In March, Kawai helped set up an organization to support Fukushima residents whose children have developed thyroid cancer since the 2011 disaster — 166 among 380,000 people 18 years and under who were tested, including suspected cases. "If another nuclear accident ever happens in Japan, everything will be destroyed — turning upside down our politics, our economy, our education, our culture, our love, our law," Kawai told The Associated Press, sitting at a desk overflowing with files and papers in his Tokyo office. Born in 1944 in Manchuria, northeastern China, Kawaii has built a reputation as a champion of humanitarian causes, helping out Japanese abandoned as children in China after World War II, and Filipinos of Japanese descent in the Philippines. In the mid-1990s he began taking on lawsuits against nuclear power. [...] 2011, he was fighting a losing battle. To win over regular people after the Fukushima accident Kawai started making movies, which are sometimes entered as evidence for his court cases. "Imagine remembering this film in an evacuation center after the next nuclear disaster," Kawai narrates in the movie. Since Japan imports almost all its energy, many in government and business view nuclear power as the cheapest option, and the best way to curb pollution and counter global warming. Even those who insist nuclear power is safe — including top government regulator Shunichi Tanaka and Gerry Thomas, a professor at the Imperial College of London who advises Japan — say the choice of whether to keep or abandon nuclear energy should be left to the Japanese people. Radiation is a sensitive issue in Japan, the only country to suffer atomic bomb attacks, and the Fukushima thyroid cancer patients and their families mostly have kept silent, fearing a social backlash.
Ap Interview: Japan Lawyer Wants No-nukes After Fukushima
By YURI KAGEYAMA and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press, Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Business
Wed, 04/06/2016 - 11:42pm
Topics: march the associated press tokyo born manchuria kawaii world war ii filipinos philippines imagine since japan shunichi tanaka gerry thomas imperial college london radiation kawai fukushima japan to china japanese in nuclear people power disaster children cancer accident thyroid government cases energy
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