As the wind blows - Fukushima 1 year later (Part 5)

On March 12th, 2011 the video of the first explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant started making its rounds on the internet. I was at home when the blast happened that afternoon. From right after the quake the day before I remember stories coming out that something had happened at the Daini and Daichi plants, but I don’t think anyone had a clue how bad it was, or would soon become.

Watching the first explosion over and over again, I tried to get a feel for the scale, not realizing at the time just how huge the building was (reactor 1) that had been blast apart like a flimsy model in some SF b-movie. I also tried to get a feel for any possible danger. There was some panicking going on in international media, and fears relayed by countless experts on Japanese TV, but for the most part I believed that it wasn’t so bad, yet.

On the 14th, however, reactor 3 went up. Looking at the video on youtube again and again, it almost made me sick to my stomach. The blast looks like a goddamn mushroom cloud, is all I could think. But, even still… the plant was far away, past mountains, and I assumed that the worst would hit places much farther from where I was (and still am now). [ Note: It was not a nuclear explosion. Pent up gas exploded. That's all. ]

And for the most part I was right. The worst fallout did hit much closer to the plants. Unlike at Chernobyl there was no huge fire where radioactive material was released high into the upper atmosphere. Of that we can all be thankful.

The next day we had our school’s graduation, as normal. Nerves were quite frayed because of constant aftershocks. I remember people I know talking about feeling seasick, asking again and again, “Did it just shake?” I felt almost the same, wondering when another big one would hit. But we made it through the day.

That night I went to Kashiwa again and met a friend. We got a few beers and food at the same place I’d been earlier, and then went to a standing bar to continue. Around 5 when I got to town I’d stopped off at Don Quixote (a local electronics/cheap crap/food store), hoping to find some real groceries to take home but left with a few bags of chocolates, beer, crackers, cans of chili and soup, and a bottle of vodka. I figured hell, when in Chernobyl Rome...

Oddly enough, though, I was spot on with that prediction. Now before I continue I want to reiterate that the scale of radiation that hit Japan compared to Russia was completely different. So my black sense of humor was fortunately off by a big magnitude. But that evening my area – northern Chiba and parts of Ibaraki and Tokyo – was hit by a wave of radioactive material. There is no denying that. And even still around me there are places where the radiation is elevated, but it is nowhere near the levels it got to up north.

Over the next week twice more clouds of radiation would spread over parts of Japan. Tokyo and my area was mostly spared. But there are places in Fukushima (especially near the plants and to the northwest) that got tragically high doses, and only time will tell what will happen to the people and animals that were there at the time.

Looking back, it’s been a hard year, but I am so thankful that I avoided the worst, from the quake to the tsunami and the nuke disaster. I could make up statements about what it means, but I don’t know if that really helps anyone. It is what it is, and we can only look at a disaster like this and ask ourselves what we can do to help.