Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Magda Hassan]

How the Yakuza and Japan's Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other

JAKE ADELSTEIN4,726 ViewsMAY 24, 2012
After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO's Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, we are learning the details of how Japan's nuclear industry relied on organized crime. Since July of last year, a few months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami resulted in a triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, investigators have been probing possible yakuza links to TEPCO and the nuclear industry under the guidance of the National Police Agency.
"Yakuza involvement in the nuclear industry is believed to go back to 2007 or earlier," said a police source, "and the gangs involved were dispatching yakuza to nuclear sites all over Japan."
The yakuza boss arrested has been identified as Makoto Owada, a high-ranking member of the Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会) crime group, the second largest organized crime group in Japan with roughly 12,000 members. Owada is charged with illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction site from May to July of last year. The Fukushima plant is located in Sumiyoshi-kai territory (in yakuza parlancenawabari). However, in his initial statements to the police at the time of his arrest, Owada admitted that he had dispatched workers, including his own yakuza soldiers, to nuclear power plant construction sites all over Japan from as early as 2007.
"If we didn't do it, who would?" asked one mid-level yakuza boss, who defended the criminal groups' involvement. He even praised the yakuza workers as heroes in the aftermath of the disaster. "When everyone else was running away as Fukushima melted down, our people stayed to avert disaster. We're not the bad guys."
Police suspect that Owada was also working with Japan's largest crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, in providing labor to areas outside of the Sumiyoshi-kai turf in a "joint business venture." Organized crime in Japan tends to be extremely organized. (At right is an issue of a yakuza fanzine that is dedicated to the Sumiyoshi-kai.) And, in fact, one of the business partners, Yamaguchi-gumi Oshuaizukaikka, which also calls Fukushima Prefecture home, has been praised for their fast and effective relief efforts after the quakeeven providing hot food and security from possible looters at disaster shelters. The other business partner, the Yamaguchi-gumi Shimizu-ikka was founded by one of the four yakuza who received a liver transplant at UCLA under controversial circumstances.
However, it's becoming apparent that yakuza involvement in Japan's nuclear industry is not limited to the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi. In January of this year, the Fukuoka Police Department arrested an executive at a front company for the Kyushu-based yakuza Kudo-kai, for her role in illegal labor contracts with the KEPCO (Kansai Electric Power Company) managed Ooi Nuclear Power Plant.
Police and underworld sources said that starting in late May of last year, Owada allegedly dispatched several people, including gang members, to the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant where they did cleanup work and reconstruction of damaged areas. According to these sources, Owada did not directly dispatch workers to the nuclear power plant; he first sent them to an official TEPCO subcontractor in Tochigi Prefecture. These sources say the way the scheme worked is that Owada then received the extra hazard pay (危険手当) that TEPCO was giving to workers at the radioactive Fukushima site. Some of that money was allegedly kicked back to the Sumiyoshi-kai as "association dues."
While most firms in Japan now have in place exclusionary clauses in all contracts that forbids the use of organized crime or affiliated companies, TEPCO has been fairly lax about taking similar measures. Last July, according to the National Police Agency and TEPCO, the firm began meeting regularly with officials from the National Police Agency to discuss rooting out organized crime influence at the company. Up until October 1, 2011, however, it was not necessarily illegal to employ yakuza at nuclear facilities or work with their front companies. It is now.
The involvement of the yakuza in Japan's nuclear industry has gone on long before last year's disaster. According to Japanese government sources, Yakuza have been supplying labor to Japan's nuclear industry since the late 90s. TEPCO and other firms have paid off yakuza groups in the past to remain silent about safety problems at their nuclear plants and other scandals. In 2003, the Japanese media reported that TEPCO had been making protection payments to a Sumiyoshi-kai front company for over ten years. The June 2005 issue of the political and news magazine, SEIKEI TOHOKU, had an in-depth expose of TEPCO pay-offs to a Yamaguchi-gumi boss. Police sources also confirmed that TEPCO ties to organized crime dated back to the late nineties.
"The yakuza provide the labor for a job no sane person would do considering the crappy working conditions," said Tomohiko Suzuki, author of Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry: Diary of An Undercover Reporter Working at the Fukushima Plant (ヤクザと原発-福島第一潜入記-鈴木-智彦). "The only way to get the yakuza out of the atomic power business is probably to shutter all the reactors. Even then, like savvy vultures, the yakuza will be living off the cleanup work for years to come."
Considering the intimate entanglements between organized crime and nuclear power in Japan, it would not be a shock if this investigation has a very short half-life. "The arrest of Owada is just the tip of the iceberg but how far the investigation will go or be allowed to go is difficult to say," said the police source. "Things don't change overnight."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/20...her/52779/

