I have avoided dealing with the anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, but today I feel I have to face the reality. A year and one day ago, I woke up to BBC news discussing the earthquake. I had fallen asleep the night before with the TV on, as I sometimes do when I have trouble sleeping. Inevitably, this backfires as I wake up at a much earlier time in the day than I would without the TV. So, it was around 6.00 or 6.30 when I heard the news talk about a strong earthquake that was affecting Tokyo. I have friends there and decided to stay awake long enough to learn the epicenter. When they said Sendai, I remembered my 23rd birthday celebrations. One of my closest friends Joe and I have birthdays a week apart. That year, we celebrated on his birthday, spending a bitterly cold January night drinking and dancing; the following year, we would do the same in Seoul on my birthday. I had visited temples and gone shopping in Sendai - my goodbye present from my town was a lacquered jewelry box and mirror I picked out in one of the shopping centers there. It was distressing that an earthquake then reported as an 8.7 - later adjusted to a 9.0 - hit so close to my second home. I wondered if there was much damage in Naraha.
I had lived through many an earthquake when I lived in Japan, but none stronger than a 5.0 or so. They lasted a few terrifying seconds, just long enough for me to jump from my bed, run through the small room separating my bedroom and the kitchen, and double-check that I had turned off the stove's gas. Inevitably I had and by the time I got in a doorway, the trembling had stopped. The one time it didn't, some cups had shattered on the ground. No real damage. And, inevitably, in the minutes that followed, I always heard the familiar man's voice come over the loud speaker system in the town: "Tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." "There is no fear of tsunami."
I didn't always understand everything the town speaker said to me, but tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen, I understood. I was told to listen for it when I first arrived, shortly after being told to turn off the gas in case of an earthquake. I would be safe from tsunami, I was assured, because I was so far up the hill, but I should still listen for the confirmation. I don't remember when BBC told me about the tsunami -- how long had I been sitting in bed waiting for reassurance about the safety of my area? -- but I remember thinking that the loud speaker must be saying something other than "tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." What does the speaker say when there is a tsunami, I wondered? Would I have even known? Would I have known to drive towards the mountains as quickly as I could? Later, as they showed cars being tossed by the waves that flooded highways north of where I lived, I wondered how many of them were trying to do exactly that. Had they not heard or understood the warning? Did they not have enough time to move away from the shore? When did the warnings come? Or were these the ones who were so used to tsunami warnings that even that did not scare them into action?
I was in Japan for two years, in a tiny town called Naraha. For ten years after leaving Japan, I used to have to tell new friends, "It's about 100 miles northeast of Tokyo; just south of Sendai, if you know where that is?" March 11, 2011, would be the start of a new answer: "I lived where the nuclear crisis is now." Naraha is ten to fifteen km south of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. I used to drive past the plant for Friday nights out in Namie and Futaba and Sunday mornings at church in Ookuma. I passed the Fukushima Daini plant more frequently - whenever I went grocery shopping, or for tea with Maya. The power plants were a part of our daily routine, and yet we rarely noticed them.
When we did notice the power plants - when their presence seemed overwhelming, rather than normal - we discussed the danger of living so near the plants. We discussed the strange cluster of cancer diagnoses in our schools; diagnoses that targeted people we considered much too young to be dealing with such abnormal cancers. Joe, who is Canadian by birth, Maya, a NZ kiwi, and I had grown up learning about the dangers of nuclear power plants. We have one outside of Cleveland, my hometown, but my greatest association with that plant is from the movie Howard the Duck, which is not the most pleasant association. The plant is far enough away that while I know of its presence, I had never seen it other than in the movie. The Fukushima plants - Daiichi and Daini - were my first up-close-and-personal experience with nuclear power. The Japanese in our community, though, regularly assured us that the plant was safe. Nuclear power was safe. It was good for the community. It supplied jobs and clean energy with no risk to the communities around us because of how well-managed it was. When we discussed the plant, Maya, Joe and I wondered how honest these assessments were, how much danger did our communities really face. Yes, the plants paid for our jobs - teaching English at junior high school in three different communities in the same gun (county). And yes, the local economy thrived because of the plant. And yes, the only time we weren't the only Westerners in our towns - and therefore not a principle source of entertainment - was when the plant was visited by GE employees from the US. But, was it safe? Was it worth it? Were the cancers 'normal' or unique? We assumed we were safe - or at least safer than the locals - but was the change in my hair texture (and color, as I found my first grey hair in Japan at the age of 22!) normal? We just were never quite convinced.
