“The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power 「もう一つの太陽」ーー１９５６年の広島原子力平和利用展と日本の原子力受容 "The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power1 Ran Zwigenberg In November 2011 when asked about the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) deteriorating finances, a Japanese official commented, “This is a war between humans and technology. Following the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, a host of commentators, in Japan and internationally, decried the corruption, smugness and shortsightedness that led Japan to choose nuclear power in the fifties. Nothing demonstrates this better than the reaction of the city of Hiroshima to the introduction of the Atomic age.5 On the 27th of May 1956 the Atoms for Peace exhibition opened in the peace memorial museum in Hiroshima. The Atoms for Peace exhibit was not accepted without some debate and resistance from activists. The Atoms for Peace exhibit serves as a lens through which Japan’s nuclear energy policies can be examined. Fight Poison with Poison: Atoms For Peace Comes to Japan
Why do people post these? When disaster struck Japan, Google and Twitter became tech first responders TOKYO -- The first wave of terror struck shortly before 3 p.m. on a Friday. "The ground, the thing that doesn't move, was moving," recalled Tomoko Sudo, who was at work when the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake hit Japan last year. "It felt like it was a living creature." Then the second shock hit: She couldn't reach family members for days in some of the hardest-hit regions in the disaster that caused some 16,000 deaths. The service, created after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, is a tool to help track down the missing after a disaster. When the earth convulsed that March day, the Internet was for millions of Japanese the only link to critical information and to one another. One by one, Sudo tracked down loved ones, including a cousin whose house was swept away by the tsunami. This help, said Gisli Olafsson, emergency response director at NetHope, a nonprofit that promotes collaboration between major tech companies and global aid organizations, is worth much more than corporate cash donations.
How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster | Mediashift The reports and pictures of the devastation from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week reminded me of reporting on the earthquake that leveled Japan’s port city of Kobe in 1995. On a personal level, I am praying for the people in a country I have come to see as a second home. As a media observer, what struck me this time was how rich and multifaceted the information flow was. In 1995, I worked in the AP bureau in Tokyo, trying to understand what I could from Japanese broadcast news reports. We were sometimes able to reach someone, official or not, in the Kobe region via phone for a quick interview as the death toll rose, eventually reaching more than 6,400. We, of course, covered the major news conferences held by agencies and government offices. Multi-platform Experience Today The past few days, sitting at home and in my office in New York, it felt like I had more information and contacts at my fingertips than I did then as a reporter in Japan. Huge Amounts of Video Related
In Japan, A Wave of Media Distrust Post-Tsunami | Mediashift Until about 10 years ago, the Japanese term “masu-gomi” — rubbishy mass media — was a derogatory word only known to a few Internet users. Not anymore. On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced a major earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the northern region followed. The unprecedented level of the disaster stunned the nation, including its journalists. Credibility in Question Without much time and sufficient background in nuclear expertise, reporters rushed to feed what the government, bureaucrats, academia and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, wanted them to tell the public. When the government and TEPCO gave only partial facts or no facts at all, the resulting reports became inaccurate or simply wrong. “Rather than trying to find out the truth, the media became a PR machine for the establishment,” says Yasuo Onuki, a journalist who used to be an executive producer at Japan’s public broadcasting service, NHK. Related