BRATTLEBORO — On Wednesday evening, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m., at the Latchis-4 Theatre on Main Street, there will be a presentation by award-winning documentary filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka, who will discuss the issue of nuclear power in Japan and events there in the aftermath of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster. She will also present selections from several of her films that address the dangers of nuclear power and weapons.
Kamanaka's presentation will be accompanied by an informational exhibit covering the first six months since the catastrophic nuclear accident in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture. This exhibit has been prepared by Keiko Kokubun, who is originally from Japan and now a resident of Salisbury. It is entitled “The News that Is Not in the News” and highlights the suffering and struggles of the people of Fukushima.
Later the same week, on Sunday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., at the New England Youth Theatre on Flat Street, Kamanaka's latest documentary film, “Ashes to Honey” (2010) will be shown in its entirety.
In this film, Kamanaka chronicles the lives of people in Iwaijima, a small island community in southern Japan, where the majority of the population has been protesting, for the past 30 years, the government's plan to build nuclear reactors across the bay. She also takes us to Sweden to show how the collective determination of citizens can lead to a way out of reliance on fossil fuel and nuclear power. Information on the film can be found at http://888earth.net.
Kamanaka first witnessed the terrible effects of radiation when she went to Iraq in 1998. Many Iraqi children were dying from leukemia after the 1990-91 Gulf War. The suspected cause was radiation exposure from depleted uranium warheads used during the war.
Her encounters with radiation-sickened Iraqi children led her to explore fundamental nuclear issues and their effects on humanity - the decades-long suffering of Hiroshima atomic bomb victims from internal radiation exposure; the nuclear contamination at the Hanford nuclear facilities on the Columbia River in Washington State in the 1980s; and the small northern Japanese village of Rokkasho, fiercely divided over the construction of a nuclear recycling facility.
Kamanaka's films have fostered a new generation of grassroots movements against nuclear power in Japan. Since the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors this year, she has been traveling throughout Japan and abroad to talk with people who are inspired by her work.
Both events are sponsored by the Safe & Green Campaign, Citizens Awareness Network, Upper Valley Sierra Club, Chelsea Green Publishing and The Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Society of Northampton, Mass.