I don't remember how long I had been googling "Naraha" in the hopes of learning the state of my town when the news reported that the Fukushima nuclear plants were having trouble. First Daiichi then Daini, then Daiichi again. The power plants closer to Sendai were fine; it was the two located almost halfway between Sendai and Tokyo that were causing the trouble. Some who defended TEPCO in the days after said they couldn't have prepared for a 9.0 earthquake with an 18 foot tsunami. But, the earthquake as it struck the plants was not a 9.0. We were south enough that it was a smaller range. At the time, I believe I read it was around a 6.5-7.0. Still strong, but not the 9.0 that Sendai experienced. As I watched an endless stream of news hoping for more information, I would yell at the TV that Fukushima City was nowhere near the plants and to please tell me which towns were really suffering. Not surprisingly, the reporters did not hear me and would continue to discuss "Fukushima" as if it was a single city rather than a massive prefecture.
My town was evacuated. It is still evacuated. Those who were in the town were forced out quickly. Over the past year, small groups of residents have been occasionally allowed back in to collect a few belongings. The community had initially been evacuated to two different places - Iwaki to the south and Aizumisato to the west - but since people have moved throughout the country. Without a continued town presence, it has been difficult to learn the fates of some of my former students and fellow teachers. I am in contact with some friends still - and all that I have heard from have been fine. But I can't help but wonder about some of my students. Shouta, who I used to sit with every day just so he would do his homework. Or the Shiina family, whose 5th son, Kazumi, was one of my favorites despite his absolute hatred for English. Shinobu's family, who took me to the hospital when I had food poisoning and who used to bring me over for dinners and Japanese conversation. Shinobu's niece should be in middle school about now. How is she? I can ask people I know - and some of my friends are still trying to locate others for me - but as with many natural disaster diaspora, members of the community have been flung about throughout Japan. They do not run into each other at the grocery store, they can't stop by to check in on each other, and they do not necessarily know where their old friends have landed. If they have landed.
It is not just my Naraha. It is all the towns around us. With the exception of Hirono, and potentially Katsurao (which I can't find information on), all towns in Futaba-gun, our county, have been evacuated.
For a few weeks after the earthquake, there was no news coverage of the conditions facing Naraha, or Namie, Tomioka, Hirono, Futaba, or Ookuma. The only news from inside the exclusion zone related to the power plant. In the months since, though, there have been plenty of stories, all equally depressing. It is not the fault of the news reporters that they did not know our beautiful towns when they flourished, but their reporting of the nuclear no-go zone is always depressing. It is empty houses, and beer cans in a flooded vending machine. It is dogs wondering the streets, and bicycles abandoned on the side. "It's hard to believe someone once lived here" a reporter once said about a street that looked like many I had known. It is not so hard when you spent many a day under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka, on the beach in Naraha, at church in Ookuma, eating sushi in Futaba, or singing karaoke in Namie. It is instead harder to believe that it may be 5 to 30 years before people are living there again.
I had taught English in Naraha for two years as part of a sister-city exchange program. Each day, I woke up, crossed the school's softball and baseball fields - the only thing separating my apartment from the junior high - and entered the front doors greeting almost every one of my students with a "Good morning!" followed by "I am fine, thank you. And you?" It was one of the first things they learned in my first classes. I would take my shoes off and place them in my cubbyhole, putting on my "inside" shoes for the day. I would settle down to my desk across from Katano-sensei or next to Katsumi-sensei and the teacher's assistance would make me green tea. I would flip flash cards, and chit-chat with the other teachers, talking to Kubota-sensei about his most recent trip to Vegas - or his upcoming one, as he went as frequently as he could - and trying surreptitiously to figure out if the rumors about Terashima-sensei's dating another teacher were true. I eventually found out they were. I'd teach a few classes and supervise the students assigned to "cleaning time" in the English classroom. I'd laugh with the students in between classes and after school, telling them once again that No, Joe-sensei was not my boyfriend, even though they had seen me with him in the grocery store last week. And no, neither was Tony-sensei event though we had had ramen together on Friday. And yes, I liked Justin-sensei, but just as a friend, even though we had been spotted by some of his students talking together at the shops on Saturday. I would take my trash to the school's bin as I was instructed to do. I waited until 10pm or so to do it so I didn't run into students on the way. Inevitably, the young, single male teachers would still be "working" as they were expected to do. As often as not, though, this consisted of them sitting around reading the newspaper. They would see me crossing the field and come to the window to say hi, and did I need anything. I didn't, but would make fun of them for "working" so late and tell them to go home to get a life.
