."
[. . .]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?_r=1&ref=world
