https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...#ixzz1Guz7xDit
Excerpt
Hours after the tsunami struck, Katsunobu Sakurai told me, he had sought advice from the government on whether to evacuate the 71,000 people in his city, which is just 12 miles downwind of the Fukushima nuclear plant.
At first ministerial officials simply ignored his calls. When he did manage to speak to them, they assured him there was no cause for concern; a message he accepted and dutifully relayed.
He had toed the line because that is what Japan's civic leaders invariably do. But yesterday, far too late, the mayor of Minamisoma finally realised that he had been deceived, at best, and perhaps even lied to. 'I was ignored and then badly misled, and as a result the people were abandoned here to die. But I was the one who told them it was safe to stay, and now I have decided that I must be the last person to leave this city. I have been in my office since last Friday, and I won't go until the last person has left safely.'
Even as foreign embassies urged their subjects to flee the country and international experts warned that Japan faces the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Tokyo cabinet blithely played down the crisis.
Yesterday, as the mayor finally woke up to the truth of his citizens' predicament and urged them to leave, they began abandoning the city by any available means.
By last night more than half the population had packed as much as they could carry and fled, jostling for places on buses sent not by the shamefaced government, of course, but by nearby local authorities.
'If anything good can come of this terrible time for Japan, it might be that people in big cities question their lifestyle, which relies so much on the electric power provided by nuclear plants in little places such as ours,' he said.
'I hope that it prompts the government to rethink its reliance on nuclear energy, too.'
And when, God willing, Japan emerges from these dark days, perhaps the government will learn that it pays to tell the truth.
[Note: And do you think our gov't is really telling the truth about radiation here in the W. Coast?]