Far East Base Closure Plans - Perhaps Fukushima is to Blame?

Marines Headed for Austraila

By 2003 the US was considering moving most of the 20,000 Marines on Okinawa to new bases that would be established in Australia; increasing the presence of US troops in Singapore and Malaysia; and seeking agreements to base Navy ships in Vietnamese waters and ground troops in the Philippines. For the Marines based on Okinawa, most for months without their families, the US is considering a major shift. Under plans on the table, all but about 5,000 of the Marines would move, possibly to Australia.

[link to www.globalsecurity.org]

A U.S. Marine Base for Australia Irritates China (Yea, now our missles are within striking distance)

Mr. Obama described the deployment as responding to the wishes of democratic allies in the region, from Japan to India. Some allies have expressed concerns that the United States, facing war fatigue and a slackened economy, will cede its leadership role to China. (What a joke)

[link to www.nytimes.com]

US-Japan May Spread Marines Across Pacific

The plan pulls together an agreement made with Australia last year to rotate thousands of Marines through that country and an acknowledgement in February that the U.S. and Japan will relocate 4,700 Okinawa Marines to Guam to create the most comprehensive realignment of the service in the Pacific since World War II.

[link to www.military.com]

Data on radiation, toxin exposure following quake yet to be released

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — A year after hundreds of U.S. troops ventured into Japan’s damaged eastern regions to bring aid to earthquake and tsunami survivors, the levels of radiation and other toxins detected in and around the places they worked has yet to be released.

Fears of a massive release of radiation from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant gripped Japan in the days following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. In an effort to properly gauge whether U.S. troops and their families living in Japan were being exposed to high levels of radiation, the U.S. military began taking readings at bases all over Japan.
When troops headed north to render aid in the disaster zone they wore dosimeters that recorded the total amount of radiation to which they were being exposed.

Environmental assessment teams took hundreds of samples of soil, air and water at disaster-zone work sites, then sent the samples to the U.S. and tested for radiation and a range of toxins, including asbestos, that are known to harm people’s health.

A year after the disaster, the Department of Defense has not released the data, although officials have stated that troops were not exposed to “unsafe” levels of toxins or radiation.

...

U.S. Pacific Command’s top surgeon, Rear Adm. Michael H. Mittelman, told U.S. personnel in Japan in July that they had potentially been exposed to something that was not normal.

[link to www.stripes.com]

A year after tsunami, a cloud of distrust hangs over Japan

Even in Tokyo, more than 200 miles from the northeastern region devastated by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that caused radiation to spew from the nuclear plant, residents fear that local schoolyards are laced with dangerous isotopes.Citizen collectives wander streets with dosimeters to make sure their neighborhoods remain radiation-free, conducting spot checks on fish and produce.

The landscape of northeastern Japan remains littered with 25 million tons of clothing, computers, stoves and car parts, shoved aside into massive unsightly mountains.

In light of the disaster, the government has scrapped plans to build 20 more reactors by 2030. Only two of the nation's 54 nuclear plants are operating. Though the government once pledged to increase the supply of energy from nuclear power from 30 percent to 50 percent, many in Japan are pushing to reduce that figure to as close to zero as possible, said Daniel Aldrich, a Purdue University political science professor who specializes in Japan's nuclear policy.


[link to www.stripes.com]

Disposal sites in Japan refuse to accept 140,000 tons of radioactive waste

TOKYO -- At least 140,000 tons of sewage sludge, ash and soil contaminated with radioactive materials has yet to be disposed of in Tokyo and six prefectures in the Kanto region of Japan following the crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a survey shows.


In Nasu and Nasu-Shiobara in Tochigi Prefecture, where decontamination work was carried out at primary and middle schools, about 11,800 tons of soil has been left in school compounds.

[link to www.stripes.com]

U.S. bases sit atop some of Japan's biggest earthquake fault lines

More propaganda for U.S. military getting the hell out of Japan.

However, the most dangerous scenario at Yokosuka (United States Navy base, in Yokosuka, Japan. Its mission is to maintain and operate base facilities for the logistic, recreational, administrative support and service of the U.S. Naval Forces Japan, U.S. 7th Fleet and other operating forces assigned in the Western Pacific. CFAY is the largest strategically important U.S. Naval installation in the western Pacific.) is a large earthquake east of Tokyo, he said, which could cause a huge tsunami.

Tokyo Bay, which is wide, is not likely to see a big tsunami, Hirata said. But Yokosuka, which is close to a narrow channel, could be in danger. After the 1923 Kanto earthquake, which sparked fires that killed 100,000, Yokosuka was hit by a 3.4-meter-high tsunami, he said.

“We expect a 5-meter-high tsunami in Yokosuka [in the event of a large off-shore earthquake],” he said. “But there is a possibility that it could be bigger than that. This is what we learned from the Tohoku earthquake [in March]. The tsunamis were much higher than what seismologists estimated.”

Jeff Lindaman, Yokosuka’s emergency management officer, said last year that the base had little in the way of sea walls to protect it from a tsunami.

In the event of a large offshore earthquake, officials at Yokosuka may have only minutes to act, said Lindaman, who monitors the Internet for earthquake and tsunami warnings posted on Japanese websites. If an earthquake strikes, officials will broadcast on AFN television and radio and send emergency services to warn people on the base to move to higher ground.

[link to www.stripes.com]

Thread: Remember Admiral Willard's Interrview of April 2011 on Fukushima (Video)

Watch the Commander of the Pacific Command, April 2011. Very telling.