Baum - Earthquake Yotsukura Diaries 3/11 and Beyond

Copyright 2016 Yogan Baum

Published by Yogan Baum at Smashwords

Cover photo: Through the Sun - Two ships navigatingthrough the melted sun

Author: Halfrain

Source: Through the Sun - Two ships navigating through the meltedsun

License: CCBY-SA 2.0

Cover design by Bonnie Mutchler: https://bonniemutchlercovers.wordpress.com/Bonnie

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Acknowlegdements

This is for Mariko.

Special thanks to Jayne for proofreading andmore, also to Leslie, and to Bonnie for a great cover.

Very special thanks to Stefan - myinspiration, guiding light and practical wizzard in publishing -who gave me the idea to publish this ebook serial.

Preface

Looking around me I sometimes feel like theonly survivor of a shipwreck. I cling to a frail wooden plank andtry not to think about the future, but then, there is nothing elseto think about! All around I see water, nothing but water. Abottomless ocean stretches east and west. Then, there is fog andthrough the mist I hear seagulls cry: there must be land somewherenear! Or are those gulls, I wonder in my dazed drifting, mockingme? Keeping a lazy eye on me, just in case? Ive seen gulls in afeeding frenzy before, and dont want to remember the talons andbeaks tearing into those long dead salmons that had no way to hide,no way to go in the shallow mouth of the Kido river north of here.Too close to the sea, too close to the monster. The tsunami? Yes,that, too.

All alone I feel at times: trying not to gounder in a deluge of people trying to forget their danger. We werecast adrift and are now caught in a flood of lies and deceptions.Nobody has the courage, or the means, to cut through the sordid webwe, people of Fukushima, are trapped in. Nobody opens their heartsto cry out to their gods: silence reigns supreme. It is almost fiveyears after March 11 now, and the monster looming less than twentymiles north of here is just not mentioned where human voices areheard. It is the nameless fear, it is that which must not bespoken of. It is taboo. Only engineers and politicians talkDai-ichi.

Deep down we are all scared shitless. Myelderly neighbors are. All our young mothers are. My wife is. I am.How could it be different when you know there are three molten-downcores of Uranium and Plutonium, weighing hundreds of tons,smoldering somewhere, in completely unknown state, underneath theburned-out ruins of Dai-ichi?

We live in fear, that is a fact. Things havecooled down, for sure, but the nagging remains. Looking around me Isee Iwaki booming: disaster is good business, man! Not for thevictims, though. What can a poor boy like me do, then? I started towrite. Not to go mad I began to write down what I saw. What my wifeof thirty years and I had to go through, just like countless fellowhumans here. Animals fared even worse. I started to write down whatI began to understand about this mess. The first year I was juststunned. After that I grew angry. Now I am almost resigned to myfate. Resigned to be a victim. Worse than that to be a victim ofvictims! Big fish eat little fish, yes, but this one little fish atleast is not willing to go down in silence. Will it do Mariko andme any good? I dont know. It is of secondary importance. Importantis to speak out.

This is the chronicle of a manmade disaster.A disaster that was mercifully not the absolute catastrophe itcould have been. A disaster unfolding over the decades. Chapterone: Chernobyl. Chapter two: Fukushima. Chapter three: Pleaseselect from a list of more than four hundred nuclear power plants.There is one near you, you may be sure.

If not there may be one planned. Betterstop it. Before it is too late.

1 Werenot leaving!

Its been more than 30 years since I came toFukushima. Am I to leave, now?

Well stay. Thats what I said in aninterview on national TV some time ago. The media were interested,very interested in Fukushima, for some time. For a very limitedtime. The time was early 2011. You will remember March 11, Ihope?

WE STAY! - well, am I saying this with anundercurrent of hope these very words might open a way out of thedesperate situation we are facing here in Fukushima? We beingMariko, my wife, and me. Me? Who am I, then? I wish I knew, Ioften feel. My wife calls me Giorgio at times. When shes in a goodmood. So, why dont we stay with that? Call me Giorgio.

We have a situation Indeed, sir, we do. Ofcourse a part of us wants to run from this blighted place, run asfast as can be. But

Why on earth are you going back there? wewere asked by all our friends and relatives in the old country whenit gradually became clear that that was exactly what we were goingto do in May 2011. Are you crazy?!

Why indeed? - We have no real alternative, mydear Louise. What else are we supposed to do? How could we make aliving in the old country after 30 years abroad? How could I ask mywife to leave her family, how could we give up a life of thirtyyears as long as there was even a shred of hope? Back to Fukushima,it was.

2Roots

After thirty years in one place a persongrows roots that can not easily be cut. There is an attachment. Wasour friend right? She regretted that our house had not been washedaway by the tsunami. It would have been so much easier foryou!

Fifty meters from here to the water lappingthe villages little fire station on March 11.

Right here, in Yotsukura, the tsunami wasinexplicably low. Height about seven meters only. Average heightfor most of Iwaki City was even more than that. In some villagesand towns nearby, both north and south of here the ocean came inmuch higher. We were spared. Nobody knows why. The ocean floor,maybe? A rocky outcrop north of Yotsukura port? Tsunamis have awill of their own.

The sea is only about 500 meters from ourhouse, close enough to walk to the beach in flip-flops.

If the wind is right we hear the surf roarits mighty song; I remember one late night when it was so loud Iactually put on my shoes to go and see what was happening outside.An overwhelming feeling of the ocean coming ashore. The funny thingwas as I got closer to the beach the surf sounded weaker until italmost faded out. A hill in the back of our house, the same hill Ievacuated to on that Friday, March 11, amplified the sea sound andmade it ring like a bell. Was this some kind of premonition, Iwonder now.

We live in Yotsukura, city of Iwaki, inFukushima Prefecture, Japan. Distance to Fukushima Dai-ichi, thestricken nuclear plant, just under twenty miles. Had evacuationbeen ordered and compensation been paid based on mile distances weshould have been better off than we are now, sitting outside thethirty kilometers evacuation recommended zone. Twenty kilometerswas obligatory. Everybody here fled the smoldering ruins ofDai-ichi, the American government advised its citizens to leave incase they were closer that sixty miles and the whole world wascollapsing upon us in the days after the M 9.0 earthquake thatshook northern Japan only to be followed by a tsunami that reachedforty meters and killed almost 20,000. Some videos on YouTube arestill unbearable to watch. In our own City of Iwaki, there were 347deaths. In our home town, the fishing port of Yotsukura there werenineteen. One out of a hundred perished. We in Iwaki City were thelucky ones, compared to others.