'Radiation leak should be a lesson for all'

Making this point clear is Mioi Nakayama, a Japanese national working with the City’s street children over the past eight years. She should know, because her birthplace was Hiroshima, a place where even today the residents are living with the scars of the atomic bomb explosions. 

Citing the nuclear plant explosions of Saturday, Nakayama warns that setting up such plants on the coastline could pose a risk to the people if national disasters like the tsunami were to strike.

“In Japan, people believed the nuclear reactors were safe and even the government advocated it that way. However, the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant will cover Asia and will affect people more than the tsunami,” she told Deccan Herald.

Her Hiroshima birth has been more than symbolic. The dark history of that place has made Nakayama doubly conscious of the dangers posed by the nuclear plants and weapons.

She had protested against India’s Pokharan blasts in 1998 by joining a demonstration against it in Hiroshima. As co-founder of Bornfree Art School, the 33-year-old is active in the anti-nuclear campaigns. 

While earthquake training is part of the school curriculum and every citizen has undergone it, Nakayama said that there was no prediction or warning sent out regarding this earthquake. “It happened all of a sudden,” she said.

Although her parents are safe, Nakayama’s repeated attempts to get in touch with her friends in the affected areas have gone in vain. “I called many of my friends but I couldn’t get through,” she said.

To show their solidarity, the School organised candlelight vigil on MG Road here on Saturday evening.