Tag Archives: Japan

Pain lingers five years later as tsunami-hit Japan town rises from ruins

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) – Time has done little to help Japanese volunteer fireman Eiki Kumagai with memories of March 11, 2011, when he clung to some steps as a huge black tsunami surged through his town, washing away people he knew as they cried for help.

“We were recovering bodies,” the 48-year-old recalls. “This is a small town, we knew them all. Women, children, old people. There were so many, we had two layers.”

Five years after Rikuzentakata lost 7 percent of its population and its entire downtown to the 49-foot wave touched off by a magnitude 9 earthquake, a huge construction project has raised its center from future waves.

But while the physical landscape has been changed for the better, emotionally many people in the town of 20,000 remain frozen in grief and psychologists say it may take several generations to ease the trauma fully.

“The year of the tsunami, I was angry at the wave,” said Kazuo Sato, a former oyster fisherman who can still barely look at the sea. He lost 100 friends and relatives.

“What’s left is regret, and that’s getting worse. We could have saved so many more people.”

The town center has been transformed with 5 million cubic tonnes of earth scraped from a nearby mountain and shaped by a fleet of backhoes into mounds up to 46 feet high.

Cranes loom over a towering seawall and new roads snake over the hills.

Home building will finally start this summer, offering hope for 1,400 households still in barracks-like temporary housing.

Officials, including Mayor Futoshi Toba, deplore regulations that delayed construction and worry that with the passing of time, attention will be diverted from a recovery only 60 percent complete. National funds for rebuilding will dip with the new fiscal year from April.

Many also worry that construction for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will hamper the rebuilding of the town.

“If construction overlaps, there won’t be enough workers and wages will rise, making houses more expensive,” said Toba, who watched helplessly from the city hall roof as the town was destroyed. His wife, with whom he had spoken moments before the quake, was killed.

“Why did the government want the Olympics in 2020? I think they could easily have hosted them four years later.”

SPRING SNOW

Some residents say the new embankments are uncomfortable reminders of how much their lives have changed.

“I think probably a lot of people have complicated feelings,” said city official Tsuyoshi Yamada. “But their feelings of wanting to live in a safe place are stronger.”

Long-suppressed feelings of anguish are emerging as life slips back into routines, but a stigma against mental illness in Japan makes many people reluctant to seek help.

“They keep their feelings shut tight in their chests out of a sense that others have suffered even more,” said psychologist Kiyoka Yukimoto. “For this city to really recover, they need mental health services.”

Volunteer firemen, who took to the streets telling people to flee as the water loomed, have particularly painful memories. One man began weeping as he recalled 51 colleagues who lost their lives.

“A couple of guys went down to check on an elderly man, even though I said we had no more time. None of them came back,” Kumagai said.

Toba, whose duties kept him from searching for his wife or seeing his children after the quake, said feelings were complex.

“It always snows around 3/11, even though it should be spring. But the weather reminds us of that day and everybody remembers those who died,” he said.

“At the same time, it is five years, so we shouldn’t just talk about gloomy things. We need to look forward and build a place where children can talk about their dreams.”

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Linda Sieg, Robert Birsel)

Japan’s nuclear refugees face bleak return five years after Fukushima

NARAHA (Reuters) – Tokuo Hayakawa carries a dosimeter around with him at his 600-year-old temple in Naraha, the first town in the Fukushima “exclusion zone” to fully reopen since Japan’s March 2011 catastrophe. Badges declaring “No to nuclear power” adorn his black Buddhist robe.

Hayakawa is one of the few residents to return to this agricultural town since it began welcoming back nuclear refugees five months ago.

The town, at the edge of a 12.5-mile evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, was supposed to be a model of reconstruction.

Five years ago, one of the biggest earthquakes in history shook the country’s northeast. The 33-foot tsunami it spawned smashed into the power plant on the Fukushima coastline triggering a meltdown and forcing nearby towns to evacuate. The disaster killed over 19,000 people across Japan and caused an estimated 16.9 trillion yen ($150 billion) in damages.

Only 440 of Naraha’s pre-disaster population 8,042 have returned – nearly 70 percent of them over 60.

“This region will definitely go extinct,” said the 76-year-old Hayakawa.

He says he can’t grow food because he fears the rice paddies are still contaminated. Large plastic bags filled with radioactive topsoil and detritus dot the abandoned fields.

With few rituals to perform at the temple, Hayakawa devotes his energies campaigning against nuclear power in Japan. Its 54 reactors supplied over 30 percent of the nation’s energy needs before the disaster.

Today, only three units are back in operation after a long shutdown following the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Others are looking to restart.

