Japan mayor offers Fukushima children home in his town
Matsumoto Mayor Akira Sugenoya wants to help families keep their children safe
A generation ago, Dr Akira Sugenoya performed life-saving cancer surgery on more than 100 children after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. Today, as mayor of a central Japanese city, he’s trying to avoid a repeat of his own history.
Beginning in April, parents living in the shadow of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will be able to send their children about 300 kilometres away to his city, Matsumoto, to go to school. The city will pay 14 million yen (US$140,000) a year for a six-bedroom house and caretakers; parents won’t pay tuition but will cover expenses such as utilities and meals.
“If my fears turn out to be unfounded, nothing would be better news,” Sugenoya said in a recent interview at Matsumoto city hall. “But if they become reality, then there is little time before it’s too late.”
Sugenoya has been critical of the government’s response to the three meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which exploded after the March 2011 tsunami and is still releasing radiation into the air and sea. Decommissioning will take decades, and experts disagree over how much the disaster will affect the health of area residents.
The single sickness confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency to have been caused by low-dose radiation from Chernobyl is thyroid cancer, which if properly treated with surgery is rarely fatal. Sugenoya, a thyroid specialist, volunteered to work in Belarus, close to the Ukraine power plant, in 1991 after hearing about thousands of cases of thyroid cancer there.