Resiliency the Japanese way

(Part One)

IWAKI CITY, Fukushima Prefecture, Tohoku Region, Japan — On March 11, 2011 at around 2:46 in the afternoon, Takeo (not his real name) was just getting off his boat after a day out fishing when he felt his boat shaking.

He initially thought that there was something wrong with the engine, but then, he looked around him and saw everything shaking. Earthquake, he thought.

He jumped from the boat and ran as fast as he could and upon reaching his house, he brought his wife and children to a higher place.

The earthquake, the most powerful to hit Japan and said to be the fourth strongest in the world, triggered powerful tsunami waves an hour after that reached as high as 133 feet in areas like Miyako in Tohoku’s Iwate Prefecture and travelling up to 10 kilometers inland in the Sendai area.

Takeo was lucky that no one in his family was hurt but others were not as lucky. A number of fishermen and workers died while at sea while most of the boats were destroyed. At the time the earthquake struck, about half of the fishermen where still out in the sea.

The powerful seawater carried ships inland and tore houses and other structures, destroying roads and highways. Though the waters that came in were not as high as in other areas, it was still enough to destroy the Onahama port in Iwaki well as fishing boats and vehicles that were carried by a tsunami wave.

Following the earthquake and tsunami, a third disaster ensued after damage to the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant contaminated a wide area.

The coastal city of Iwaki is about 50 kilometers south of the nuclear plant.

The World Bank has estimated the economic cost of the 9.2 magnitude Great East Japan earthquake or the 2011 Tohoku earthquake at $235 billion to make it the costliest natural disaster in history.

There were 15,893 across 20 prefectures who were killed, many of who died due to drowning. (Around 2,553 were reported missing while 119,163 remain evacuated as of March 28 of this year, according to the Japan Reconstruction Agency)

The Tohoku region consists of six prefectures in the north of Japan’s
largest island, Honshu. It is well known for its countryside, mountains, lakes, hot springs, high quality rice, and rough winters. (www.japan-guide.com)

Among its top tourist destinations are the Aomori Prefecture where Lake Towada which is a huge crater lake, the former castle town Hirosaki, and Aomori City which is best known for its Nebuta Matsuri festival, can be found; and Fukushima Prefecture where Iwaki which has one of the best fishing grounds is located. The other prefectures in Tohoku are Akita, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata.

Fukushima is about 239 kilometers from Tokyo by plane and 287 kilometers driving distance. It takes about 0.27 hours by air travel. By Shinkansen (Japan’s bullet train), it takes around 1.5 hours from Tokyo to Fukushima plus another 58 minutes from Narita Airport to Tokyo by JR Narita Express train or a total of around 2.5 hours by train. By car travelling at 80 km per hour, it will be around 3.5 hours.

After the Japanese government declared a nuclear emergency, around 470,000 people had to leave their homes. Everybody within a 20-km radius from the power plant was required to evacuate with only the barest necessities. Many rice paddies were damaged by salt from the tsunami and a number of residents never returned to their hometown, with some finding employment and schools for their children elsewhere.

Life literally stood still in this part of the world.

Officers of the Iwaki Fisheries Cooperative, which has 300 members, told members of the international media including this writer visiting this part of Japan that the earthquake and tsunami destroyed all facilities owned by the cooperative, including the fishing boats of the members. It was only in October of 2013 that they started fishing again. But they had to fish 30 kilometers away from the power plant and were limited to a few marine products like octopus and squid that were not affected by the radiation scare.

The aftermath

But more than six years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, which resulted in meltdowns, explosions, and release of radioactive material, and despite official findings that the marine catch was not contaminated, life has not attained normalcy for Iwaki’s fishermen.

They say that the number of fish that they are selling now is still down to 10 percent from what it was before the earthquake. This was not enough to feed their families and so the Tokyo Electric Power Corp. (Tepco), which owns and operates the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, had to give them compensation every month, the amount of which depends on the catch that a ship makes and the number of workers that it has.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, around 1.73 million food monitoring tests were conducted between March 2011 and March of this year. Based on these tests, the MoFA said that the proportion of samples exceeding the standards for radionuclides is declining, and recently accounting for only 0.09 percent of the total and were limited to wild mushrooms and game meat. (Of the 340,311 samples during the period April 2015-2016, 291 or 0.09 percent were over the limit. Of the 291, around 167 were game meat, 87 wild plants and wild edible mushrooms, 15 processed food, 14 freshwater fish). It emphasized that appropriate measures including disposal and shipping restrictions prevent the market distribution of items exceeding the limits.

MoFA stressed in a briefing in Tokyo that Japan complies with the international standard for radionuclides in food and even exceeds it. While the international standard set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission which is a body set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization for radioactive nuclides in particular Caesium (Cs) 134 and Cs137 is 1,000 bq/kg for food and that of the United States is 1,200 (European Union is 1,000-1,250), the limit set under Japan’s Food Sanitation Act is 100 for food in general, 10 for drinking water, and 50 for milk and infant food.

Reconstruction efforts

The Japan Reconstruction Agency, which was established immediately after the earthquake and designated to do reconstruction work for a period of 10 years with a budget of $320 billion (32 trillion yen), has spent around 27 trillion yen since its creation and reports that steady progress has been achieved so far, thanks to international assistance.

Infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads, have been almost totally restored, and the number of people who had to leave their homes reduced from 470,000 to less than 120,000. It said that restoration of housing which includes public houses and relocation to upland is being speeded up and is planned to be complete by March of 2019.

It emphasized that reconstruction of areas affected by the tsunami such as Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures will be finished by 2021.

The agency reported that the effects of the nuclear accident still remain, with eastern coastal areas still affected although life has returned to normalcy in other areas. After April 1 of this year, an area of about 370 square km or less than three percent of Fukushima Prefecture which is about 13,783 square km. remains under evacuation orders

It said that there has been a drastic decrease in radioactive elements which is 71 percent less than after the earthquake due to decontamination and natural decay while evacuation orders are being lifted gradually with currently less than 3 percent of the Fukushima Prefecture area still under such orders.

The agency noted that the air dose rate in Fukushima City is about the same level as in other major cities overseas at 0.17 microsievert per hour compared to 0.12 in Seoul, 0.10 in Singapore and 1.05 in Kerala and Chennai in India which are regions with high natural radiation levels. In Minamisoma which is another city in Fukushima, the level is at 0.08 while in Iwaki it is 0.07 and in Minamiaizu, 0.04.

It also emphasized that only products that have passed a radiation inspection based on the strictest level of standard limits are found in domestic and international markets, with all rice bags proving to be safe since 2015. As for rice produced in the Fukushima Prefecture, it said that all products are tested for contamination of radioactive materials and 100 percent of those produced in 2014 contained less than the limit.

(To be continued)