On the weekends, I would hop around the gun, running errands, seeing friends, hanging out with Maya and Joe. The city supplied me with a car and insurance so I wasn't tethered to the train schedule to do my grocery shopping (thank goodness!). Since each town in the gun had no more than 2 Westerners permanently present, and we were all English teachers, our students learned the names of the other town's English teachers quite quickly. It never surprised me when a student wearing a Namie junior high uniform - one of Kristin's kids - would come up to me at Tom-Tom, the local mini-mall, and say, "Tara-sensei, do you like baseball?" (pretty much the second thing they learn in junior high English!). "Yes, I like baseball. Do you like baseball" I would reply. They would say, "Yes," giggle, and run away. Maya and Karen's students - they shared two junior high schools between them - would get more bold over the two years and would begin to mimic my own: "Tara-sensei, do you like Joe-sensei?" "Joe-sensei is my friend," I would reply. "Does Maya-sensei like Joe-sensei?" before erupting into more giggles. They really wanted our love lives to be more interesting than they were; but when we were 12-15 years old, didn't we all want to believe our 20-something selves will have really interesting love lives?
I left Naraha in 2002. That was also the first of three years that the Fukushima Daiichi plant stopped operating. The Japanese government had found TEPCO had falsified data reports relating to routine government inspections. The plant's closure ultimately resulted in a huge financial loss for the towns in the gun, which received a lot of tax money from those plants. With the cuts, Naraha to opt out of using teachers from its sister-city, instead opting into the government-run JET program. In 2005, TEPCO reopened the plant, safer and more secure, they assured the public. In 2008, the IAEA told Japan that the Fukushima plants were built with safety standards that were now outdated. Little was done to answer the IAEA's concerns, but a control center that was used in 2011 was added. On February 28, 2011, the Japanese government announced that TEPCO had admitted to submitting fake inspection and repair reports. Amongst the problems was that TEPCO failed to inspect vital infrastructure, including cooling boards. The earthquake hit 11 days after the report's release.
In the year since the earthquake, I have not gone a full week without thinking of my town and the surrounding county. I wonder about the sweet old man who gave me pottery when I visited. I wonder about the kind lady who gave me kiwis at the grocery store on my first day on my own. I think about the countless community members who rode the bus with me to town events, -- like a festival in our intra-prefecture sister-city, Aizumisato, where people would evacuate for a while, -- the ones who taught me traditional Japanese dances and helped me understand what a daruma is. Last night, I had a dream about some of the teachers from Naraha getting together for a picnic under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka. I don't know if I will ever see or hear about those teachers again, but I will return to Naraha as soon as is practical after the evacuation is terminated. I want to allow the residents to return and settle in without having to worry about me (the people in Naraha would always worry about taking care of me, no matter how long I'd been there or how self-sufficient I had become). Then I'll go back. I'll visit my old school, I'll talk to the new students, and, hopefully, I'll get to see some cherry blossoms.
I had lived through many an earthquake when I lived in Japan, but none stronger than a 5.0 or so. They lasted a few terrifying seconds, just long enough for me to jump from my bed, run through the small room separating my bedroom and the kitchen, and double-check that I had turned off the stove's gas. Inevitably I had and by the time I got in a doorway, the trembling had stopped. The one time it didn't, some cups had shattered on the ground. No real damage. And, inevitably, in the minutes that followed, I always heard the familiar man's voice come over the loud speaker system in the town: "Tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." "There is no fear of tsunami."
I didn't always understand everything the town speaker said to me, but tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen, I understood. I was told to listen for it when I first arrived, shortly after being told to turn off the gas in case of an earthquake. I would be safe from tsunami, I was assured, because I was so far up the hill, but I should still listen for the confirmation. I don't remember when BBC told me about the tsunami -- how long had I been sitting in bed waiting for reassurance about the safety of my area? -- but I remember thinking that the loud speaker must be saying something other than "tsunami no shinpai wa arimasen." What does the speaker say when there is a tsunami, I wondered? Would I have even known? Would I have known to drive towards the mountains as quickly as I could? Later, as they showed cars being tossed by the waves that flooded highways north of where I lived, I wondered how many of them were trying to do exactly that. Had they not heard or understood the warning? Did they not have enough time to move away from the shore? When did the warnings come? Or were these the ones who were so used to tsunami warnings that even that did not scare them into action?
I was in Japan for two years, in a tiny town called Naraha. For ten years after leaving Japan, I used to have to tell new friends, "It's about 100 miles northeast of Tokyo; just south of Sendai, if you know where that is?" March 11, 2011, would be the start of a new answer: "I lived where the nuclear crisis is now." Naraha is ten to fifteen km south of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. I used to drive past the plant for Friday nights out in Namie and Futaba and Sunday mornings at church in Ookuma. I passed the Fukushima Daini plant more frequently - whenever I went grocery shopping, or for tea with Maya. The power plants were a part of our daily routine, and yet we rarely noticed them.
