I am just going to get a a quick diary up on this because I have not seen it reported on anywhere else.
From Aljazeera:
Fifty-one crew members of the USS Ronald Reagan say they are suffering from a variety of cancers as a direct result of their involvement in Operation Tomodachi, a U.S. rescue mission in Fukushima after the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The affected sailors are suing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), alleging that the utility mishandled the crisis and did not adequately warn the crew of the risk of participating in the earthquake relief efforts.
There is a conspicuous media blackout on news about Fukushima and what is going on there, and solutions to the slow motion disaster that is taking place in Japan are not being discussed anywhere.
It continues:
Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors, says the radiation the USS Ronald Reagan crew was exposed to extended beyond the tasks of Operation Tomodachi. Deployed ships desalinate their own water, so crew members were unknowingly drinking, cooking with, and bathing in contaminated water due to the ship's close proximity to the disaster site, according to Bonner. The USS Reagan was ultimately informed of the contamination after a month of living approximately 10 miles offshore from the affected region.
This does not bode well. How do we break through to the truth?
Discuss...
EDIT: I had originally linked to an unreliable and toxic source, so I've edited the diary to remove those links. But there does seem to be something to this story, so I will leave the diary up.
Thanks to those commenters for pointing out the problems with the original source.
Update: The lawsuit against TEPCO was dismissed in November, but the case will be refiled. (h/t to campionrules in the comments)
A San Diego federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that U.S. sailors were exposed to dangerous radiation during the humanitarian response to the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
But Judge Janis L. Sammartino left the door open for a follow-on lawsuit, and the attorney representing several sailors from the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan said he intends to refile.
The judge dismissed the case Nov. 26 on jurisdictional grounds, saying it was beyond her authority to determine whether the Japanese government had perpetrated a fraud on its American counterpart.
Update2: Thanks for the Reclist, my first time there. Glad to see that this important story is getting some exposure..
