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This radiation not only hurts the young sailors, but it hurts their offspring. This is a declaration
from the wife of a sailor, who writes in her declaration to the court, "My husband was
exposed to radiation particles while assigned to the Seventh Fleet on the USS Ronald Reagan
assisting in Operation Tomodachi beginning in March of 2011. As a result of this exposure,
our son, who was born on November 14, 2012, at eight months was diagnosed with brain and
spine cancer." These are just a few examples of what these young sailors are dealing with.
And one last report. This is a sailor who's 22, has been diagnosed with leukemia and is
losing his eyesight. And he writes in his declaration to the court, "Upon my return
from Operation Tomodachi, I began losing my eyesight. I lost all vision in my left eye
and most vision in my right eye. I am unable to read street signs, and I am no longer able
to drive. Prior to Operation Tomodachi, I had 20/20 eyesight, wore no glasses and had
no corrective eye surgery. Additionally, I know of no family member who have had leukemia."
So these are the examples of the kinds of illnesses and injuries that these young sailors
are experiencing. We're going to break and then come back to
this discussion. Charles Bonner, attorney, joining us from San Francisco; Lieutenant
Steve Simmons, a U.S. Navy sailor. And when we come back, we'll also be joined by Kyle
Cleveland. He's a professor. He'll join us from Yokohama, Japan, to talk about documents
he obtained of backstage conversations among U.S. officials about the radiation risk at
the time that all of this was happening three years ago
We're talking about a class action suit that has been brought by marines and U.S. sailors
against TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, that runs the nuclear power plants that melted
down March—in that week of March 11, 2011, after the earthquake led to the tsunami that
created this catastrophe. Our guests are Lieutenant Steve Simmons, who was a sailor who participated
on the USS Reagan in relief efforts, now suffering from very serious health ailments potentially
related to radiation exposure, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. We're also joined
by his attorney, the class action attorney, Charles Bonner. He's in San Francisco. And
we now go to Professor Kyle Cleveland, who recently wrote "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The
Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Politics of Uncertainty."
Kyle Cleveland, thanks for joining us from Japan. Talk about the backstage conversations
that were taking place among the U.S. military and U.S. officials. And how did you get a
hold of these conversations? The documents you're referring to are through
the Freedom of Information Act, and these were documents that were made available maybe
six or eight months after the crisis started, through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
And in these documents, these were transcribed telephone conversations between NRC officials
and Washington, D.C., embassy and diplomatic staff in Tokyo, and also people in Pacific
Command or United States Forces Japan, principally the Navy.
And what those documents reveal is that there was a lot of backstage discussion by these
experts, who were trying to assess just how bad the situation was. I think you quoted
in the document a discussion in which they were saying—this is on, I think, March 13th—that
they were picking up rates at about a hundred nautical miles out from the plant that were
30 times above background and would represent a thyroid dose, a committed dose equivalent
to the thyroid—that in a 10-hour period would exceed the protective action guidelines
set up by the Department of Energy. So, in my research, I've interviewed some
160 people, including diplomats and diplomatic staff and people within the various nuclear
agencies. It's been quite interesting to see that at that period of time, particularly
in about the first 10 days or so after the crisis began, there was a great deal of disagreement
and a great deal of debate backstage about just how bad this was and what those rates
represented and whether or not they could verify this. Now, keep in mind that TEPCO,
at this period of time, in the period of time that we're talking about where the Reagan
sailors would have been exposed, they were trying to—frantically trying to deal with
the situation. They were in a station blackout. And even though they knew that the radiation
levels were quite high, that wasn't really making it into the public.
When we talk about TEPCO, I think it's important to make a distinction between the operational
staff at the plant, who were really working desperately 24 hours a day to deal with this,
and the TEPCO officials, including their spokesmen, who were really downplaying the situation.
