By ROGER PULVERS

Special to The Japan Times
The Japan Times Online, Oct. 23, 2011

Every year when I was a child, my parents would take my brother and me from our Los Angeles home to Las Vegas on vacation. Back then in the 1950s, Vegas was still a family-oriented holiday destination. Dad would drop a few bucks at the crap table while the rest of us basked in the sun.

I vividly recall, one late afternoon, looking out over the desert that stretched endlessly from our hotel and pointing to a rather eerie glow over the horizon.
„That’s from the atom-bomb testing they do,“ Dad explained.
„But isn’t that dangerous, Dad?“
„Do you think they would do it if it was dangerous?“
That was the average person’s attitude at the time toward nuclear testing in the atmosphere: „They“ wouldn’t do it if it caused harm.
That incident from my childhood sprang to mind when the reactors at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant began to spew radioactive materials into the environment. The Japanese public had the wool pulled well over their eyes, just as my father had. 

They had made the fatal mistake of believing that the government officials and company executives carrying out nuclear tests and establishing nuclear power facilities had the interests of their countries and their citizens at heart; while, in fact, what motivated both was the lust for power and an all-consuming greed.