When we did notice the power plants - when their presence seemed overwhelming, rather than normal - we discussed the danger of living so near the plants. We discussed the strange cluster of cancer diagnoses in our schools; diagnoses that targeted people we considered much too young to be dealing with such abnormal cancers. Joe, who is Canadian by birth, Maya, a NZ kiwi, and I had grown up learning about the dangers of nuclear power plants. We have one outside of Cleveland, my hometown, but my greatest association with that plant is from the movie Howard the Duck, which is not the most pleasant association. The plant is far enough away that while I know of its presence, I had never seen it other than in the movie. The Fukushima plants - Daiichi and Daini - were my first up-close-and-personal experience with nuclear power. The Japanese in our community, though, regularly assured us that the plant was safe. Nuclear power was safe. It was good for the community. It supplied jobs and clean energy with no risk to the communities around us because of how well-managed it was. When we discussed the plant, Maya, Joe and I wondered how honest these assessments were, how much danger did our communities really face. Yes, the plants paid for our jobs - teaching English at junior high school in three different communities in the same gun (county). And yes, the local economy thrived because of the plant. And yes, the only time we weren't the only Westerners in our towns - and therefore not a principle source of entertainment - was when the plant was visited by GE employees from the US. But, was it safe? Was it worth it? Were the cancers 'normal' or unique? We assumed we were safe - or at least safer than the locals - but was the change in my hair texture (and color, as I found my first grey hair in Japan at the age of 22!) normal? We just were never quite convinced.
I don't remember how long I had been googling "Naraha" in the hopes of learning the state of my town when the news reported that the Fukushima nuclear plants were having trouble. First Daiichi then Daini, then Daiichi again. The power plants closer to Sendai were fine; it was the two located almost halfway between Sendai and Tokyo that were causing the trouble. Some who defended TEPCO in the days after said they couldn't have prepared for a 9.0 earthquake with an 18 foot tsunami. But, the earthquake as it struck the plants was not a 9.0. We were south enough that it was a smaller range. At the time, I believe I read it was around a 6.5-7.0. Still strong, but not the 9.0 that Sendai experienced. As I watched an endless stream of news hoping for more information, I would yell at the TV that Fukushima City was nowhere near the plants and to please tell me which towns were really suffering. Not surprisingly, the reporters did not hear me and would continue to discuss "Fukushima" as if it was a single city rather than a massive prefecture.
My town was evacuated. It is still evacuated. Those who were in the town were forced out quickly. Over the past year, small groups of residents have been occasionally allowed back in to collect a few belongings. The community had initially been evacuated to two different places - Iwaki to the south and Aizumisato to the west - but since people have moved throughout the country. Without a continued town presence, it has been difficult to learn the fates of some of my former students and fellow teachers. I am in contact with some friends still - and all that I have heard from have been fine. But I can't help but wonder about some of my students. Shouta, who I used to sit with every day just so he would do his homework. Or the Shiina family, whose 5th son, Kazumi, was one of my favorites despite his absolute hatred for English. Shinobu's family, who took me to the hospital when I had food poisoning and who used to bring me over for dinners and Japanese conversation. Shinobu's niece should be in middle school about now. How is she? I can ask people I know - and some of my friends are still trying to locate others for me - but as with many natural disaster diaspora, members of the community have been flung about throughout Japan. They do not run into each other at the grocery store, they can't stop by to check in on each other, and they do not necessarily know where their old friends have landed. If they have landed.
It is not just my Naraha. It is all the towns around us. With the exception of Hirono, and potentially Katsurao (which I can't find information on), all towns in Futaba-gun, our county, have been evacuated.
For a few weeks after the earthquake, there was no news coverage of the conditions facing Naraha, or Namie, Tomioka, Hirono, Futaba, or Ookuma. The only news from inside the exclusion zone related to the power plant. In the months since, though, there have been plenty of stories, all equally depressing. It is not the fault of the news reporters that they did not know our beautiful towns when they flourished, but their reporting of the nuclear no-go zone is always depressing. It is empty houses, and beer cans in a flooded vending machine. It is dogs wondering the streets, and bicycles abandoned on the side. "It's hard to believe someone once lived here" a reporter once said about a street that looked like many I had known. It is not so hard when you spent many a day under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka, on the beach in Naraha, at church in Ookuma, eating sushi in Futaba, or singing karaoke in Namie. It is instead harder to believe that it may be 5 to 30 years before people are living there again.
