A much too common interpretation of the
Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters is that health impacts were minimal, and that
the victims received humane treatment and compensation for their losses: no
harm, no foul. The nuclear industry gets an all-clear to carry on. This view is without empathy for the sociological impacts of such
catastrophes. As Robert Jacobs puts it so succinctly, “Radiation makes people invisible.”
His essay bearing this title is not about comic book characters given magic
powers by radiation. It’s about the way that radiation victims (hibakusha) become invisible to the
institutions that harmed them and are marginalized in societies they once
belonged to. Radiation may cause real health effects or death, but in addition
the victims also suffer loss of homes, community, identity and traditional
knowledge. They suffer discrimination in various forms. They become medical
subjects rather than patients. That is, it might be better to say they become
medical objects. Medical tests are often conducted only to collect government data
rather than to benefit the patient. Finally, they suffer immeasurable grief and
anxiety and are told in the end that if they still have concerns, they must be
suffering from “radiophobia,” even though no such term is recognized in the
field of psychology to describe people who have experienced radiological
disasters.
The official conclusions of these
tragedies usually look only at cancer deaths, or the survivors of thyroidectomies
who can look forward to “full and productive” lives on hormone therapy. Other
health effects are ignored, and the social and psychological effects are brushed
aside. One of the reasons for this neglect could be that the people responsible
for it come from a rootless culture that extolls only an imagined future and material
progress (either a capitalist or a socialist utopia), and prides itself on the “mobility
of the workforce,” a term which really means a people set totally adrift. It is
difficult for such people to understand those who have attachment to land,
communities and traditions; to understand why, when a community is destroyed,
some people are not satisfied with a minimal compensation package and being
told to start over somewhere else.
The Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich
collected Chernobyl survivor testimonies during the 1990s and published them in
1997. The English translation of Voices
from Chernobyl appeared in 2006 (reviewed previously here).
The following testimony excerpted from this book was given by a man who had no
knowledge of a sociological theory that describes how “radiation makes you
invisible,” but his story gives a perfect illustration of Robert Jacobs’
formula for the outcome of radiological disasters. The notes in parentheses
refer to examples in the testimony:
1. Loss of health or death (black
spots on skin, death of daughter)
2. Loss of homes and community (evacuation
from Pripyat)
3.
Loss of identity (employed to
unemployed, normal person to “one of them”)
4.
Loss of culture and traditions (the
tradition of keeping the family door, placing the deceased upon it)
5. Discrimination in housing, employment
and marriage (being labelled “one of them”)
6.
Becoming medical subjects or rather
objects of study (the test results are “not for you”)
7.
Grief and anxiety (death of daughter)
8.
Blaming the victim (“My daughter died
from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget about it.”)
I
hope the author and publisher will regard this long citation as fair use. I am
assuming they are not terribly concerned with making money off these tales of
suffering that belong to the people who experienced them. Like Mr. Kalugin, the
man who tells his story here, I want to bear witness also--to just having heard
his story.
from Voices from Chernobyl
by Svetlana Alexievich (2006), pages 31-33
MONOLOGUE ABOUT A WHOLE LIFE WRITTEN DOWN ON DOORS
I want to bear witness ...
It happened ten years ago, and it
happens to me again every day.
We lived in the town of Pripyat. In
that town.
I’m not a writer. I won’t be able to
describe it. My mind is not enough to understand it. And neither is my
university degree. There you are: a normal person. A little person. You’re just
like everyone else-you go to work, you return from work. You get an average
salary. Once a year you go on vacation. You’re a normal person! And then one
day you’re turned into a Chernobyl person, an animal that everyone’s interested
in, and that no one knows anything about. You want to be like everyone else,
and now you can’t. People look at you differently. They ask you: Was it scary?
How did the station burn? What did you see? And, you know, can you have
children? Did your wife leave you? At first we were all turned into animals.
The very word “Chernobyl,” is like a signal. Everyone turns their head to look.
He’s from there!
That’s how it was in the beginning. We
didn’t just lose a town, we lost our whole lives. We left on the third day. The
reactor was on fire. I remember one of my friends saying, “It smells of
reactor.” It was an indescribable smell. But the papers were already writing
about that. They turned Chernobyl into a house of horrors, although actually
they just turned it into a cartoon. I’m only going to tell about what’s really
mine. My own truth.
It was like this: They announced over
the radio that you couldn’t take your cats. So we put her in the suitcase. But
she didn’t want to go, she climbed out. Scratched everyone. You can’t take your
belongings! All right, I won’t take all my belongings, I’ll take just one
belonging. Just one! I need to take my door off the apartment and take it with
me. I can’t leave the door. I’ll cover the entrance with some boards. Our door--it’s
our talisman, it’s a family relic. My father lay on this door. I don’t know
whose tradition this is, it’s not like that everywhere, but my mother told me
that the deceased must be placed on the door of his home. He lies there until
they bring the coffin. I sat by my father all night, he lay on this door. The
house was open. All night. And this door has little etch-marks on it. That’s me
growing up. It’s marked there: first grade, second grade. Seventh. Before the
army. And next to that: how my son grew. And my daughter. My whole life is written
down on this door. How am I supposed to leave it?
I asked my neighbor, he had a car: “Help
me.” He gestured toward his head, like, You’re not quite right, are you? But I
took it with me, that door. At night. On a motorcycle. Through the woods. It
was two years later, when our apartment had already been looted and emptied.
The police were chasing me. “We’ll shoot! We’ll shoot!” They thought I was a
thief. That’s how I stole the door from my own home.
I took my daughter and my wife to the
hospital. They had black spots all over their bodies. These spots would appear,
then disappear. About the size of a five-kopek coin. But nothing hurt. They did
some tests on them. I asked for the results. “It’s not for you,” they said. I
said, “Then who’s it for?”
Back then everyone was saying: “We’re
going to die, we’re going to die. By the year 2000, there won’t be any
Belarussians left.” My daughter was six years old. I’m putting her to bed, and she
whispers in my ear: “Daddy, I want to live, I’m still little.” And I had
thought she didn’t understand anything.
Can you picture seven little girls
shaved bald in one room? There were seven of them in the hospital room ... But
enough! That’s it! When I talk about it, I have this feeling, my heart tells me,
“you’re betraying them.” Because I need to describe it like I’m a stranger. My
wife came home from the hospital. She couldn’t take it. “It’d be better for her
to die than to suffer like this. Or for me to die, so that I don’t have to
watch anymore.” No, enough! That’s it! I’m not in any condition. No.
We put her on the door ... on the door
that my father lay on. Until they brought a little coffin. It was small, like
the box for a large doll.
I want to bear witness: my daughter died
from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget about it.
Nikolai
Kalugin, father
from Voices from Chernobyl
by Svetlana Alexievich (2006), pages 31-33
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