Fukushima a Month Out: Hear Not Much Evil, See Not Much Evil

This reactor story didn’t smell right to me from the beginning (Japan series at Bag and Bag Tumblr), and it only felt more so after listening to Helen Caldicott and Alex Smith talk about the volatility of the Fukushima plant a week ago on Pacifica Radio (as opposed to that MOR NPR).

At this point — with the NYT now reporting Fukushima has made the jump from 3 Mile Island to Chernobyl status — the fact corporate media seems to so grudgingly catch up to the unfolding catastrophe, and tepidly, after days with its eyes half-open, seems a case study in denial.

One thing we were asking ourselves at The Bag early last week was: where were the pictures of the abandoned towns and the deaf echos from the evacuation zone? All I have to say is, thank goodness for David Guttenfelder for his troubling photos last Thursday of posterity’s newest “no man’s land.” I posted this one of the deserted town of Minami Soma on our Tumblr site. Those dogs, man’s best friend, roam the same irradiated town. It’s a image that defines forlorn.

I was attracted to this shot also.  Just like the sky was broken, this mosaic-in-mud suggests (the guys in the radiation suits piling dead bodies into a police van, though not from radiation — as yet) that the earth is broken, too.

I’m keeping these photos firmly in mind, not knowing how soon and how many more like them we’ll see.

(photos: David Guttenfelder/AP. caption 1: Dogs wander around a town of Minami Soma, inside the deserted evacuation zone established for the 20 kilometer radius around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in northeastern Japan Thursday, April 7, 2011. caption 2: Japanese police, wearing suits to protect them from radiation, guard the area as a dead body is loaded into a police van in the town of Minami Soma, inside the deserted evacuation zone established for the 20 kilometer radius around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactors Thursday, April 7, 2011.)