MOSCOW: Echoing a post-World War II climate of fear that the world was meant to forget, a small Japanese fishing village has reinstituted early-warning evacuation drills, only too aware of how close North Korean ballistic missiles await. About 500 miles from Pyongyang, residents in the tiny western Japanese village of Abu have, on Tokyo’s recommendation, begun holding evacuation drills, training themselves to hunker down at a signal, in the event that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) makes good on its continual threat to fire off nuclear weapons at its numerous enemies, real and imagined. Locals commented on the new directives, with one 10-year-old student remarking that the siren “rang all of a sudden while we were picking grass, so that scared me,” according to Deutsche Welle. The missiles and Pyongyang’s expanded underground nuclear weapons detonations have created a quiet panic in the region. In a stark reminder of another war, most of the western Japanese towns and prefectures, including nearby Fukuoka, have been urged by Tokyo to create similar alert systems to that in use in Abu.

Source: Manila Times June 05, 2017 02:18 UTC