Animals are all spiritual, and before some natural disasters occur, many animals can always perceive it in advance and show abnormal performance.
Sixty-five years ago, in the town of Minamata in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, there was a scene of more than 50,000 cats collectively jumping into the sea to commit suicide, and the people in the town felt very strange.
Cats that jump into the sea to commit suicide
A few years ago, Kumamoto Prefecture on the Japanese island of Kyushu was out of the loop for its cute cartoon character "Kumamoto Kumata," but decades ago, the place was famous around the world for the town of Minamata.
There is an inland sea on the outskirts of Minamata Bay in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, which is a place rich in fishery resources, and in the eastern part of Minamata Bay there is a small minamata town with a population of more than 40,000 people.
For generations, the people living in this area have lived on fishing, and on the abundance of fishing products, Minamata Town has developed prosperously, and the townspeople have become more and more prosperous.
Places rich in fishery resources generally have many cats, and Minamata Town is no exception, and almost every household has cats. Even many stray cats, because they can often eat meaty fish, live well.
The people of Minamata Town regard cats as lucky animals and love them very much.
In 1952, the cats in Minamata Town began to appear very unusual, like the evil in the middle. They do not eat or drink, often twitch their limbs, and from time to time they circle and roll on the ground, accompanied by a few howls of pain.
These cats are still always wobbly when they walk, which should not be manifested by extremely balanced animals.
At first, only some stray cats did this, but then it developed that many domestic cats behaved abnormally, and residents asked a veterinarian to diagnose the cat, but the veterinarian was puzzled.
This phenomenon only happened to cats at first, and people thought it was an infectious disease between cats, so they called it "cat dance disease".
This is just the beginning of a nightmare, the people of Minamata Town have witnessed many times in a year the painful cat fell to the ground and died while walking, and many cats could not bear the torture and chose to jump into the sea to commit suicide.
You know, cats are water-afraid animals, and they will choose to jump into the sea, which must be a huge pain. In just one year, more than 50,000 cats in Minamata Town committed suicide by jumping into the sea, and the carcasses of cats piled up on the seashore.
This is naturally frightening, but the residents are helpless, and they only regard it as a curse from heaven on the town. After the cats basically disappeared, the cows, pigs, dogs and other animals in the town also developed similar symptoms.
You know, the animal collective has abnormal behavior, generally indicating that disasters are coming, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, some Japanese experts came to Minamata town, want to investigate this matter, but there is no result.
Minamata disease patients
In 1956, a 5-year-old girl named Shizuko Tanaka in Minamata Town suddenly developed the same disease as "cat dance disease".
She walked shakily, fell from time to time, and then directly developed into paralysis of her hands and feet, difficulty controlling her body, unclear speech, and often made strange howls.
The family took Shizuko Tanaka to the hospital, but after repeated examinations, the doctor could not diagnose what kind of disease she had, only that the central nervous system was damaged.
Eventually, Shizuko Tanaka fell ill and went blind in both eyes, leaving doctors and family members to watch the girl die in agony.
Soon after, Shizuko Tanaka's 2-year-old sister suddenly developed the same illness as her sister, and died less than a month later, and the death was extremely tragic, which was a very heavy blow to a family.
The doctor suspected that this was a rare genetic disease, so he took the medical team to Tanaka's house to investigate, but the Tanaka family except for the two dead sisters, everyone else was very healthy, and the family members did not know what genetic diseases their family had.
However, the nightmare is yet to come. There are more than twenty households in Minamata Town that have successively developed similar symptoms, basically walking inconvenience, difficulty in speaking, the whole person looks stupid and stupid, and the hands and feet of serious people will be deformed.
The final outcome of the sick people is to die in a terrible cry, the whole town of Minamata is shrouded in the shadow of death, and the hospital is helpless.
The residents of Minamata Town think it is a strange infectious disease, and the town is completely devoid of the laughter of the past. Because of the sharp decline in population and the lack of work for the survivors, the fishery in Minamata Town has suffered a lot of blows.
In the absence of a cause, one can only name the disease Minamata.
The outbreak of Minamata disease has caused panic, and the people in Minamata Town will reject people with this disease because they are afraid of being infected.
At that time, a fisherman named Sugimoto was ill, relatives and neighbors were turning away from him, and all the animals in his family were slaughtered, and some shops were reluctant to even sell him the necessities of life.
