"SHANE SMITH:" "This week on "VICE,"" "the disaster that the Japanese government is hiding in Fukushima." "MAN:" "TEPCO's own engineers are clueless." "They've sent in cameras to try to locate where the molten uranium is, and they simply don't know." "Who knows how much of it is washing into the ocean?" "SMITH:" "And then, why some of our returning war heroes are self-medicating their PTSD." "MAN:" "I mean, I've tried every fucking antidepressant known to fucking man, 7 different psych. meds." "It just doesn't seem to help." "Thing that I found relief in is dope." "Move that camera, eh?" "[Crowd chants]" "[Shouts]" "*" "[Cheering]" "[Chanting]" "MAN:" "Ladies and gentlemen..." "[Ticking]" "That doesn't sound good." "We've just been told to leave by TEPCO." "What's the drug of choice?" "That's crack." " Crack?" "How long will it last?" "With us, like 10 minutes." "*" "In 2011, the Tohoku earthquake created a tsunami so large that when it struck Japan, it killed approximately 16,000 people, destroyed 130,000 buildings, and caused an estimated $210 billion worth of damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters" "in world history." "On top of that, when the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was hit by the tsunami, it began releasing the largest amount of radioactive materials into the environment since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986." "Now, almost 3 years later, there are continuing and serious concerns over the levels of both the initial and ongoing radiation contamination not only in Japan proper, but also what's leaking into the Pacific Ocean." "Now, information regarding this nuclear accident has been very tightly controlled by the Japanese government." "So we sent Vikram Gandhi to ground zero of this environmental disaster to see firsthand what's really happening in Fukushima." "*" "[Geiger counter ticking]" "Ah, that's the Daiichi Plant." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "More than 160,000 residents were evacuated from the contaminated towns which surround Fukushima." "Many of them had little to no idea the full extent of the disaster." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "We were able to get special access to the exclusion zone by tagging along with the Yamada family as they visited the home they abandoned 3 years ago." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The Japanese government has declared most of these ghost towns unlivable, but what is more disturbing is what they are not telling us." "[Explosion]" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "In the days following the tsunami, a series of explosions ripped through 3 of the Fukushima reactors." "Despite global concern of a potential nuclear catastrophe, the Japanese government downplayed the severity of the situation." "As a member of the Japanese House of Representatives at the time of the disaster, Hiroshi Kawauchi witnessed firsthand the inadequacy of the government response." "GANDHI, Do you think the government is lying about the extent to which the damage has been created by this accident?" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Wondering how radiation levels 168 times worse than Hiroshima could ever be perceived as OK, we decided to investigate further." "*" "GANDHI:" "In this school, there's an NGO that's going around testing people for thyroid cancer." "Thyroid cancer is one of those diseases that's caused by radiation." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Inside, we met with Dr. Masamichi Nishio, who was in the midst of testing local children." "GANDHI:" "Have you been told that there should be warnings because you're gonna have a child?" "NISHIO:" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The monitoring posts that he's referring to are government-funded Geiger counters, but the problem is that many locals believe that the government has only cleaned up in the area immediately around them." "Mrs. Kayoko Hashimoto has made it her personal mission to uncover the truth." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The whole concept of these stationary Geiger counters becomes suspect when only a few feet away, the readings are twice as high, and when you move even further away, those government monitors start feeling completely irrelevant." "Over here by the edge of the school, we're gonna leave it there for a second." "Oh, shit." "So the reading is now 3.5." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "That level is 20 times higher than the monitoring post around the corner on a playground at an elementary school, but why does this all matter?" "To get a better understanding of the long-term effects of radioactive contamination in our global ecosystem, we went to Okinawa to meet Dr. Joji Otaki, a researcher at the University of Ryukyus who has focused his research on an unlikely subject." "The lifespan of butterflies is only about one month." "So the effects of radiation in contaminated food over the course of multiple generations can be studied in a short span of time." "What happened?" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Dr. Otaki's experiments have shown the truly horrifying effects contaminated food can have on living organisms." "GANDHI:" "So this is a normal butterfly that has eaten healthy food." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Next up was a butterfly that ate contaminated food at the larvae stage." "GANDHI:" "Doesn't really even look like a butterfly anymore." "And then the third generation?" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The evidence that contaminated food has increasingly worse effects over the course of generations is especially scary since one of Fukushima's primary industries is agriculture." "49 miles from the Fukushima Plant is the farm of Kazuya Tarukawa, tended by his family for 8 generations." "In the days after the tsunami, the government allowed them to continue to sell their produce as usual." "The current state-mandated limit for radiation in produce is 100 becquerels per kilogram." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Finding out that he had been selling highly contaminated produce for over two weeks, his father was consumed with guilt." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "In the 3 years since the accident," "Tarukawa's farm has been cleared to sell crops once again." "This was accomplished through an official government decontamination process." "They come in, scrape up the top layer of soil, load it into trash bags, and haul it away, and as of now, they have no idea where to permanently store the 250,000 tons of contaminated soil" "that sit stacked around Fukushima, and, as explained to us by physicist Michio Kaku, this is only the beginning of Fukushima's long-term problem." "KAKU:" "Realize that we're 50 years into the nuclear age, and we still don't know where to put the nuclear waste." "We're literally making it up as we go along." "Why should the world be worried about that?" "In a normal nuclear power plant and even in your car radiator, there is a loop, a loop that circulates cooling water, keeping the engine of your car cool." "At that reactor in March, we had a tsunami, a wall of water 40 feet tall which knocked out the cooling system." "Without the cooling system, the core begins to crumble, melt, and we have the danger of explosions." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The disaster caused irreparable damage to the reactors' cooling system, which led to a triple meltdown." "Even now, the system is not functioning normally." "A few hundred tons of groundwater are washing underneath the plant every day and being exposed to radiation." "That water must be removed and placed into storage tanks." "400 tons of clean water every day, and then it flushes out as 400 tons of radioactive water, and, as a consequence, they are piling up tank after tank of contaminated water." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Since the explosion, they've hastily built and filled over a thousand tanks, which are now surrounding the plant and holding over 90 million gallons of radioactive water." "GANDHI:" "So what are they doing with it?" "They're just..." " Nothing." "No one knows what to do with it at the present time." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Not only do hundreds of tons of radioactive water go into these tanks every single day, but to make it even worse, the tanks themselves are leaking." "KAKU: 300 tons worth of radioactive water leaked right into the ground, even after weeks of denying that any such leak had taken place." "Who knows how much of it is washing into the ocean?" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "We went to TEPCO's headquarters to try and get a direct answer on their lack of transparency, but they wouldn't even let us in the building." "The head of PR met us on the front steps, flanked by handlers." "GANDHI:" "It took TEPCO two years to admit that 300 tons of contaminated water were going into the Pacific Ocean." "So why would people in the international community or Japan believe TEPCO now?" "MAN:" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "TEPCO's representatives wouldn't talk to us, but we were able to track down one of their employees who, as long as his image was concealed, was willing to tell us what he believes is the real extent of the damage." "GANDHI:" "Is TEPCO trying to cover up how bad the water leakage is?" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Hearing more about the terrible conditions in the facility, we needed to see it for ourselves." "After numerous attempts to gain access to the Daiichi facility, we were finally granted permission, but only if we were accompanied by an appointed government official." "GANDHI:" "We are driving right now with Mr. Kino, who is from the Ministry of Economic Trade and Industry." "He's on a mission to show everyone that there's nothing to be worried about." "[Ticking]" "That doesn't sound good." "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Despite the high radiation levels and the government mandate that all visitors within the exclusion zone need to wear protective suits," "Mr. Kino refused to wear any protective gear at all, explaining he wanted to show our cameras and the world that the Fukushima area was safe." "These guys are wearing suits." "These are TEPCO employees?" "We've just been told to leave by TEPCO, that we're not supposed to be here," "So we're going to get out of here right now." "Mr. Kino, why does TEPCO not want us to be here?" "*" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "Clearly, there's more going on here than TEPCO or the government is willing to admit." "Add this to the fact that the Japanese government has just passed a law that could impose a 10-year prison sentence on those who leak state secrets, a law that journalists are concerned could be used to silence Fukushima whistleblowers," "and the future of Japan begins to look even more bleak." "KAWAUCHI:" "GANDHI, VOICE-OVER:" "The government trying to silence people cannot change the dark reality of radiation that may only rear its head in generations to come." "KAKU:" "Because of the cover-ups, what could have been a minor nuclear accident became one of the greatest nuclear disasters of all time." "KAWAUCHI:" "On April 2 of this year, Specialist Ivan Lopez went on a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 3 and injuring 16." "At the time of the shooting, he was undergoing evaluation and treatment for mental issues often attributed to PTSD." "Throughout history, soldiers have struggled with the aftereffects of war." "During the Civil War, we called it "soldier's heart."" "After World War I, it was changed to "shell shock,"" "and then, World War II, "battle fatigue."" "Now we have soldiers coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from a condition called posttraumatic stress disorder." "It's estimated that over a quarter of a million vets have sought treatment for PTSD, and 22 veterans a day take their own life." "It seems that we have an urgent health crisis facing our recently returned veterans." "So wanting to see what's being done about all of this, we sent Ryan Duffy to investigate." "*" "MAN:" "No matter what you've been through, you know, no matter how hard your road is, you shouldn't be left behind, and when you see a veteran who's struggling, you know, it definitely breaks the heart of people watching," "but for a fellow veteran, it's especially hard." "You know, you don't want to ever leave anybody behind, whether it's on the battlefield or it's home in San Diego or Texas." "*" "MAN:" "What's the drug of choice?" "MAN:" "Crack or dope." "That's crack?" "How long will it last?" "Ha!" "With us, like 10 minutes." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "This is Emily and her husband Mike." "Both veterans of the Iraq War, they're currently homeless and struggling with reentry into civilian life." "MIKE:" "Everything that I was before..." "Like, a social, outgoing person..." "I wasn't that when I came home." "There was something wrong with me." "I should've never been put out just being that way, being mentally incompetent." "I just didn't have any connection to people at the time when I got back from Iraq." "I knew how to do my job, but that was it." "EMILY:" "There was just so much emotional baggage and bullshit, you don't want to think about it." "You don't want to talk about it." "You don't want to care about it, but it all comes back, anyway." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "This is their friend Jarek, an infantryman in Afghanistan who, like Mike and Emily, is suffering from PTSD and augmenting his prescription medication with harder drugs." "DUFFY: "You were ambushed by enemy forces."" ""You were the lead gunner in the lead vehicle" ""and the first to fix the enemy and return fire." ""When the patrol was cut off, the decision was made" ""to turn around and go back through the kill zone." ""You reloaded and again were lead gunner," ""and your courage under fire set the tone for all gunners during this engagement."" "You were a fucking American hero." "CAMAC:" "I was fucking hot shit." "I mean, how did we get here?" "I got injured during a firefight, and I took some shrapnel in my legs." "[Gunshot]" " Uh!" "Hey, we took wound right there... gunshot." "CAMAC:" "One of my good friends died in a tank mine explosion." "The whole incident just gave me nightmares and shit." "I mean, I've tried every fucking antidepressant known to fucking man, 7 different psych. meds." "It just doesn't seem to help." "The thing that I've found relief in is dope." "I swear they teach the doctors not to diagnose people with PTSD because I wasn't diagnosed with PTSD till after I overdosed." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "To get a better understanding of PTSD, we spoke to Dr. Bart Billings, a clinical psychologist who served 34 years in the Army Reserves and has been working with vets suffering from combat stress for the past 25 years." "Human beings get used to living in a certain environment." "If you introduce anything in that environment that is very traumatic, very different than what they're exposed to, they're gonna experience posttraumatic stress afterwards." "99% of people who go into combat come back with posttraumatic stress." "It's a normal reaction to being in an abnormal environment." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "And with the Department of Veteran Affairs' medical budget at an all-time high of $58 billion, you'd think we'd be moving towards more sophisticated care, but the results are going in the wrong direction." "Between 2009 and 2011, the most recent year the data is available, the number of veterans under the age of 30 who committed suicide increased by 44%." "BILLINGS:" "Making a transition from military service to the civilian world is very difficult." "I'd call it the transitional reaction, and that reaction always involves stress, and that's normal, but if you really want to interfere with that transition, medicate them." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "Which is exactly what the VA is doing." "Between 2008 and 2013, there was a 100% increase in the number of psychotropic drug prescriptions issued to active-duty soldiers." "BILLINGS:" "The military's job, the Veterans Administration's job isn't to change their brain chemistry, which will interfere with them normalizing self back to the civilian world." "These are mind-altering medications." "The black box warning on these psychiatric medications, the first warning is suicidality." "Second warning is poor judgment, third warning..." "Anger, hostility, which can translate into homicide." "[Machine gun fire]" "There you go!" " Nice." "Got to get back in the saddle again..." "MAN:" "Ha ha ha!" "Get blown up by an IED." "Ain't no time to rest around here." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "Kelly Hughes is a highly decorated Marine who served 4 tours on the front lines of Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan and has been out of the service since 2009." "HUGHES:" "I was gonna go to this year's ball." "I put these babies on, and they were fitting a little snug." "DUFFY:" "Yeah." "Ha ha ha!" "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "Despite his good nature," "Kelly's reintegration back into civilian life has not been easy." "This is my rating from the VA..." "Found not fit for duty here." "You have trouble maintaining employment due to your PTSD syndromes." "Oh, yeah." "Posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and alcohol abuse and dependency." "Note... 3 suicide attempts since January 2010, with the most recent attempt on May 2011." "I'm sorry, dude." "I came home, and this was on the TV, this letter." "She left?" "Ex-girlfriend or fiancee?" "Wife." " Wife." "How long were you together?" "4 years." "One thing I always think about is if I'm able to have a relationship." "Right, like if you can actually put the pieces back together and start something new." "Yeah, but..." "Yeah." "Let me show you some of the meds that I'm on." "Yeah." "I take Zoloft, Seroquel, Paxil," "Trazodone, Risperdal, Wellbutrin..." "EMILY:" "Effexor, Abilify, Ambien..." "Depakote, Seroquel, Gabapentin, Buspar..." "Klonopin here and there and Valium here and there." "CAMAC:" "Restoril for sleep, Clorazepate for anxiety," "Thiazoline for anxiety and sleep." "*" "DUFFY:" "Antipsychotics?" "Oh, yeah." "How'd those go?" "They didn't work, really." "Yeah." " Yeah." "It turned me into a zombie." "My head would shake like this..." "Yeah." " you know?" "It's just crazy." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "But even more disturbing is what happened to Kelly when he tried to wean himself off of the meds." "HUGHES:" "At the beginning of the year," "I was doing very well." " Yeah." "I felt like I was doing OK up until about a month and a half ago." "That's when I started thinking about suicide, planning, and it was tripping me out, and, you know, homicidal thoughts, too." "When I sensed that, I was like," ""Man, I got to get back on this"..." "Yeah." "And so I went back to this." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "It's a true and devastating example of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" conundrum." "These vets are chemically shackled to meds that they feel are only making their situation worse, but psychoactive drugs are not the only ones being overprescribed at an alarming level." "In October of 2013, a group of veterans and VA doctors testified before Congress, attempting to stop the overuse of narcotics in treating PTSD." "CLAUDIA BAHORIK:" "I discovered that veterans' narcotic prescriptions were being renewed month after month, months on end, sometimes for one to two years, without an examination of the body part that was in pain." "I'm here to tell you that this is just not a problem at Jackson." "It's endemic throughout the VA, where quick and cheap is rewarded over good and thorough." "I was ordered by supervisors to write large amounts of Schedule II narcotics for inappropriate medical circumstances." "I pointed out that 10% to 20% of opioid users become addicted." "We were creating addicts." "All of this fell on deaf ears." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "After testifying," "Dr. Gray was fired from her job as the head of pain management at the VA hospital in Hampton, Virginia." "We met with her at her home in Norfolk." "The very first rule of medicine is do no harm." "And why did you speak out against the VA?" "There was harm being done, is the simple answer." "There were copious amounts of large doses of opioids being prescribed inappropriately for PTSD." "What is recommend is psychotherapy," "SSRis, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antidepressants." "There are multiple other modalities." "Narcotics are very cheap." "You can see high volumes of patients in a short amount of time for relatively no cost." "There is really a prescription medicine addiction for a lot of these PTSD patients that the VA is cultivating, in a way." "Perpetuating." "Correct." "I agree with you entirely." "I saw patients who were receiving thousands, thousands of prescribed opioids in multiple combinations on a monthly basis." "I do not understand how any medical institution in good conscience can perpetuate a therapy that is harmful to the people that they are supposed to serve, and let's remember, the VA serves the people who served us." "*" "DUFFY:" "So we repeatedly reached out to the VA to get their side of this story, but we got a "no comment" at every turn." "So instead, we came down here to the Tampa area to talk to Congressman Gus Bilirakis, who vice chairs the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs." "How would you rate the VA's performance in dealing with our veterans today?" "I don't think they're doing a good job on the mental health issue." "Sometimes you need medication..." "Sure." "But I think the focus should be on the counseling and the therapy." "They need to get it timely, right away." "You know, we need to have psychiatrists evaluate, but, again, we have to have the proper treatment, and one size does not fit all." "So if one particular therapy is not working, try another, but they're not encouraging that within the VA." "So is there a staffing and resource problem within the VA?" "Well, we keep giving them money." "We keep funding them." "They say there's a staffing problem." "Every year after year, we keep giving them more money." "I think that the system needs to be overhauled." "Too many veterans are falling through the cracks, and it's unacceptable to me." "RIECKHOFF: 1/3 of the folks who go to the VA for mental health care don't get the follow-up support that they're supposed to get." "Before they even get to the point where somebody can prescribe medication, too often, they're waiting for an initial appointment." "If you go in and file a disability benefits claim right now, you're gonna wait in a major city about 600 days." "For about 900,000 people, they are right now waiting for the VA." "600,000 are backlogged." "So 600,000 people are waiting more than 125 days for a simple answer, and that's bullshit." "*" "I wish that 10 years ago, folks fully understood the cost of war because they had plenty of money for tanks, they had plenty of money for bombs, but they didn't have enough money for counselors," "and they didn't have enough money for the treatment that was going to be necessary when these folks came home." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "And this oversight will have long-lasting effects on our veterans." "HUGHES:" "There's a good possibility I'm gonna have to be on medication for the rest of my life." "There's a possibility that I won't be able to hold down a job, and there's a possibility that I may not be able to hold down a relationship." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "As for Jarek, he moved from Delaware to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding a better VA hospital." "CAMAC:" "Every day is kind of a struggle, thinking about wanting to get high." "I can't stop thinking about it, you know?" "It's like, try to focus on something else, and then, just, like, the sand is the color of good heroin, you know, like..." "DUFFY, VOICE-OVER:" "After a month in L.A.," "Jarek is still struggling to get the care he needs from the VA." "CAMAC:" "I was admitted to the psych. ward of the VA for opiate cravings, PTSD symptoms, and starting to have suicidal thoughts." "They put me on Clonidine for opiate withdrawal," "Ativan as needed." "I feel that I need therapy." "It's helped me in the past." "Just giving me medication doesn't make the suicidal thoughts go away." "If you don't fix the underlying issues, the same problem is gonna appear." "*"