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More than 60 years on, Japan's mercury-poison victims fight to be heard

6 Comments
By Minami Funakoshi and Kyung Hoon Kim

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6 Comments
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Japan's shame. Murder basically.

The government and company should have paid huge financial reparations and sincerely apologized to the victims.

I'm sure most, if not all, people feel exactly the same way but no justice has been done nor does it look like it ever will.

10 ( +10 / -0 )

A heartbreaking story. Why no mention of Chisso Corporation in the article?

For the Japanese national government and Kumamoto prefecture -- the political powers concerning this disaster -- policies and countermeasures for Minamata Disease were not about comprehensive relief for victims. Rather, the forty-five year history of Minamata Disease has shown it to be completely the reverse.

In one word, throughout the history of Minamata Disease, both the national and Kumamoto prefectural governments consistently stood on the side of the polluter which had caused the disaster.

http://aileenarchive.or.jp/minamata_en/aboutminamata/index.html

W. Eugene Smith, the American photographer known as one of the fathers of photojournalism, lived and photographed in Minamata for 3 years in the early 1970s. This is what happened to him:

" Smith and his wife were attacked and injured in January 1972 during a confrontation between mercury poisoning victims and Chisso employees at the factory in Goi. Victims were violently evicted from Chisso property. Smith had to seek medical treatment in the U.S. for his injuries. Ken Kobre described the attack in an essay at the Masters Exhibition website: “Smith almost lost his eyesight covering the story. He and his wife, armed with camera and tape-recorder, accompanied a group of patients to record a meeting the group expected to have with an official of the company. The official failed to show up. “But,” Smith related, “suddenly, a group of about 100 men, on orders from the company, crowded into the room. They hit me first. They grabbed me and kicked me in the crotch and snatched the cameras, then hit me in the stomach. Then they dragged me out and picked me up and slammed my head on the concrete.” Smith survived, but with limited vision in one eye".

http://www.documentingmedicine.com/minamata-the-story-of-the-poisoning-of-a-city/

Some of Smith's photographs:

http://aileenarchive.or.jp/minamata_en/slides/index.html

UN mercury convention link:

http://www.mercuryconvention.org/

11 ( +11 / -0 )

Yes, why the company isn't forced to pay up is beyond me. The Japanese government should be helping more as well. It's tragic. What's worse is that it's been repeated, to one extent or another, since then. I blame a lack of prosecution of the senior managers of these disasters.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

The saddest thing about this story is that nothing has been learned. They're doing the same thing with Fukushima and likely other places the world over and there's never any punishment for those responsible.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Alfie NoakesToday 08:11 am JST

Interesting comments about Eugene Smith...I wondered if these were some hired yakuza or uyoko that bashed him?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

A hellish story, but sadly not an isolated example of the post-war collusion / chumminess between Japan Inc & the LDP.

That there is unfinished justice re all of this, is truly an indictment of the powers to be, lack of social conscience.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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