And anyone who followed the situation at that time, it was quite confusing. It was very
frustrating that in every stage of this, they were downplaying just how bad it was. And
so, in the first few days, the United States really had no information that they could
act upon. And so, very quickly, they set up their own radiation assessment. You know,
the United States has a great deal of military assets in Japan, some 82 military bases, and
their own radiation measurements, starting about on the 13th or 14th of March and going
for months after that, were revealing that the situation was really quite a bit more
severe than what TEPCO was acknowledging. According to the documents that you saw about
these conversations, the Navy was aware that the sailors on the USS Reagan would be exposed
to dangerous levels of radiation? Well, what they were—the readings that they
were getting, these were coming from helicopters that were flying relief missions for the tsunami
effort. They had landed on a Japanese command ship that was about 50 miles away from the
plant, and the measurements that they were getting clearly alarmed them. These were readings
much higher than they expected. In the documentation—again, the Freedom of Information Act documents—they
did not anticipate that they would have really any readings of significance at a hundred
nautical miles, and yet they were getting readings that were—that would exceed the
protective action guideline dose in a 10-hour period. So, they were aware that they were
getting hit by this radiation. Keep in mind, in the first week or so of the crisis, at
least the first four or five days, the wind was blowing out to sea, and aside from these
inland communities very close to the reactor, the first people that were hit by this plume
were the U.S. military. And these nuclear aircraft carriers are arguably some of the
most sophisticated radiation-measuring devices in the world. And what those documents reveal
is that their alarms set off at very consistent levels, and they saw that they were getting
rates that were surprising them. The issue of whether—
So, Professor Cleveland, why isn't the U.S. Navy responsible for this as well asTEPCO,
as Japan, the nuclear power company? Well, I think that the real question is whether
or not the U.S. government, and the U.S. Navy, in particular, took the appropriate protective
action measures, given the information that they had available at the time. You know,
it's very easy now to look in retrospect and make these kind of severe judgments about
this, now that we have more information and there's a lot more transparency to this. But
at the time, they had very little information to act on.
And from what I've gathered, at least from my interviews, they immediately were trying
to take protective measures. They moved the carrier off. They did stop the water supply
after they saw that it had become contaminated. For many of the servicemen who were close
in, they provided potassium iodine to protect them against thyroid doses. And they set up
also a radiation registry, called the Tomodachi Registry, which is still publicly available
as an online interactive website, that allows servicemen and anyone who was in Japan at
that time in proximity to the plant to go on and see where they were at a given day
and what their estimated dose exposures were. So, I think the United States government and
the Navy was doing whatever they could. Keep in mind that many of the officers and
the administrative staff that were dealing with this, they were on the ship themselves,
or they were at the military bases in Japan, where their families were living, and they
were also being exposed to this. So, I think that, you know, for many people who were not
privy to these backstage discussions and these kind of elite-level decision makers and the
kind of rationale and reasons for why they were making their decisions, it may seem that
somehow it was unreasonable and unfair. But when you scrutinize it closely, I think that
they were trying to take the appropriate protective actions. The question of whether or not that
was useful and whether or not they were in fact the best measures they could take is
kind of another question. I wanted to go back to Naoto Kan, an interview
we did on the third anniversary of the meltdowns, March 11th. Naoto Kan was the prime minister
of Japan when the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown occurred. I spoke to him in Tokyo when we
broadcast from Japan weeks ago. The former prime minister spoke about the inaccuracy
of the information TEPCO provided to him at the time of the disaster.
: [translated] From what I was hearing from the headquarters of TEPCO, and in particular
from Mr. Takeguro, who was the former vice president, was—had almost no accurate information
being conveyed about what was actually the situation on site.
The former prime minister of Naoto—the former prime minister of Japan. He went on to say
that he flew to the nuclear plant, because he couldn't get accurate information from
TEPCO officials, to speak to workers, where he could get accurate information. I wanted
to go back to Lieutenant Steve Simmons. What was your health like before March 11th, 2011,
three years ago? : Before March, I was actually in what I would
like to consider relatively good health. I was physically active. I had been doing P90X
and Insanity workouts, and oftentimes kind of a hybrid between the two of them. And the
summer of 2010, when I was down in Hawaii, one day I had met up with a friend and gone
out and did a trail run, the following day hiked Diamond Head. And then, after—the
day or so after that, I went and hiked Stairway to Heaven. So, I was in pretty good health.
Lieutenant Simmons, can you explain when you decided to join this lawsuit and what you'd
like to see happen now? It wasn't—well, for a long time, actually,
after my ailments started, I had tried to find out if there was anybody else that was
dealing with similar issues or other ailments related from that deployment. And I had reached
out to some of the other folks that I was stationed with on board the Reagan, and they
hadn't heard anything. And it wasn't until, I think, December of '12, when my wife's sister
had actually sent her a news article talking about the original plaintiffs of the case.
Shortly after that, I had reached out to Paul and his team and inquired with them about
it and sent them my information. And it really—for me, it comes down to the fact that, like Charles
said, a lot of these sailors and marines are in their early twenties, mid-twenties, and
they haven't had the luxury that I've had to do 16 years of the service and be awarded
the opportunity for medical retirement. And these young sailors and marines need to be
taken care of. And that was the main driving force for me to come forward and bring my
information to Paul and Charles to help strengthen their case, to make sure that these individuals
are taken care of in the manner that they deserve.
How many people were on the USS Reagan? Approximately 5,500.
I want to thank you all for joining us: Lieutenant Steve Simmons, U.S. sailor, a part of the
class action suit that's being represented by Paul Garner and Charles Bonner; Charles
Bonner, our guest from San Francisco; and Professor Kyle Cleveland, thank you for joining
us from Yokohama, Japan. We'll link to your piece, "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias."