IN MARCH OF 2014, NBC DID AN ARTICLE ABOUT "JAPAN'S NUCLEAR BOMB IN THE BASEMENT" AND ITS PLANS TO OPEN A NEW BREEDER REACTOR IN THE FALL OF 2014.
"But according to a senior Japanese government official deeply involved in the country’s nuclear energy program, Japan has been able to build nuclear weapons ever since it launched a plutonium breeder reactor and a uranium enrichment plant 30 years ago.
Japan now has 9 tons of plutonium stockpiled at several locations in Japan and another 35 tons stored in France and the U.K.
The material is enough to create 5,000 nuclear bombs.
The country also has 1.2 tons of enriched uranium.
In fact, many of Japan’s conservative politicians have long supported Japan’s nuclear power program because of its military potential.
[NOTE: On 06 April 2002 Liberal Party president Ichiro Ozawa created a furor claiming that Japan - to deter Chinese threats - could produce "thousands of nuclear warheads" from plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of its more than 50 commercial nuclear reactors. Ozawa said that "if [China] gets too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical. It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads-we have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads..[I]f we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power."
On 31 May 2002, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda became the most senior Tokyo official to publicly discuss Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Fukuda said Japan's peace constitution did not preclude nuclear weapons, and that the times have "changed to the point that even revising the constitution is being talked about." He suggested that "depending upon the world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons."]
“The hawks love nuclear weapons, so they like the nuclear power program as the best they can do,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. “They don’t want to give up the idea they have, to use it as a deterrent.”
WELL, WE KNEW THAT JAPAN IS STOCKPILING PLUTONIUM.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fukushima-anniversary/japan-producing-huge-lightly-guarded-stockpile-plutonium-n49376
JAPANESE CITIZENS AGAINST NEW MILITARY
Tens of thousands of people, including a younger generation of activists, have recently mobilized against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to REWRITE the Japanese constitution in order to allow the country to have an offensive military--which was outlawed at the conclusion of the Second World War.
With the nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in mind, protesters have set out to oppose Japanese militarism. The challenge remains in this country to revive a struggle against U.S. empire--in solidarity with its victims around the world.
But Abe seems intent on crushing these protesters and taking further steps to bring Japan back to its military might before World War II.
WAS JAPAN ENRICHING URANIUM FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS BEFORE THE 2011 EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI THAT DEVASTATED JAPAN'S NUCLEAR FACILITY AT FUKUSHIMA?YES.
THE PROOF OF THAT SEEMS TO BE GROWING.
"Henry Sokolski, executive director at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, urged the House Foreign Affairs committee to hinder the reopening of the nuclear reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, North Japan.
The plant itself was supposed to begin operations in October 2013, but its reactivation was delayed by new safety regulations.
The operators of the facility, which, according to the IAEA, has an annual capacity of 800 tons of uranium, or 8 tons of plutonium, say it should be up and running by this October.
"If Japan ever decided to open its large reprocessing plant at Rokkasho, it would be producing roughly 2,000 bombs' worth of nuclear weapons-usable plutonium a year," Sokolski told the committee in a hearing in July 2014. "This would almost certainly prompt South Korea to initiate nuclear enrichment or reprocessing of their own as a hedge or weapons option."
September 18, 2015
In 2004, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a case for Japan to restore its military capabilities, writing in his book, Determination to Protect This Country, that “if Japanese don’t shed blood, we cannot have an equal relationship with America.”
[WHAT CAN HE MEAN BY THAT?
"“if Japanese don’t shed blood, we cannot have an equal relationship with America” ?
ABE HAS ALSO STATED SEVERAL TIMES THAT THE TREATY ALLOWS FOR JAPAN TO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR DEFENCE!]
Since then, Abe has sought to revive the country’s defensive capabilities, mostly toward fortifying its claim over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, an island chain in the East China Sea that Beijing says belongs to China.
He has requested a record five trillion yen ($42 billion) defense budget for fiscal year 2016 (if approved, it will be Tokyo’s largest in 14 years) and reinterpreted the constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense.
The efforts have provoked growing alarm.
MANY AMERICANS MAY BE UNAWARE OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE'S LOATHING OF THE MILITARY.
HERE'S HOW THAT CAME ABOUT...
Although the Japanese emperor, Emperor Showa, popularly known as Hirohito, had been accused of overseeing war crimes—mass rapes and killings in China and Southeast Asia—U.S. General Douglas MacArthur thought it politically expedient to keep him in power and successfully ran a campaign to exonerate Hirohito.
The Japanese people came to regard Hirohito as innocent and subsequently turned against the military, accusing the services of deceiving them and drawing the country into a perilous war.
Japanese police reports immediately after the surrender note the people’s “grave distrust, frustration, and antipathy toward military and civilian leaders” and general “hatred of the military.”
Civilian contempt for the military quickly spread to the rank and file of the 3.5 million-strong Imperial Japanese Army. And so, after the war, Japanese soldiers were both defeated and despised. In a letter from an anonymous former soldier dated May 9, 1946, “Not a single person gave me a kind word. Rather, they cast hostile glances my way.”
Military uniforms were nicknamed “defeat suits,” and military boots were called “defeat shoes.”
AND SO, TODAY, THE MILITARY IS NOT SEEN AS RESPECTABLE AND IS FILLED BY MANY DROPOUTS, THOSE WITH LIMITED JOB OPPORTUNITIES, WHICH MEANS THE JAPANESE MILITARY IS FILLED WITH 'LOWER CLASS' TO 'LOWER MIDDLE CLASS' VOLUNTEERS WHO MAKE IT THEIR LIFELONG CAREER.
IN SPITE OF THIS, IN SPITE OF ONLY 11% OF TODAY'S JAPANESE CITIZENS FAVORING REBUILDING THE MILITARY, THERE REMAINS THOSE HAUNTED BY HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI, THOSE WHO STILL HOLD AMERICA ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HORRORS OF THAT DAY AND ALL THE DAYS SINCE AS CANCERS AND OTHER DISEASES RELATED TO THE FALLOUT FROM THE ATOMIC BOMBS STILL PLAGUE MANY.
MILLIONS LOST RELATIVES WHEN THOSE BOMBS WERE DROPPED AND IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FALLOUT WHICH CONTINUES TO THIS DAY.
THERE IS NO "REPARATION" FOR LOSING A LOVED ONE.
THERE IS ALSO A NATIONWIDE LONGING TO SEE AMERICAN MILITARY LEAVE JAPAN.
IF ANYTHING UNIFIES JAPAN IT IS THE STRONG DESIRE TO BE RID OF U.S. "OCCUPATION", TO LOSE THE LABEL OF "OCCUPIED JAPAN".
MANY JAPANESE SEE THE DROPPING OF THOSE ATOMIC BOMBS ON JAPAN AND NOT GERMANY OR ITALY AS PROOF JAPAN WAS UNNECESSARILY TARGETED.
THEY SEE THE RESULTS OF THE BOMBINGS AS WAR CRIMES AND FEEL THAT NO ONE IN AMERICA HAS EVER PAID THE PRICE FOR THE DECISION TO UNLEASH HELL ON JAPAN ALONE.
TO SOME OF THESE, THE RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT FROM THE DAIICHI NUCLEAR PLANT THAT ARRIVES DAILY HERE IN THE U.S. IS SIMPLY "PAYBACK".
GIVEN WHAT WE SEE ABE WROTE IN HS BOOK AND KNOWING THAT THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT OWNS 51% OF THAT FACILITY, MAYBE ABE FEELS NO NEED TO STOP THE CONTINUAL RADIATION?
IS THAT WHY JAPAN HAS DONE ALMOST NOTHING OF WORTH TO STOP THE CONTAMINATION?
WE SHOULD, IN LIGHT OF THESE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS, CONSIDER THAT.
MAYBE FUKUSHIMA IS JUST JAPAN'S SILENT NUCLEAR REPLY TO HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI.
ABE HAS REALLY CAUSED CHINA TO BECOME SUSPICIOUS AND TO MAKE ACCUSATIONS THAT JAPAN IS TRYING TO BUILD A NUCLEAR ARSENAL.
AS THE BBC REPORTED IN MARCH, 2014:
"US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz described the deal to return some 300 kg of plutonium as a very significant nuclear security pledge.
The material was originally bought from the US in the 1960s for what were described as research purposes.
The Abe administration was reported to have resisted initial approaches from the US to hand it back.
That led to expressions of concern by China at Japan's nuclear intentions.
Japan has a long-standing policy not to develop nuclear weapons.
But experts say its remaining stockpile of lower-grade plutonium contained in waste fuel could potentially be reprocessed as fissile material for an extremely large nuclear arsenal.
Japan is planning to open a nuclear reprocessing plant this year in the north of the country, which could turn out large quantities of additional plutonium.
The plutonium was intended to be reused as fuel in Japan's nuclear power stations, but they have been standing idle for three years in the aftermath of the disaster and meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011.
In February, China expressed grave concern at what it called Japan's possession of weapons-grade nuclear materials.
State media in China said that Japan needed to explain why it was stockpiling so much plutonium.
Some experts believe that Japan has the technology to build a nuclear weapon within a year should the government abandon its longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons."
SO FAR, IT APPEARS THE MAJORITY OF JAPANESE CITIZENS WILL FIGHT ABE ON REBUILDING JAPAN'S MILITARY.
"The Japanese have resisted Abe’s attempts to revive the military. In August 2015, in one of the largest demonstrations in Tokyo against Abe, tens of thousands hit the street. One protester told the Financial Times, “This is the last chance we have to preserve Japan’s worldwide reputation as a country of peace.”
LAST CHANCE?
WHAT AN ODD THING TO SAY!
AMONG OTHER THINGS WE MAY SEE THAT POINT TO JAPAN REVVING UP FOR REBUILDING ITS MILITARY MIGHT IS THIS ARTICLE WHICH, ON THE SURFACE, SEEMS INNOCENT ENOUGH...BUT IS IT JUST COMMERCIAL AIRPLANES JAPAN IS BUILDING?
"For the first time in five decades, a passenger airplane is being developed in Japan. Test flights of the Mitsubishi Regional Jet are scheduled to begin in October. Back in 1965, another Mitsubishi plane first took to the skies. The MU-2 was overseen by Katsuyuki Oonoda who led the design team at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. At 93, he's still proud of the product.
Oonoda was drafted by the navy in WW2 and assigned to develop military planes.
An attack plane called the Ouka was designed for suicide missions.
It was in essence a flying bomb.
Japanese pilots used the aircraft to crash into enemy battleships.
The Ouka's flying range was limited, so it had to be hung from a conventional bomber and dropped off close to the targets. The bombers were slow and were often shot down before they could release the Oukas. "It was like a coffin, a flying coffin," Oonoda says. "Young pilots were put into the Oukas, and once they were up in the air, there was no turning back. The planes had no equipment for landing. It was very sad."
When the war ended, the US and Allied Forces banned the production of airplanes in Japan.
Oonoda and his colleagues were relegated to designing agricultural equipment, such as threshing machines.
When the ban was lifted in the 1950s, Oonoda joined a team that was dedicated to airplanes.
"Of course I was happy to be back in my real profession," he recalls. "I worked very hard to create a good product."
THIS WENT UNNOTICED IN OUR MEDIA WHEN IT HAPPENED
"In October 1999, Shingo Nishimura, parliamentary vice defense minister and well-known hawk, resigned after stirring up trouble by suggesting Japan arm itself with nuclear weapons. Nishimura had scared a conservative governing leadership that actually agreed with much of what he was saying about nuclear weapons and military policy.
AND THEN I RAN ACROSS AN ARTICLE by Yoichi Shimatsu former editor of 'The Japan Times Weekly' THAT CLAIMED TO OFFER
"Proof Of Fukushima Weapons Program"
REALLY?
LET'S HAVE THE PROOF!
"Soon after Japan's triple disaster, I suggested that an official cover-up of a nuclear-weapons program hidden inside the Fukushima No.1 plant was delaying the effort to contain the reactor meltdowns. Soon after the tsunami struck, the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that only three reactors had been generating electricity on the afternoon of March 11.. (According to the initial report, these were the older GE-built reactors 1,2 and 6.). Yet overheating at five of the plant's six reactors indicated that two additional reactors had also been operating (the newer and more advanced Nos. 3 and 4, built by Toshiba and Hitachi). The only plausible purpose of such unscheduled operation is uranium enrichment toward the production of nuclear warheads.
On my subsequent sojourns in Japan, other suspicious activities also pointed to a high-level cover-up, including systematic under-counts of radiation levels, inexplicable damage to thousands of imported dosimeters, armed anti-terrorism police aboard trains and inside the dead zone, the jamming of international phone calls, homing devices installed in the GPS of rented cars, and warning visits to contacts by government agents discouraging cooperation with independent investigations. These aggressive infringements on civil liberties cannot be shrugged off as an overreaction to a civil disaster but must have been invoked on grounds of national security.
One telltale sign of high-level interference was the refusal by science equipment manufacturers to sell isotope chromatography devices to non-governmental customers, even to organizations ready to pay $170,000 in cash for a single unit.
These sensitive instruments can detect the presence of specific isotopes, for example cesium-137 and strontium-90.
Whether uranium was being enriched at Fukushima could be determined by the ratio of isotopes from enriched weapons-grade fissile material versus residues from less concentrated fuel rods.
THE "PROOF" CAME IN CALIFORNIA?
Now six months after the disaster, the smoking gun has finally surfaced, not on a Japanese paddy field but inside a pile of steer manure from a pasture near Sacramento, California. Bull crap though it may be, a sample of bovine excrement provides incontrovertible proof.
