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A kindAfter a year of delay and months of resentment… Finally, some Olympic sports. Few people will remember the details of Yukiko Ueno’s opening game against Michelle Cox in Japan’s softball game against Australia. Fukushima Wednesday morning. But under the witness of the chairman of the organizing committee, Seiko Hashimoto, her performance marked that the most bizarre Olympic Games in modern times is really happening.
Depending on the depth of the world’s reserves of optimism, the first action taken by the countries of the world 2020 Games, This may mark a turning point for the troubled Olympics, or more likely it will only temporarily relieve the virus cloud that is hanging over the host city of Tokyo.
However, there is a symbolic meaning JapanThe spirit of defeating Australia by 8-1 was nearly ten years before the pandemic. In a sense, Japan’s Olympic events have carried out a complete cycle at the Fukushima East Baseball Stadium, and the tragedy of the region’s proximity has inspired the propaganda of the “Resume Games”. 40 miles east of the stadium is the site of the worst nuclear accident in the world since the Chernobyl accident. On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, a class of 9.0 earthquake It triggered a huge tsunami that destroyed large tracts of land on the northeastern coast of Japan, killed more than 18,000 people, and swept entire towns.
The same waves hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Triggered the meltdown of its three reactors, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, while factory workers, firefighters and soldiers fought to cool the reactor core. Ten years later, many people are still unable or willing to return to safe communities that have been declared suitable for human habitation.
The decision to award Fukushima softball and baseball games was intended to prove to the world that a wider area has recovered from the tsunami and that the nuclear crisis has been “controlled,” as the then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the International Olympic Games. The committee’s final effort in 2013 to save Tokyo’s bid. But the recent surge of the virus in the host country centered in Tokyo means that the once convincing signs of recovery-enjoying sports together-have disappeared in Fukushima.
Until last week, only over 7,000 locals will participate in softball and baseball games in Fukushima, where they will see Japan launch an impressive defense for their Olympic gold medal in Beijing, this is the last time the sport Appeared at the Summer Olympics. However, due to Fukushima Prefecture Governor Masao Uchibori’s insistence on banning local fans from entering the stadium, the atmosphere was provided by the shouts of encouragement from the air-raid shelter, and the cicadas inhabiting the background of the stadium’s mountains fought with police helicopters hovering in decibel bets. . Any sigh of relief from Olympic officials has been stifled diplomatically.
The team lined up to play the national anthem almost silently, and a large group of Japanese reporters and officials watched from a small area of the stadium, not exposed to the hot morning sun. After Uchibori overturned the organizer’s plan to allow a limited number of spectators, hundreds of local volunteers were told that their services were no longer needed. “I want to thank the world for supporting us after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but now I have no chance,” one of them told the Nikkei Business Newspaper on the eve of the softball opener.
The local voices expelled from the stands were expressed through young peach trees planted along the stadium hall, and local children’s messages encouraged athletes to “go for gold.” At the entrance, marigolds and begonias are planted in the shape of Olympic rings.
Before the game, reporters and TV crews passed multiple security checks, and the sign at the entrance of the stadium clearly wrote the message on the opening day of the Olympics to the public: “No entry.” Sports officials led by the police and the security team , Walk along the empty road spanned by verdant rice fields, and then pass through the VIP entrance of a stadium with no spectators.
According to Kyodo News, the chairman of the Fukushima City Softball Association, Seiichi Yasuba, said: “The Olympic Games should be an opportunity to show the status quo of Fukushima. Before we decide to ban spectators from entering the stadium, we already have various plans.” “Our emotions are polarized because it is understandable considering the coronavirus situation, but at the same time, we want the Olympics to be held in front of the audience.”
A Fukushima hotel operator who asked not to be named believes the area has been exploited. “The government has used Fukushima from the beginning,” she told the Guardian, referring to the decision to start passing the Japanese torch to J-Village, a football training center that has been functioning as a logistics center for many years. Workers are trying to control and decommission the damaged nuclear power plant 12 miles away. “They said they would host the Olympics for Fukushima, but I think a lot of people here feel that this really happened. It all boils down to politics.”
Abe, a resident of Fukushima who makes traditional mustard seeds The doll said: “Now we are in a pandemic and it doesn’t feel like a’rehabilitation Olympics’ at all. The Olympics themselves are not really suitable for the Olympics.”
Fukushima has Have come a long way Because wild animals roam the streets, the atmospheric radiation there prevents residents from returning. But after softball and baseball Olympians return home, this recovery—if even possible—will continue for a long time.
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In the next few years, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant-Tokyo Electric Power-will begin to release more than 1 million tons of Polluted water Entering the Pacific Ocean, this move was opposed by local fishermen, who spent several years repairing the damaged reputation of the industry. The plant itself will take decades to decommission and cost billions of dollars.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is one of those people who insist that the softball game will help convince TV viewers around the world that life in Fukushima has returned to normal.But on the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics, coronavirus, Finally conveyed a different message: the collective trauma caused by the nuclear accident and the current global pandemic will never be eliminated by the swing of bats.
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