“I can’t tell my grandson to be my heir,” said Hayakawa, pointing at a photo of his now-teenaged grandson entering the temple in a full protective suit after the disaster. “Reviving this town is impossible,” he said. “I came back to see it to its death.”

That is bound to disappoint Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Rebuilding Naraha and other towns in the devastated northeast, he says, is crucial to reviving Japan.

Tokyo pledged 26.3 trillion ($232 billion) over five years to rebuild the disaster area and will allocate another 6 trillion for the next five years.

VANISHING TOWN

More than 160,000 people were evacuated from towns around the Daiichi nuclear plant. Around 10 percent still live in temporary housing across Fukushima prefecture. Most have settled outside their hometowns and have begun new lives.

In Naraha, two restaurants, a supermarket and a post office, housed in prefabricated shacks, make up the town’s main shopping center. The restaurants close at 3 p.m.

No children were in sight at Naraha’s main park overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a recent morning. Several elderly residents were at the boardwalk gazing at hundreds of bags stuffed with radioactive waste.

In fact, the bags are a common sight around town: in the woods, by the ocean, on abandoned rice fields.

Little feels normal in Naraha. Many homes damaged in the disaster have been abandoned. Most of the town’s population consists of workers. They are helping to shut down Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Daiichi reactors or working on decontamination projects around town.

Other workers are building a new sea wall, 8.7 meters high, along a nearly 2 km stretch of Naraha’s coast, similar to other sea walls under construction in the northeast.

A local golf course has been turned into dormitories for workers. Some families have rented their houses to workers.

“Naraha is a workers’ town now,” said Kiyoe Matsumoto, 63, a member of the town council, adding that her children and grandchildren have no plans to come home.

RADIATION LEVELS

The town’s future depends on young people returning, residents say. But only 12 below the age of 30 have returned as worries about radiation linger.

Radiation levels in Naraha ranged from 0.07 to 0.49 microsieverts per hour in January, or 0.61-4.3 millisieverts per year. That compares with the government’s goal of one millisievert a year and the 3 millisieverts a year the average person in the United States is exposed to annually from natural background radiation.

The significant drop in atmospheric radiation allowed the government to lift the evacuation order last Sept. 5 – “the clock that had been stopped began ticking again,” Japan’s Reconstruction Agency said on its website.

“It is hoped that the reconstruction of Naraha would be a model case for residents returning to fully evacuated towns,” the agency statement said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the town a month after that and repeated one of his favorite slogans: “Without reconstruction of Fukushima, there’s no reconstruction of Japan’s northeast. Without the reconstruction of the northeast, there’s no revival of Japan.”

But with few people coming back, there is little meaning in what the reconstruction department in Naraha does, said one town hall official who requested anonymity. “I don’t know why (Abe) came,” he said.

Back at his Buddhist temple, part of which he has turned into an office for his anti-nuclear campaign, Hayakawa called the idea Naraha could be a model of reconstruction “a big fat lie”.

“There’s no reconstructing and no returning to how it used to be before (March 11). The government knows this, too. A ‘model case’? That’s just words.”

($1 = 113.1100 yen)

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Pressure mounts on North Korea to abandon rocket launch

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – International pressure grew on North Korea to call off a planned rocket launch, seen by some governments as another missile test, while Japan put its military on alert to shoot down any rocket that threatens its territory.

North Korea notified United Nations agencies on Tuesday of its plan to launch what it called an “earth observation satellite” some time between Feb. 8 and 25.

Pyongyang has said it has a sovereign right to pursue a space program, although the United States and other governments suspect such rocket launches are tests of its missiles.

Japan’s defence minister, Gen Nakatani, told a media briefing on Wednesday he had issued an order to shoot down any “ballistic missile threat”.

Tension rose in East Asia last month after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, this time of what it said was a hydrogen bomb.

A rocket launch coming so soon after would raise concern that North Korea plans to fit nuclear warheads on its missiles, giving it the capability to launch a strike against South Korea, Japan and possibly targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.

North Korea last launched a long-range rocket in December 2012, sending an object it described as a communications satellite into orbit.

South Korea warned the North it would pay a “severe price” if it goes ahead with the launch.

“North Korea’s notice of the plan to launch a long-range missile, coming at a time when there is a discussion for (U.N.) Security Council sanctions on its fourth nuclear test, is a direct challenge to the international community,” the presidential Blue House said in a statement.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang was demonstrating “an outrageous disregard for the universally recognised norms of international law,” while France said the launch would merit a firm response from the international community.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged North Korea not to use ballistic missile technology, which is banned by Security Council resolutions.