The sample of cattle dung and underlying soil was sent to the nuclear engineering lab of the University of California, Berkeley, which reported on September 6:
We tested a topsoil sample and a dried manure sample from the Sacramento area. The manure was produced by a cow long before Fukushima and left outside to dry; it was rained on back in March and April. Both samples showed detectable levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137, with the manure showing higher levels than the soil probably because of its different chemical properties and/or lower density.
One interesting feature of t the Sacramento and Sonoma soil samples is that the ratio of Cesium-137 to Cesium-134 is very large - approximately 17.6 and 5.5, respectively. All of our other soil samples until now had shown ratios of between 1 and 2.
We know from our air and rainwater measurements that material from Fukushima has a cesium ratio in the range of approximately 1.0 to 1.5, meaning that there is extra Cs-137 in these two soil samples.
The best explanation is that in addition to Fukushima fallout, we have also detected atmospheric nuclear weapons testing fallout in these soils.
Weapons fallout contains only Cs-137 (no Cs-134) and is known to be present in older soils .
Both of these samples come from older soils, while our samples until this point had come from newer soils.
To cut the bull, permit me these simple observations:
The last atmospheric nuclear blast at the Nevada Test Site occurred in 1962, whereas the manure was presumably dropped less than 49 years ago.
Over the past year, the approximate life-span of a cow patty, the rain that fell on the plain came not from a former province of Spain.
Within that short time-frame, the only possible origin of radioactive fallout was Fukushima.
To think otherwise would be lame.
Sun-dried manure is more absorbent than the rocky ground of Northern California, which explains the higher level in Sacramento dung than in the Sonoma soil. As a rule of thumb, the accuracy of radiation readings tends to improve with higher concentration of the test material.
The manure acted like a sponge for the collection of radioactive rainfall. Its ratio of Cs-137 (resulting from enriched uranium) to Cs-134 (from a civilian fuel rod) is more than 17-to-1.
Larger by 1,700 percent, this figure indicates fission of large amounts of weapons-grade material at Fukushima.
What about the findings of lower ratios in samples gathered earlier? The recent higher readings were probably based on either late releases from a fire-destroyed extraction facility or the venting of reactor No.3, a Toshiba-designed unit that used plutonium and uranium mixed oxide or MOX fuel. Unannounced nighttime airborne releases in early May caused radiation burns in many people, as happened to my forearms.
Those plumes then drifted toward North America.
Enrichment of uranium for nuclear warheads is prohibited under constitutional law in Japan and by terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Since no suspects have been charged by prosecutors, this cannot be a plot by a few individuals but stands as the crime of a national entity.
Japan is a rogue state and international outlaw.
This should not come as a surprise, considering its past."
Well, not absolute PROOF, but interesting.
MEANWHILE,
"Japan’s Monju nuclear reprocessing reactor, plagued by safety errors, offline for most of 20 years"
THIS IS THE FACILITY CHINA AND OTHERS POINT TO AND SAY IT IS FOR ENRICHING URANIUM FOR WEAPONS OF WAR.
"The Nuclear Regulation Authority says it has recently found at least 3,000 mistakes with safety classifications of equipment and devices at the reactor during its regular inspections which are conducted 4 times a year. Its officials say, equipment and devices with high importance were, in some cases, classified in lower ranks in the 3-level system, which suggest the operator might have failed to carry out necessary inspections for them.
The operator of the prototype reactor in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, has been banned from conducting test runs since 2013 following discoveries of a large number of safety inspection oversights.
The errors found recently include those going as far back as 2007.
The fact suggests that government inspectors have also overlooked the operator’s mistakes.
The operator, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, built the Monju fast-breeder reactor in the early 1990s to reuse the spent nuclear fuel MOX, a mixture of plutonium extracted from spent fuel and uranium.
But it has been offline for most of the period after it underwent a fire from a leak of sodium, the reactor’s coolant, in 1995."
THAT IS NOT BY ANY MEANS THE WORST NUKE FACILITY IN JAPAN.
Feb. 4, 2015
Tohoku Electric Power Company says it has found more than 4,000 improper entries in its inspection records about one of the reactors at its Onagawa nuclear power plant.
In other cases, incorrect product types and serial numbers were left untouched. They say there were 4,188 errors in total.
Managing Director Takao Watanabe apologized to people in the region for causing concern, although he asserted the improper entries will not lead to any safety problems.
The company says it will also check the inspection records for the No.1 and No. 3 reactors."
THE INMATES SEEM TO BE RUNNING THE ASYLUM IN JAPAN, FOLKS!
WHETHER THEY HAVE THROWN CAUTION TO THE WIND THERE IN ORDER TO QUICKLY BUILD A NUCLEAR ARSENAL OR NOT, IT DOES NOT LOOK GOOD FOR THE PLANET THAT JAPAN IS ALLOWED ONE REACTOR!
WHY HAVE NO HEADS ROLLED OVER ANY OF THIS?
WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO KEEP OPERATING?
WHY WOULD THEY BE DRIVEN TO CONTINUE OPERATING?
THE NEW YORK TIMES DID AN ARTICLE IN 2011 ABOUT FUKUSHIMA'S DARK NUCLEAR PAST.
I DOUBT MANY OF US REALIZED HOW DARK IT WAS.
THEY WERE TRYING TO BUILD THE BOMB BACK THEN.
ISHIKAWA, Japan
"It was here that, as a junior high school student in the final months of World War II, Mr. Ariga and his classmates were put to work hacking rocks out of the hill’s then exposed stone face until the blood ran from their sandaled feet. The soldiers told them nothing beyond instructing them to look for stones with brown or black spots.
Then one day, Mr. Ariga recalled, an officer finally explained what they were after:
“With the stones that you boys are digging up, we can make a bomb the size of a matchbox that will destroy all of New York.”
Mr. Ariga said he did not learn other details of Japan’s secrecy-wrapped efforts to build an atomic bomb until years after the war.
“We had no idea what we were doing here, in our bare feet, digging out radioactive uranium,” Mr. Ariga said, standing between cedar saplings as spindly as his aging legs. “Now, 66 years later, we are exposed to radiation again.”
Mr. Ariga, who in recent years has begun telling his story to local schoolchildren, says that most Japanese are shocked to hear that their nation also tried to build an atomic bomb. “I have no doubt Japan would have used it if it succeeded,” he added.
“Maybe it is Fukushima’s unlucky mission to stand as a warning against the dangers of nuclear power,” both civilian and military, said Etsuo Hashimoto, a retiree and amateur historian who volunteers at Ishikawa’s one-room mineral museum, where rocks with printed labels collect dust on shelves.
“We were brainwashed during the war, and we were brainwashed again after the war,” Mr. Ariga said. “Maybe we will get wise the third time.”
TEPCO FUNDED NUCLEAR WEAPONS RESEARCH BEFORE!
"The emerging picture shows that nuclear-weapons development, initiated in 1954 by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and supervised by Yasuhiro Nakasone, was centered inside civilian nuclear plants, since the Self-Defense Forces were bound by strict Constitutional rules against war-making and the Defense Agency is practically under the direct supervision of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Funding came from the near-limitless budget of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which today claims financial insolvency without explanation of how its vast cash holdings disappeared. A clandestine nuclear program must be expensive, since it would include the cost of buying the silence of parliament, the bureaucracy and foreign dignitaries.
The bomb program was accelerated during the media-inflamed "North Korean crisis" of 2005-06, which led to the ascendancy of Kishi's grandson as prime minister. On taking office, Shinzo Abe repeated verbatim his patriarch's statement that nuclear weapons are defensive and permissible under the postwar "peace" Constitution.
Following the March 11 disaster, TEPCO sent a team of 250 emergency personnel into the plant, yet only 50 men were assigned to cooling the reactors. The other 200 personnel stayed out of sight, possibly to dismantle an underground plutonium-extraction facility.
No foreign nuclear engineers or Japanese journalists were ever permitted entry into the reactor structures."
CHINA AS AN EXCUSE
GIVEN THE "BAD BLOOD" BETWEEN JAPAN AND CHINA BECAUSE OF THE WAR, JAPAN MAY FEEL THREATENED ENOUGH BY NEAR-NEIGHBOR CHINA TO GO HEADLONG INTO DEVELOPING NUKES.
IT CERTAINLY APPEARS THAT ABE IS ON THAT PATH.
IF HIS OWN PEOPLE CAN'T STOP HIM, WHO CAN?
WHO WILL?
___________________________________
FURTHER READING:
IS IT A WEAPONS RACE?
Kiyoshi Takasaka, a prefectural expert on atomic power, wants the NRA to place radiation limits on rainwater immediately.
However, the NRA’s position is that there are no laws that regulate radiation-tainted rainwater and therefore it cannot set numerical limits. One industry source said doing so would require revisions to existing laws, which will take a lot of time.
“I’m worried because we don’t know how much radiation-tainted rainwater has leaked out,” said Tomomitsu Konno, a 56-year-old fisherman in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture. “Tepco should fully investigate the problem and show the results to the fishermen.”
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