Japanese Plant Owners Refuse To Meet Cancer Community
Japanese owners of at heart of US Cancer Town refuse to meet activists.
Residents of Reserve, Louisiana aimed to present evidence to Denka that its plant’s toxic emissions are responsible for high rates of cancer in their town”
Lydia Gerard and Robert Taylor never came close to losing their composure, even when it became clear that that their 7,000-mile journey from the southern United States to Japan was about to come to nought.
Denied even the courtesy of a brief meeting – in a country fabled for its levels of civility – with representatives of a Japanese company they blame for spewing a toxic chemical into the air above their hometown, they listened patiently as uniformed guards repeatedly told them to turn around and leave – immediately.
They had walked together through the lunchtime drizzle to the gleaming high-rise housing the headquarters of Denka in central Tokyo, clinging to the hope that on this, their second trip to the Japanese capital in three months, they would be given the chance to make their case to the people best placed to end their town’s misery.