‘EXTREMELY CONCERNED’

China, under U.S. pressure to use its influence to rein in the isolated North, said Pyongyang’s right to space exploration was restricted under U.N. resolutions.

China is North Korea’s sole main ally, though Beijing disapproves of its nuclear programme.

“We are extremely concerned about this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing on Wednesday.

“In the present situation, we hope North Korea exercises restraint on the issue of launching satellites, acts cautiously and does not take any escalatory steps that may further raise tensions on the Korean peninsula.”

Reports of the planned launch also drew fresh U.S. calls for tougher U.N. sanctions that are already under discussion in response to North Korea’s Jan. 6 nuclear test.

A spokeswoman for the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency, said it had been told by North Korea of the plan to launch a satellite.

The Washington-based North Korean monitoring project 38 North said commercial satellite images of North Korea’s Sohae launch site taken on Monday showed activity consistent with preparations for a launch within North Korea’s given timeframe, but no indications that this was imminent.

North Korea said the launch would be conducted in the morning one day during the announced period, and gave the coordinates for the locations where the rocket boosters and the cover for the payload would drop.

Those locations are expected to be in the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast and in the Pacific Ocean to the east of the Philippines, Pyongyang said.

South Korea told commercial airliners to avoid flying in areas of the rocket’s possible flight path during the period.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in Seoul, Ben Blanchard in Beijing and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Dean Yates and Jonathan Oatis)

Japan puts military on alert for possible North Korean missile test

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan has put its military on alert for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch after indications it is preparing for a test firing, two people with direct knowledge of the order told Reuters on Friday.

“Increased activity at North Korea’s missile site suggests that there may be a launch in the next few weeks,” said one of the sources, both of whom declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

Tension rose in East Asia this month after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, this time of what it said was a hydrogen bomb.

A missile test coming so soon after the nuclear test would raise concern that North Korea plans to fit nuclear warheads on its missiles, giving it the capability to launch a strike against rival South Korea, Japan and possibly targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.

Japan’s Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani has ordered Aegis destroyers that operate in the Sea of Japan to be ready to target any North Korean projectiles heading for Japan, the sources said.

A Defense Ministry spokesman declined to say whether PAC-3 batteries and the Aegis destroyers had been deployed to respond to any threat from North Korea.

Nakatani, asked in a press briefing whether Japan would shoot down any North Korean missile, said: “We will take steps to respond, but I will refrain from revealing specific measures given the nature of the situation.”

The advanced Aegis vessels are able to track multiple targets and are armed with SM-3 missiles designed to destroy incoming warheads in space before they re-enter the atmosphere and fall to there targets.

Japan also has Patriot PAC-3 missile batteries around Tokyo and other sites to provide a last line of defense as warheads near the ground.

Rather than a direct attack, however, Japan is more concerned that debris from a missile test could fall on its territory.

(Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Indonesia, Japan hit by magnitude 6.0-plus quakes 30 minutes apart

A pair of magnitude 6.0-plus earthquakes occurred within 30 minutes of each other on Tuesday.

Both earthquakes were located in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles apart. Neither earthquake produced reports of significant damage and no tsunami warnings were issued.

According to the United States Geological Survey, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred in the water between Indonesia and the Philippines at 12:38 a.m. local time. A half-hour later, the USGS reported a magnitude 6.2 earthquake deep below the Earth’s surface in the Sea of Japan.

The first quake was centered a few miles southeast of the Talaud Islands of Indonesia, and the USGS reported the tremors caused strong shaking there. While the quake was more than 100 miles away from larger cities, user-submitted data published on the USGS website indicated some people reported weak shaking approximately 200 miles away in Manado, Philippines.

The earthquake was triggered about 13 miles below the Earth’s surface, the USGS reported, while the earthquake that followed in Japan occurred at a much larger depth of 150 miles.

The Japan earthquake was centered about 46 miles northwest of Rumoi and 610 miles north of Tokyo. But because it occurred so far underground, those on the surface didn’t feel its full effect.

The Japan Meteorological Association reported most parts of the country experienced a 2 on its own seismic scale of 0-7, which usually carries only weak shaking and can be undetected by humans.

Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake Offshore of Japan

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Saturday off the coast of southwest Japan, triggering a small tsunami, followed by another 6.5 earthquake shortly after.  There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The USGS says the first quake struck at 5:51 a.m. local time, or 12:51 p.m. PDT, approximately 99 miles southwest of Makurazaki, Japan. The second one occurred 32 seconds later, 9 miles away.