I had taught English in Naraha for two years as part of a sister-city exchange program. Each day, I woke up, crossed the school's softball and baseball fields - the only thing separating my apartment from the junior high - and entered the front doors greeting almost every one of my students with a "Good morning!" followed by "I am fine, thank you. And you?" It was one of the first things they learned in my first classes. I would take my shoes off and place them in my cubbyhole, putting on my "inside" shoes for the day. I would settle down to my desk across from Katano-sensei or next to Katsumi-sensei and the teacher's assistance would make me green tea. I would flip flash cards, and chit-chat with the other teachers, talking to Kubota-sensei about his most recent trip to Vegas - or his upcoming one, as he went as frequently as he could - and trying surreptitiously to figure out if the rumors about Terashima-sensei's dating another teacher were true. I eventually found out they were. I'd teach a few classes and supervise the students assigned to "cleaning time" in the English classroom. I'd laugh with the students in between classes and after school, telling them once again that No, Joe-sensei was not my boyfriend, even though they had seen me with him in the grocery store last week. And no, neither was Tony-sensei event though we had had ramen together on Friday. And yes, I liked Justin-sensei, but just as a friend, even though we had been spotted by some of his students talking together at the shops on Saturday. I would take my trash to the school's bin as I was instructed to do. I waited until 10pm or so to do it so I didn't run into students on the way. Inevitably, the young, single male teachers would still be "working" as they were expected to do. As often as not, though, this consisted of them sitting around reading the newspaper. They would see me crossing the field and come to the window to say hi, and did I need anything. I didn't, but would make fun of them for "working" so late and tell them to go home to get a life.
On the weekends, I would hop around the gun, running errands, seeing friends, hanging out with Maya and Joe. The city supplied me with a car and insurance so I wasn't tethered to the train schedule to do my grocery shopping (thank goodness!). Since each town in the gun had no more than 2 Westerners permanently present, and we were all English teachers, our students learned the names of the other town's English teachers quite quickly. It never surprised me when a student wearing a Namie junior high uniform - one of Kristin's kids - would come up to me at Tom-Tom, the local mini-mall, and say, "Tara-sensei, do you like baseball?" (pretty much the second thing they learn in junior high English!). "Yes, I like baseball. Do you like baseball" I would reply. They would say, "Yes," giggle, and run away. Maya and Karen's students - they shared two junior high schools between them - would get more bold over the two years and would begin to mimic my own: "Tara-sensei, do you like Joe-sensei?" "Joe-sensei is my friend," I would reply. "Does Maya-sensei like Joe-sensei?" before erupting into more giggles. They really wanted our love lives to be more interesting than they were; but when we were 12-15 years old, didn't we all want to believe our 20-something selves will have really interesting love lives?
I left Naraha in 2002. That was also the first of three years that the Fukushima Daiichi plant stopped operating. The Japanese government had found TEPCO had falsified data reports relating to routine government inspections. The plant's closure ultimately resulted in a huge financial loss for the towns in the gun, which received a lot of tax money from those plants. With the cuts, Naraha to opt out of using teachers from its sister-city, instead opting into the government-run JET program. In 2005, TEPCO reopened the plant, safer and more secure, they assured the public. In 2008, the IAEA told Japan that the Fukushima plants were built with safety standards that were now outdated. Little was done to answer the IAEA's concerns, but a control center that was used in 2011 was added. On February 28, 2011, the Japanese government announced that TEPCO had admitted to submitting fake inspection and repair reports. Amongst the problems was that TEPCO failed to inspect vital infrastructure, including cooling boards. The earthquake hit 11 days after the report's release.
In the year since the earthquake, I have not gone a full week without thinking of my town and the surrounding county. I wonder about the sweet old man who gave me pottery when I visited. I wonder about the kind lady who gave me kiwis at the grocery store on my first day on my own. I think about the countless community members who rode the bus with me to town events, -- like a festival in our intra-prefecture sister-city, Aizumisato, where people would evacuate for a while, -- the ones who taught me traditional Japanese dances and helped me understand what a daruma is. Last night, I had a dream about some of the teachers from Naraha getting together for a picnic under the cherry blossom trees in Tomioka. I don't know if I will ever see or hear about those teachers again, but I will return to Naraha as soon as is practical after the evacuation is terminated. I want to allow the residents to return and settle in without having to worry about me (the people in Naraha would always worry about taking care of me, no matter how long I'd been there or how self-sufficient I had become). Then I'll go back. I'll visit my old school, I'll talk to the new students, and, hopefully, I'll get to see some cherry blossoms.
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