BRATTLEBORO — Chikako Nishiyama was on the council of Kawauchi, a town of 2,300 people, 15 miles from the Fukushima reactors. In 2011, when she was getting ready for her run for the second term, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. Kawauchi was first a shelter town for evacuees from the evacuation zone. Then a plume of radiation engulfed Kawauchi, and it too was evacuated.
Her son, a firefighter, worked in Kawauchi before the evacuation order was lifted one year later, and she is concerned for his health.
Kawauchi is the sister city to Greenfield, Mass. As part Safe and Green Campaign's “Voices of Fukushima” project in March, Greenfield held a vigil and wrote messages of hope to Kawauchi. Ms. Nishiyama was so moved by their action that she reached out to Chiho Kaneko, a Japanese-born Vermonter, to organize a speaking tour of our area. They will be speaking in Brattleboro on May 28 at 7 p.m. in the parlor of Centre Congregational Church on Main Street, in Greenfield on May 29, and in Montpelier June 4.
Throughout this year, she stayed active as an anti-nuclear voice from the affected area. Currently she is working on a project to relocate people to the western Japan. She is also involved in the “do not pay your electric bill” movement, and in the class-action lawsuit on radiation pollution in Japan.
Please join us to hear her first hand story of life during and after a nuclear evacuation.