It’s torturing to remember / learn something. To memorize something, you must break it down to the parts and understand the mechanism as a system and the function of each part.
After being a traffic control, I was starting at the website of Nikkei, NHK and TBS. changed the screen almost every second to try to know what is going on.
However, the reason why I don’t really remember what I saw is because I didn’t understand anything I read. I had never thought about nuclear, was not familiar to the local names either. wasn’t even sure about the distance from Fukushima to Tokyo / Yokohama. I didn’t even know what I was looking for.
I just remember my feet got so sweat for a sign taken as a warning.
However, this was the moment when the “new media” got attention and used its power. On ustream, you see streaming on the left side of the screen and twitter rolls on its right side. Though the streaming was repeating tsunami report, twitter side was talking about something totally different. It was about the risk of nuclear explosion and depleted uranium in Chiba. About 5800 people were in the conversation. Most of those warnings were denied and labelled as “harmful rumor”, even I thought it was a lie, but after all, they were all true. All. If everyone took those anonymous warnings serious, millions of lives would have been saved.
I didn’t turn off the light. put shoes, canned food and torches into a bag, left it beside the bed. took down everything on the wall to the floor and slept in aftershock. I’m used to sleeping in the train.
Around this time, in reactor1, fuel rods were already melted and only waited to explode.
10AM. Saturday morning. Still the air was yellowish but birds were tweeting and it was another beautiful day of spring. Phone call woke me up. It was from my mother. She was angry for my “selfish” behavior and told me to be “more responsible”. I heard my ancles and cousins were fine as well. I also heard someone died because of the blackout. The person was connected to life support system in a hospital. What surprised me was that she didn’t know anything about Fukushima. I didn’t know either, but she was still at the point of “earthquake and tsunami”. This little gap grew bigger and bigger, and teared Japanese into 2 groups after all.
Turned on the PC. TBS, Fuji, they were all still reporting tsunami disaster but obviously nuclear accident was more important because it was / is still going on. Only NHK was reporting it.
Evacuation zone was already 10km from Daiichi and 3km from Daini.
NHK reported, the container vessels are heated but the fuel rods are still safe and it will be settled soon, they were “venting” but this is nothing serious. They had “specialists” explain the situation. Anyway, soon after I observed them speaking, I understood they didn’t know anything, and probably they were not the specialists. It was only the “tone” of their voice to try to calm us down. I really wanted to know what was going on, stair at PC for hours.
I was replying to tones of emails and comments to worry about Japan. Actually there was no major damage in Tokyo and Yokohama. Still the phone line and the internet was messed up sometimes but you would have thought everything was alright if you came there without knowing the earthquake the day before.
An email came from my friend in US. She was married to a man of US navy, moved to US a few years ago. I had not talked to her for a while. She was so concerned and told me to go to west. At this time, CNN and BBC were doing great job and it was easier to access to information out of Japan than in Japan. but I thought she was panicking because she didn’t know “how peaceful it looks” here.
More and more report came about how many people died in Tsunami. Though Tsunami was not the matter anymore, still it is sad to know thousands of people died.
My feet were still sweaty and cold. was feeling very anxious but didn’t know why.
All of a sudden, the NHK reporter stopped reading news and said, something seemed to happen at reactor1.
At 15:36, reactor1 had hydrogen explosion. It was the moment to know I was deceived all through my
life.
The voice of NHK reporter was shaking, which I had never heard. For some reason, NHK did not capture the moment of the explosion. NHK reporter compared the picture of reactor 1 of 15:45 and 8:00. The reactor building was blown off, yet the “experts” were saying, the building was designed to be blown off to protect container vessel. This is nothing harmful.
The reporter ignored him talking, and said, please stay in house, close the windows, turn off the fans and air conditioner and put wet towel on your mouth when you have to go out.
This reporter was relegated a few weeks later.
Actually, since morning of 3/12, NHK and other mass media started the worst media black out in our history.
[From an old article <Link>]
3/12 NHK “(Whisper) Don’t read this draft about exposed fuel rods.”
3/12/2011, On NHK mid noon news, director stopped an announcer reading the news about exposed fuel rod assemblies.
An NHK reporter Nomura Masaiku announced,
“At 11:40 on 3/12/2011, fuel rod assemblies are exposed about 90 cm above the pool of reactor 1. It is really a dangerious situation. Currently Tepco is planning to give 27,000 tones of water by using pomp for fire extinction etc. I’ll repeat..”
At this moment, on 0:45 on this video, the announcer stops and the mike catches the voice of director to say,
“They say you mustn’t read this draft..”
Though he said “I’ll repeat,” he started to announcing about different issue after the disturbance.
After 4/4/2011, this announcer was sent to a local NHK station in Fukuoka from Tokyo central studio.
My friend in US was almost shouting, get out, get out, get out.
I knew she was right. I felt adrenaline was running though my blood. but to where ? What should I do with those turtles ? What should I do for my job ? Evacuation seemed too unrealistic. I couldn’t stay, but I could’t go. I was so isolated from information like everyone else. We really needed more information.
Iori Mochizuki