At the same time, Minamata disease has also attracted widespread attention in Japanese society. Minamata Town itself exports a lot of seafood, but when the disease breaks out, the seafood in this area cannot be sold, and trains do not dare to stop in Minamata Town.
Hospitals in Kumamoto Prefecture and experts from all over Japan jointly investigated what the minamata disease was caused by, but the investigation has been slow to reach a definitive conclusion.
The truth surfaces
Hosokawa Kazuto, president of the Affiliated Hospital of the Japanese Nitrogen Fertilizer Corporation, found that the cats who first jumped into the sea to commit suicide often wandered by the sea, eating fish in the sea and drinking seawater.
The family of the dead girl, Shizuko Tanaka, also lived by the sea, often fishing and eating in the sea. So, could the sudden Minamata disease be related to the sea water around Minamata Town?
After all, the chemical plants of Japan's nitrogen fertilizer companies often discharge wastewater exceeding metal standards into small rivers at will, and although there has been no serious situation before, who can guarantee that disasters are not cumulative?
Hosokawa performed a more brutal experiment in which he gave the cats the wastewater discharged from the factory to drink, and three months later, the cats walked and shook their limbs, just like before.
At this time, a friend told him that the symptoms of Minamata disease were very similar to mercury poisoning, but they had never had this disease before, so the hospital could not find out at all.
At this point, Hosokawa is 100% sure that the source of Minamata disease is contaminated seawater.
Hosokawa immediately reported the situation to his superiors, but the superiors told him not to pursue it any further, and he lost his job soon after.
After all, paper can't contain fire. The Japanese team believes that Minamata disease only occurs in Minamata Town, shows no signs of spreading outwards, and does not look like an infectious disease.
After surveying the surrounding environment of Minamata Town, they sampled and analyzed the water in Minamata Bay and found that the mercury content of all seafood in Minamata Bay was seriously exceeded, which caused the town to suffer from this disaster.
The source points to a nitrogen fertilizer company in Minamata Bay, Japan. The factory was built in 1925 and is owned by a company called Nippon Chiso Corporation.
Founded in 1906, the company produced fertilizer and gunpowder during World War I and slowly grew to become Japan's largest chemical company.
In the 1920s, Chiso Co., Ltd. wanted to open a new branch in Japan, and Minamata Town, a small fishing village, wanted to seize this opportunity to make a fortune, so it stood out in the bidding.
In this way, the nitrogen fertilizer company under Zhisuo rose up in Minamata Bay.
In 1932, nitrogen fertilizer companies began producing ethanol, and that was the beginning of all nightmares.
In order to reduce production costs, nitrogen fertilizer companies chose mercury with greater toxicity as a catalyst.
You know, mercury is mercury, on weekdays accidentally broke a thermometer, mercury volatilization in the air, will cause certain damage to the body, it can be seen how much damage this catalyst is to the human body.
However, this company has not yet treated the wastewater, but because of the convenience, it is directly discharged into Minamata Bay, causing a lot of pollution.
After a large amount of mercury material enters the sea, it quickly precipitates and enters the stomach of the fish and shrimp. When eaten by aquatic organisms, mercury is converted into methylmercury, a neurotoxic environmental pollutant that requires only a little bit to kill people.
If methylmercury enters the human body through fish and shrimp, it will randomly invade the brain and other parts of the body, causing irreversible damage to the nervous system.
The people of Minamata Town eat seafood in Minamata Bay every day, as if they were eating poison, which explains why the cats that eat fish for a living are the first victims.
After all, the fish and shrimp that people eat have been cooked, so people have to be slower to get sick.
After autopsying the minamata disease victims, it was found that the mercury content in their various organs was up to ninety-nine times the amount of mercury that the normal human body could withstand, and even the skin, nails and hair had mercury in it.
Minamata disease is regarded as one of the eight major public hazards in today's society, and ordinary people can hardly imagine how terrible it will be in the future for people who are unfortunate enough to suffer from this disease.
Even if the patient with mild illness is not life-threatening, the lifelong walk will be shaky, intellectually impaired, and it is difficult to take care of himself, and the severe patient will bear great pain and then wait for death in pain.
