Secrecy throughout war and peace: structural disaster long before Fukushima

Chapter 4 further investigates institutionalized secrecy by examining the structural similarities between the Fukushima accident and a little-known yet serious accident in pre-war Japan from the perspective of structural disaster. In doing so, the chapter goes beyond widespread dichotomous narratives that make a clear-cut distinction between the pre-war social context of wartime mobilization of science and technology (resulting in nuclear bombing) and the post-war context of promoting science and technology for commercial use in peacetime (manifested in nuclear reactors for power generation). In particular, the chapter will probe the behavioral patterns of the agents involved in the accident that occurred immediately before WWII and was kept secret, with a comparative perspective of the Fukushima accident, which occurred more than 70 years later.

This chapter illustrates how both the pre-war accident and the Fukushima accident can be analyzed as structural disasters in a manner that is free from a hindsight narrative that is opportunistic and dichotomous. By focusing on the restriction of critical information under the name of military authority in the pre-war accident and under governmental authority in the Fukushima accident, this chapter reveals that the structural adaptation of heterogeneous agents was carried out in a path-dependent manner. The adaptation transformed structural integration into functional disintegration, which has had profound sociological implications for the post-Fukushima situation.

Structural similarities between the Fukushima accident and little-known pre-war accident: from the perspective of structural disaster

While the Fukushima accident itself was extremely shocking, the devastating failure to transmit critical information on the accident to affected people when the Japanese government faced unexpected and serious events after March 11, 2011, was perhaps the most shocking aspect of the accident overall. This failure to transmit critical information was a result of secrecy: secrecy to the people who were forced to evacuate from their birthplaces, who wanted to evacuate their children, who suffered from opportunity loss such as giving up on entering college, and others. It is impossible to enumerate individual instances of suffering and aggregate them into a single category, but suffice to say that critical information was restricted to only the insiders of the governmental sector. This situation is similar to the state of pre-war Japanese wartime mobilization, in which all information was controlled under the name of supreme military authority (TMM2011).

While such a comparison could be viewed as merely rhetorical, this chapter argues that once patterns of behavior of the agents involved are concerned, the connection is more tangible. The pre-war Japanese military regime was oriented toward overall mobilization for war, while the post-war regime has been prohibited from mobilization for war purposes of any kind by the country’s constitution. In this respect, there is a marked discrepancy between the regimes’ purpose; however, similarities are evident in the patterns of behavior embedded in the regimes via the details of a hidden accident that took place just before the outbreak ofWWII.

This chapter examines structural similarities in the patterns of behavior of agents involved in the Fukushima accident and those involved in the little-known but serious accident involving naval vessels that occurred immediately before WWII, with a particular focus on the subtle relationship between success and failure in the science-technology-society interface. This chapter will then contextualize the structural similarities and discuss sociological implications for affected people living in the current, post-Fukushima situation within the context of structural disaster. As such, this chapter meaningfully connects two different accidents more than 70 years apart and the social contexts in which they happened; in addition, this chapter elaborates on the sociological implications of both the similarities and differences of the two accidents.

As defined in Chapter 1, the concept of structural disaster within the science- technology-society interface provides a sociological account of the repeated occurrence of similar failures during and after extreme events (Matsumoto 2002). This chapter focuses on the interdependence of heterogeneous agents within the science-technology-society interface that give rise to institutionalized secrecy under a specific social condition. The chapter clarifies this interdependence by tracing it back to the little-known pre-war accident, which reveals an important clue to understanding the Fukushima accident from the perspective of structural disaster. To properly understand the social context of this hidden pre-war accident, it is necessary to go beyond the current social context of the post- Fukushima situation to the pre-war social context of the wartime mobilization of science and technology. Following such clarification, the current social context surrounding the Fukushima accident will be examined in relation to the little- known accident tor potential future extreme events.

To approach the structural similarities between the Fukushima accident and the little-known/hidden accident that occurred before WWII from the perspective of structural disaster, two basic points should be noted: first, we need to carefully place the specifications of six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the development trajectory of technology, which can help to clarify a dynamic aspect of structural disaster (see Table 4.1); and second, a repeated

Table 4.1 Nuclear Reactor Specifications at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Sources: TEPCO (2014).

occurrence of similar patterns of behavior throughout various different instances seems to suggest institutionalized secrecy.

There are two reasons for the first basic point of highlighting the development trajectory of technology to understand the dynamic aspect of structural disaster in regard to the Fukushima accident. First, each reactor at the plant had a long history of successful operation extending more than 30 years since its start in the 1970s; as such, there is a greater possibility of a more structural cause of the accident beyond blaming ad hoc errors. Second, as the ratios of domestic production indicate, the reactors at the power plant embody a turning point that shifted the country from licensed production to self-reliant production; a shift that may accompany the structural change of a system of production and operation. From these reasons, common characteristics could be seen throughout the system of production and operation of the plant’s reactors, and it is possible that such characteristics are related to what is called a “common-mode failure” of the science-technology-society interface.

While the above-mentioned possibility in terms of the development trajectory of technology is one thing, the statement that such a possibility triggered a structural disaster outbreak in the science-technology-society interface is quite another. Structural similarities among the development trajectory of technology hint at the possibility that both the hidden pre-war accident and the Fukushima accident can be considered structural disaster. However, when structural disaster is broken down into its elements, specified in Chapter 1, the above may present a possible yet indirect connection to the respective elements of the disaster.

The second basic point is more directly concerned with the understanding of the Fukushima accident as structural disaster, wherein a repeated occurrence of similar patterns of behavior throughout different instances seems to suggest institutionalized secrecy. The emergency situation both during and after an extreme event such as the Fukushima accident includes the expectation of confusion and delay in transmitting information; however, the degree and range of confusion and delay went beyond a reasonable expectation from an emergency situation alone, as mentioned in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3. If the details of the Fukushima accident embody structural disaster, then institutionalized secrecy could be captured at the sector level (for example, the governmental-industrial-university complex manifested in the nuclear village). This could be a noteworthy social background against which structural similarities with the little-known pre-war accident can be scrutinized, examined, and extended through the lens of structural disaster within a broader comparative perspective.

Thus, structural disaster could be examined from a broader perspective by extracting structural similarities between the two accidents in terms of the development trajectory of technology' and institutionalized inaction such as institutionalized secrecy.¹ If we can substantiate the elements of structural disaster, particularly institutionalized secrecy to understand other independent cases as structural disaster, then sociological implications from the Fukushima accident as a structural disaster can be more concretely formulated and extended to potential future extreme events. What follows is an independent substantiation of this with particular focus on institutionalized secrecy by examining the hidden accident happened long before the Fukushima accident.