"Mom’s anti-nuclear stance inspires film"
January 27, 2015 As reported by Kyodo and posted at Japan Times, the daughter of a long-time anti-nuclear activist who passed on in 1996 has been moved by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and inspired by her mother's lead, to make a documentary film about the ravages of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in Japan and around the world.
Shizuko Sakata was "an ordinary person living in the quiet city of Suzaka, Nagano Prefecture," but moved to warn her fellow townspeople about nuclear dangers, after learning of radioactive pollution from her daughter Yuko, who had moved to the English Channel Islands, immediately downstream from the French radioactive waste reprocessing facility at La Hague.
Shizuko Sakata began publishing her own newsletter on nuclear matters in 1977, and handed them out to passersby in Suzaka, asking them "Could you listen to me?" Her many newsletters were collected into a book, entitled Please Listen.
Masako Sakata, Shizuko's daughter and Yuko's sister, is an environmental documentary filmmaker. She has traveled the world to nuclear hot spots, such as the Marshall Islands where the U.S. tested hydrogen bombs, and Kazakhstan, where the U.S.S.R. tested nuclear weapons. She has also traveled to Fukushima a number of times, carrying her mother's old radiation monitor with her.
Her film is entitled "Journey Without End," and will be available in Japanese and English versions.