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Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
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30 Jul, 4 tweets, 2 min read
NEW: The prevailing theme of Tokyo Olympics is "Recovery," showcasing how far the country has come from the 2011 disasters in Fukushima, Japan.

But to many displaced residents of Fukushima, the Olympic message rings hollow. From me & @juliaminuma:
washingtonpost.com/sports/olympic…
At the Olympics, symbols intended to emphasize the recovery of Fukushima are hard to miss: The torch relay start at J-Village, the operational HQ of Fukushima disasters, the food served inside the Olympic Village use ingredients from Tohoku, etc.

washingtonpost.com/sports/olympic…
To many Fukushima residents whose lives were upended by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami & nuclear meltdown, the Olympics messaging of "recovery" from the disasters feels tone deaf: a public relations slogan that ignores the realities of their daily lives.
washingtonpost.com/sports/olympic…
“It seems nothing more than just taking advantage of Fukushima for political reasons,” said Yoichi Tao, 80, who lived in Hiroshima in 1945 & works on Fukushima rebuilding. “It was simply that adding this ‘recovery’ element made the Games more appealing.” washingtonpost.com/sports/olympic…

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More from @myhlee

Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
1 Aug
No clear answer by Tokyo 2020 officials on their views of covid spike in Tokyo and relation to Games. Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto says "How to analyze this? There are various different opinions."
Muto says he can’t say there’s no correlation at all but notes PM Suga & Tokyo Gov Koike don't believe in correlation cuz of high TV ratings, which they believe means people are staying at home to watch, and the testing in Olympics bubble. But...
But half the Games-related people who have tested positive for covid so far are Tokyo 2020 contractors who are residents of Japan and are not tested as frequently as athletes. Muto says he is concerned about the large number of positive cases among the contractors.
Read 4 tweets
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
31 Jul
Photos via the IOC of the Olympic Village since there's not a media tour this year. These are 6 meter flag poles that athletes like to take photos with, says Takashi Kitajima, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village general manager ImageImage
Outdoor gathering/jogging/hanging out area for athletes living inside the Olympic Village. The apartments are their residences. Image
These are autonomous buses developed by Toyota that are transporting the athletes around the Olympic Village, per the Village manager. Image
Read 4 tweets
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
17 Mar
To all the Asian American and Pacific Islander journalists logging on/showing up to work this morning, feeling shook, horrified, exhausted and invisible, I see you and you’re not alone. 1/
You’re processing the news while putting on your game face to do your job.

Maybe none of your managers or colleagues are checking in on you today.

Or maybe they ARE checking in and you worry about seeming weak or biased.
Maybe you're the only AAPI in your newsroom, or maybe there are no AAPI managers there.

You may be the only one pitching the shooting story today, even if it's not your beat.

There are hundreds of AAPI journalists across the country feeling the way you do today.
Read 5 tweets
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
12 Mar
A reminder to check in on your Asian American and Pacific Islander friends & colleagues. We're exhausted. We're overwhelmed by videos & images of people who could be our parents/grandparents brutally attacked — spat on, shoved to the ground, slashed across the face & more. 1/
As AAPI journalists, we've been working for a year to try to get our newsrooms and the country to pay attention to the rise in violence and hatred, on top of the burden of everything else that comes with being a functioning human in a pandemic. 2/
AAPI journalists constantly ask me: My boss won't cover Asian violence unless I find a "fresh" angle — how? Why am I the only AAPI reporter at work when our audience is X% AAPI? Why doesn't my company's race initiatives include AAPIs? How do I ask this without retaliation? 3/
Read 7 tweets
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
28 Feb
Been thinking a lot about that line in the @nytimes diversity report about Asian American women, and women of color broadly, feeling invisible and unseen. Some thoughts: 1/
That feeling of invisibility is why @seungminkim's experience this week resonated so much with me and others. Being a woman and nonwhite lands you in a particularly vile venn diagram of racism and sexism that so often goes unseen. And here's why:
Women of color are underrepresented in newsroom leadership.

For a lot of people, the incident this week was appalling and shocking. But for so many of us WOC, it's been a constant in our DMs and email inboxes since the day we started working in journalism.
Read 6 tweets
Michelle Ye Hee Lee Profile picture
6 Feb
NEW: We contacted 22 states where state and local agencies paid for security, property repair & legal defense as a result of Trump's lie that the election was stolen.

Here's what @ToluseO & I found: (thread)
washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
Of the $519M+, the biggest chunk of taxpayer money spent is $480M in estimated military expenses to deploy thousands of National Guard troops around DC amid fears of additional extremist violence stemming from Trump's falsehoods.
washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
Many of the agencies in 22 states we contacted couldn't provide a breakdown yet, cuz they're still trying to tally the cost of rapidly scaling up security to deal with the increased threat of violence from Trump supporters. We'll update as we hear back. washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
Read 7 tweets

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