It has surfaced that the government failed to keep minutes of meetings of various units it set up to cope with the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. In view of the disasters' historic significance and devastating and lingering effects, the government's failure to keep the detailed records of the meetings — which could have been accomplished by simply electronically recording the meetings — is deplorable.
The government may make outlines or summaries of those meetings by utilizing existing memos and other materials, but the lack of original minutes will make it extremely difficult not only to reconstruct what kind of judgments the government's March 11 disasters-related units made on what basis but also to learn lessons from their decision-making processes, and to leave an accurate historical record for future generations.
After NHK's initial report on Jan. 22, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which served as the secretariat of the government's task force to cope with the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, admitted the next day that it had not kept minutes of the 23 meetings held by the task force, except for lists of agendas. NISA said that since the meetings were often held without advance notices, it was difficult to keep minutes. The task force, set up by then Prime Minister Naoto Kan on March 11, made decisions on such matters as establishment of no-go zones around the nuclear power plant.