In the welfare home set up by the government to treat patients with mild minamata disease, there are still many elderly patients, who have been greatly deficient in intelligence and action for many years, and have always needed the care of social workers.
Secondly, Minamata disease has a strong hereditary nature, if a pregnant woman suffers from Minamata disease, then the child she gives birth to must also be a minamata disease patient.
Children born with Minamata disease will also suffer from Minamata disease, but to a lesser extent.
Decades ago, there was no research on Minamata disease, so some pregnant women insisted on giving birth to children after suffering from the disease, and the hereditary nature of the disease will pass on the misfortune, and now some young people are also victims of Minamata disease.
At that time, the town of Minamata had a population of only 40,000, but more than 10,000 people suffered from the terrible incurable disease of Minamata disease. The people of Minamata Town can no longer make a living from fishing, and this once promised land has become synonymous with disaster.
A tough road to rights protection
Minamata disease has brought endless suffering to many families, and the culprit is a large company that ignores the consequences and only seeks profit. The victims just want to get justice, but the road to defending their rights is extremely difficult.
After the incident, the victim's family demanded that Zhisuo compensate for medical expenses and other losses, but the company's attitude was very indifferent, and it refused to respond, did not stop discharging sewage into the sea, and even expanded the production line of acetaldehyde.
Zhisuo responded: "What causes people to suffer from Minamata disease is methylmercury, and our factory only uses metal mercury, so it has nothing to do with us." ”
Naturally, the public will not listen to the lies of Zhisuo, the protests and demonstrations have never been interrupted, and Zhisuo has privately given a very low amount of compensation under pressure.
Seeing that the victims did not buy it, they hired thugs to prevent some volunteers from investigating the matter in depth, hoping to use violent means to suppress the matter.
What made people even more chilling was the inaction of the Japanese government at that time.
After World War II, the Japanese economy was in a downturn for a time, the chemical industry is one of the pillar industries of its economy, and as a leading enterprise in the chemical industry, Zhisuo Company naturally bears the responsibility of revitalizing the Japanese economy.
Therefore, the Japanese government does not want to punish the company and let its economy suffer.
When the Food Hygiene Investigation Committee of Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare reported this matter, it directly avoided talking about the source of the disease, and the people cried completely. Under the protection of the government, Zhisuo's nitrogen fertilizer company has been standing in Minamata Bay.
In 1965, mercury poisoning also occurred in Niigata Prefecture on honshu Island, Japan, which was investigated to be related to the discharge of mercury-containing wastewater from a local electrical plant.
The victim sued the factory and won, giving the victims in Minamata the town a glimmer of hope.
Four years later, more than 100 Minamata disease patients and their families filed a public nuisance lawsuit against Chiso.
After the causal relationship was ascertained, Zhisuo was identified as the main body responsible for the accident, and the person in charge was punished, but the trial process lasted for four years, and only some patients received compensation, but this compensation was still far below the amount they proposed.
In 1971, news photographer Eugene Smith came to Minamata town, and for three years, he used a video camera to record the appearance of Minamata patients and their lives.
Eugene made these photographs public to let the world know about Japan's evils. When Chiso found out, he hired someone to beat Eugene, and he was nearly blinded in his right eye.
For decades, Minamata patients and their families have been on the road to defending their rights, the indifference of large enterprises, the avoidance of the government, no one knows how difficult this road they have taken.
It wasn't until 2004 that they received a belated apology and reasonable compensation from Chiso and the Japanese government, but by this time, many of the patients had passed away.
The Minamata incident in Japan reflects the reality that many countries in Order to develop industry during World War II did not hesitate to destroy the environment.
To this day, Japan still wants to risk the world by dumping nuclear wastewater containing a large amount of dangerous substances into the Pacific Ocean, claiming that there is no harm in this regard.
But everyone knows that this threatens the environment and life of the entire world.
If Japan insists on going its own way, it will affect the lives of all people in the world, and when the time comes, what will Japan do to compensate? And when will the Japanese learn to reflect?
Resources
[1] People's Daily, "The impact of Minamata disease is still there, and the Japanese government should not forget the lessons of history"
[2] Guangming Network, "Who is the culprit of this strange disease that was popular 60 years ago?" 》
[3] Learning Times, Mercury Poisoning: The Minamata Disease Incident That Lasted For Half a Century