LOS ANGELES--Fidel Castro said he wants to visit Fukushima next year.
LOS ANGELES--Fidel Castro said he wants to visit Fukushima next year."Nuclear plants should not be built, because they are very dangerous objects,” the 85-year-old former Cuban president said at the Global Hibakusha Forum on March 1 in Havana.“An erratic human manipulation can trigger a serious accident,” he said. “I want to assist Japan because situations where children suffer should be avoided by all means."When Japanese participants at the forum called on Castro to lead the global movement against nuclear power and to visit Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban revolutionary said he hopes to do so next year.The forum was organized in the Cuban capital by Peace Boat, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to international exchanges, during its Global Peace Voyage.About 750 members of the Japanese delegation and hundreds of Cubans attended the event.During the forum, Castro met with a Fukushima University researcher helping victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and 10 “hibakusha” survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Fuminori Tanba, an associate professor of social welfare at the disaster reconstruction institute of Fukushima University, also talked with Castro about the areas affected by the March 11 disaster.Castro is known for his strong interest in nuclear issues. He visited the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima in 2003.