There was no immediate tsunami danger to the U.S. West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska, the National Tsunami Warning Center said.

In 2011, a massive earthquake caused a tsunami that left more than 18,000 people dead or missing in north-eastern Japan.

Some 230,000 people have yet to return to their home towns since the disaster reported the BBC.

Japan, China, and South Korean Leaders to Revive Dialogue at First Summit in Three Years

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, and South Korean President Park Geun Hye will meet in Seoul on Sunday for the first summit between the three countries in since 2012.

While past historical issues will most likely be brought up, the leaders hope to move forward in order to boost stability in Northeast Asia and better relations with Tokyo, according to South Korean and Chinese officials. The Washington Post also reports that all three countries are concerned over North Korea and its nuclear capabilities and may discuss the matter at the meeting. However, Sunday’s meeting is said to be a first step toward burying the past.

“None of them wants to be seen stonewalling the cooperation,” said Shin Kawashima, a University of Tokyo professor of international studies. They all have soft spots “so they want to find a comfortable middle ground,” he told Fox News.

And it is a tricky situation for the three Asian powers as Tokyo does not want to discuss history, Beijing, for political reasons, can’t be too friendly with Japan, and Seoul doesn’t want the U.S. to think they are getting too close to China.

Reuters reports that the bad blood between the nations are due to past wartimes when China and South Korea suffered under Japan’s colonial rule and brutal occupation before Japan was defeated in 1945.

Japan Abandons Pacifism

Japan has moved away from their stance of post-World War II pacifism by voting to end the ban on troops fighting on foreign soil.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pushing for the easing of the rules on the military, allowing the nation to now provide support to an ally who is coming under attack.  The move has been criticized by Chinese officials and is not popular with many Japanese voters.

“There is no change in the general principle that we cannot send troops overseas,” Abe told a televised news conference.

The decision has caused the largest protests in Toyko in decades.

Japanese officials say the move allows the nation to be more of an influence in the Asia/Pacific region.  The move was hailed by U.S. officials who want to see Japan become more of a player in the region’s politics.  The U.S. maintains a treaty to defend Japan if attacked.

“This decision is an important step for Japan as it seeks to make a greater contribution to regional and global peace and security,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement.  “The United States has an enduring interest in the Asia-Pacific’s peace and prosperity, and our alliance with Japan is critical to our strategy in the region.”

Analysts say that the move shows the growth of the nation since World War II.

“Japan is like the 42-year-old kid still living in the basement of the United States,” longtime Asia strategist Keith Henry told CNN.

“Conservative governments have pushed the envelope hard and often to get the public to agree to a more elastic interpretation of article 9 (which renounces war). Abe is taking a bigger leap and getting away with it, thanks to the Chinese,” Columbia University political science professor Gerry Curtis told Reuters.

Japan’s Mount Aso Erupts Without Warning

One of the world’s largest volcanos erupted without warning Monday morning.

Mount Aso, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, exploded without any warning tremors and is sending a plume of ash and smoke over a mile into the sky.

A group of 30 tourists who were near the crater at the time of the blast were safely recovered by police.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency raised the alert level for one of the mountain’s peaks to level 3 on a 5 level scale, meaning that the public should avoid the mountain out of fear of hot rocks shooting from the plume.

The volcano, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, has produced more explosive eruptions than any other volcano in the world.  The caldera of the mountain is 12 miles in diameter and has smaller active peaks in the middle.

A 2.5 mile exclusion zone is now in effect around the mountain.  The area includes restaurants and museums but no residential homes.  All flights from nearby Kumanoto Airport have been cancelled or re-routed.

Three Deaths in Japan Flooding

Japanese officials reported that three people have been confirmed dead in massive flooding that drove over 170,000 people from their homes.

Officials say that one woman was found dead in her floating car in Miyagi Prefecture.  Two deaths took place in Tochigi Prefecture, one from a landslide and the other from drowning.

The flooding caused by remnants of Tropical Storm Etau has caused nearly 30 injuries and 22 people are still listed as missing.  At least 180 people were still waiting for rescue from the stricken city of Joso, inundated with flood waters after the Kinugawa River jumped its banks.

The storm dumped more than 2 feet of rain in some areas.  Residents have reported over 6,500 homes have been flooded.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has raised the flood warning level for both the Yoshida river in Miyagi Prefecture and the Mogamiogumi River in Yamagata Prefecture to “level 5”, the highest possible.  Residents have been told to flee the area.

The city of Sendai, with more than 400,000 residents, has been told to prepare for evacuation.

The areas hit by the flood waters are in the path of another storm that could bring another four inches of rain over the next 36 hours.