The glass of water I drank every morning
The water bottle I gave my son every day when he went to nursery school
The taro I grew the natural way
The stream where I caught guppies
The pond where we throw eggs and worship
The school grounds where I play football
The river I paddleboard on
Invisible, it has neither smell or taste. Was that substance in the water I drank and touched? In the water we used to grow our vegetables? Is it still in the water that flows out of our faucet now? What harm have these substances, accumulated in my body, done to me and my children? And will they continue to harm us?
In 2016, it was announced that water supplied to 450,000 people in central Okinawa had been contaminated with organofluorine compounds (PFAS). PFAS are carcinogenic substances known as 'Forever Chemicals', which rarely break down in nature or in the human body. Four years later, in 2020, a fire alarm in a hangar at Futenma Airbase malfunctioned causing a large amount of firefighting foam to be released into the local community. The fluffy foam, which wafted romantically and seemed never to fade, contained PFAS. People tried to grasp the true nature of the water they had taken for granted and used to for everyday life.
This is the story of the PFAS contamination leaked from US military bases in Okinawa told through local people’s memories of the water and land. It is not possible to measure past contamination figures. While neither the Japanese government nor the US military have offered any fundamental solutions or even acknowledged the source of contamination, the reality of the contamination was gradually revealed, and the hazy memories of those affected, many overlooked until now, have become distorted.
I walked through the contaminated land and water, tracing their distorted memories. Wading through the dreamy aabuku (foam) it remained elusive. I wove together the words and unspoken thoughts of the people I met.
Moe Suzuki is a visual artist based in Tokyo. Her primary medium is photography, which she mixes with archival images and illustrations to tell stories in her books and installations. She is engaged in telling narratives of memories and landscapes that change with the passage of time, environmental changes, development, disability and relationships within the community, by collecting the stories of people who are in the midst of these themes. Her work has won Luma Rencotres Dummy Book Award (France, 2021) and been exhibited around the world, notably her work "SOKOHI". Currently working on the long term project about the water pollution in Japan caused by the "invisible chemical" (PFAS).