Japan Lax Nuclear Security Could Make It The Land Of The Melting Sun

POSTED BY JAKEADELSTEIN ON SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013

Japan is a giant nuclear pressure cooker. Let's hope it doesn't get set off.

full article is in the Japan Times (May 5th, 2013) On April 15, two alleged terrorists in Boston killed three people, injured more than 170 others and terrified a nation for about $100 it cost them to modify pressure cookers into bombs. We should be glad they didn't come to Japan, where they may have been able to explode a ready-made nuclear dirty bomb, kill untold thousands, render huge swaths of the country uninhabitable and get paid by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) in the process. I wish I were kidding. Japan has more than 50 gigantic nuclear "pressure cookers" ripe for exploitation by terrorists. And they wouldn't even have to lay siege to the facilities. Instead, they could just walk into a nuclear plant and leave with enough weapons-grade plutonium for a small atomic device which later could be detonated wherever they chose. How?

In Japan, getting access to a nuclear power plant is very simple: fill out a job application.

It is now more than two years since the start of the nuclear crisis following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and there are still no mandatory background checks for workers at its nuclear facilities. After the three reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex in March 2011, it became clear that Tepco, the plant's operator, was allowing members of Japan's organized crime groups, the yakuza, to staff the well-paid cleanup just as they had been allowed into plants long before then. Indeed, members and associates of the Sumiyoshi-kai (Kanto) and Kudo-kai (Kyushu) mobs have been arrested for their roles supplying labor to Tepco and its Kansai cousin, Kepco. So the dirty secret that yakuza-linked workers and companies have long sustained Japan's nuclear industry along with yakuza members themselves, ex-convicts, wanted criminals, and drug addicts working there is now public knowledge. Although many yakuza groups claim to have a protective role in society, most of their members are sociopathic felons who would commit theft, assault or murder to make a little money. And if you consider the black-market value of a little plutonium, you may feel a tad uneasy knowing such people have long had access to it and can still get their hands on nuclear materials. Don't worry, though: Last month the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said a panel will be set up to discuss atomic energy security issues, and it will consider introducing a system to investigate the backgrounds of workers to avoid acts of terrorism at nuclear plants. Specifically, it seems the panel will examine ways to check whether nuclear facility employees are drug addicts or have a criminal record, among other issues, in order to screen out anyone who could potentially get involved in terrorism. The panel will comprise NRA Commissioner Kenzo Oshima and outside experts. However, one expert who will not be on the panel is Haruki Madarame, former chief of the now-dissolved Nuclear Safety Commission. He is currently being investigated by prosecutors for alleged criminal negligence. But hey, let's not dwell on the past. The good news is that the NRA is thinking about making nuclear plants safer in the future. They may even reach the same conclusions that the Nuclear Security Expert Commission of the Atomic Energy Commission announced … in September 2011. Of course, why take action when you can spend more time debating about taking action? The AEC makes recommendations for nuclear energy policy. However, that 2011 report, titled "Basic Nuclear Security Assurance," doesn't give a positive view of Japan's countermeasures. For the rest of the story …

Reference materials for the article and those interested in Japan's nuclear issues

A few source materials for the article are below for those who would like to know more. 原子力防護専門部会 (Nuclear Security Expert Commission of the Atomic Energy Commission aReport on Basic Nuclear Security ) Their full report, which discusses the threat from dirty bombs made out of nuclear facility materials, is on-line. (Japanese only) For a prescient look at the crisis that came, see Japan's Nuclear Roulette from 2004 For a comprehensive history of Japan's troubled and corrupt nuclear industry, Jeff Kingston's essay from Contemporary Japan is a must read. Also very prescient. The Melting Sun: Japan's Nuclear Follies
For another view of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and Japan's nuclear security problems, Professor Kingston's recent article: Power Politics: Japan's Resilient Nuclear Village is a very succinct and chilling read.

TEPCO is beyond parody sometimes but we try.

http://www.japansubculture.com/japan-lax...MQ.twitter