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    Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People
    Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People
    Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People

    By Leslie E. Corrice

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    This is the dark, depressing story of Japan's 300,000 tsunami refugees. On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake struck Japan. Soon after, a huge tsunami inundated a 400 kilometer stretch of Main Island’s northeast coast. Nearly 500,000 people fled from the onrushing torrent. More than 20,000 were died. Over 300,000 residents lost everything – their homes and all belongings – swept away by the raging torrent. Within a week, news concerning the tsunami refuges had vanished from the popular Press, supplanted by the evolving nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. While the Press regularly reminds the world of the plight of Fukushima’s evacuees, virtually nothing is reported concerning the dire situation with the tsunami refugees. This story follows the chain of events in Tokyo and at Fukushima Daiichi that deflected international attention away from the aftermath of Japan's worst natural disaster. It also reports the situation along the Tohoku coast two years following the disaster, which has been largely ignored by the Press inside and outside Japan. This book explains why and how the tsunami refugees have become Kimin: Japan’s Forgotten People…a moral disaster which demands to be told.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9780985769932
    Kimin: Japan's Forgotten People

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      Kimin - Leslie E. Corrice

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      Preface

      In the pleasant, early-spring mid-afternoon of March 11, 2011, the worst natural disaster in Japan’s recorded history struck with startling suddenness. First came an unprecedented earthquake of roughly 9 on the Richter scale, centered about 120 kilometers off-shore of Miyagi Prefecture. The quake was caused by the sudden release of tension along the off-shore continental subduction zone. The prompt movement sent a powerful hydraulic pulse in all directions, moving along the deep seabed. As the pulse neared the Northeastern coastline (Tohoku), it rose up along the ever-shallowing sea-floor and produced a giant tsunami. Wave heights differed along the northeastern Japan seacoast according to variations in undersea topography and the shape of the coastline. In the locations where the hydraulic pulse was concentrated and amplified by these features, the wave peaks were from 10 to 40 meters high! However, the majority of the Tohoku region’s coastline experienced waves between 6 and 8 meters high, which were lower but considerable and often deadly. While most towns, cities and industrial facilities along the shore had erected various types of anti-tsunami barriers, about two-thirds were woefully insufficient and the dark, surging waters swamped everything in its path. Entire communities were washed away. Buildings were toppled. Vast tracts of agricultural land were inundated. And, the loss of life was horrific.

      It took nearly a year for the death tolls to be verified. Now, more than two years on, 16,000 have been confirmed dead. Nearly 4,000 are missing and presumed dead. About 2,000 died due to the chaotic coastal evacuation and inadequate medical facilities for the aged, infirmed and severely injured. Plus, the tsunami left behind nearly 33 million tons of debris and rubble. More than 475,000 people had fled when the tsunami warning was issued soon after the earthquake’s violent shaking had ceased. Roughly 315,000 would never be able to go back home because their domiciles were wither swept away or utterly destroyed. Videos taken by local citizens on their smart phones chronicled the catastrophe as it progressed. A horrified nation, and much of the rest of the world, watched in stunned amazement.

      Several hours after the waters receded, something began to evolve which, when considered in hindsight, boggles the mind. The tsunami had caused a full electrical blackout at the nuclear power station called Fukushima Daiichi. At first, the situation at F. Daiichi took second-stage to the dreadfulness inflicted by the tsunami. However, within 48 hours of the tsunami, the nuclear accident at Fukushima became the lead story in Japan and around the world. Within a week, the aftermath of the tsunami was a non-story and the nuclear crisis consumed the post-tsunami Press. A tsunami’s horrid aftermath had been relegated to the back seat of the informational bus, while the hypothetical risks of low level radiation exposure and exaggerated what-if scenarios of an impending nuclear apocalypse filled the headlines of Japan and the world. The government in Tokyo also focused on the Fukushima accident rather than address the situation with respect to the tsunami. Now, two years after the fact, the consequences of the tsunami and the plight of over 300,000 refugees begin to emerge. It is a dark and depressing story.

      Promises made by the Tokyo government have not been met. Entire communities have been turned into, and remain an empty wasteland. The refugees have become depressed and angry because their depressing situation has been ignored due to a nuclear accident that killed no-one. How could such a thing have happened? The refugees of the 3/11/11 tsunami need to have their story told.

      Chapter 1 - The Great East Japan Earthquake

      On March 11, 2011, the main island of Japan...Honshu...was rocked by the most powerful earthquake in recorded Japanese history, measuring at approximately 9.0 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was located about 120 kilometers east of the northern Honshu region known as Tohoku. The intense shaking and ground motion caused wide-spread impacts covering all or parts of 20 prefectures (Japan’s term for states), collapsing numerous homes and businesses, while triggering soil liquification as far south as Tokyo. The majority of the destroyed structures were wooden, but even concrete buildings erected before 1981 suffered varying degrees of damage. All steel-reinforced concrete structures built after the 1981 revision of the national building code survived. At least 350 fires, mostly due to ruptured gas lines, were reported and tended-to by Japanese fire companies. (AON) The force of the temblor moved Honshu nearly 2.5 meters closer to North America and lowered a 400 kilometer stretch of the Pacific coastline as much as 2 feet. Roughly 125 major landslides occurred on the steep slopes near the Pacific Ocean. The total energy released by the quake was estimated to be 600 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

      A 400-kilometer-long segment of the subduction zone paralleling the Tohoku coast, about 120 kilometers off-shore, had literally let go and displaced the upper-most plate somewhere between 30 and 40 meters from its pre-quake location, in the direction of the Tohoku shoreline. The underlying plate slipped two-thirds of a meter to the east, sliding below the upper plate. Japan’s historical record, tracing back about 450 years, had registered nothing like this. The maximum credible earthquake for the zone was assumed to be ~8.3 Richter scale, roughly five times less severe than the actual quake of 3/11/11. A geologic anomaly in the Tohoku bedrock indicated an 8.9 Richter Scale quake in 869 AD, but the evidence was not considered verifiable so it was not incorporated in the Japan National Seismic Hazard Maps, which were used for technical criteria related to building codes. A series of roughly 7-Richter-scale tremors had occurred off the Tohoku coast over a two-day period before March 11, but none had produced any measurable tsunamic activity. (RMS; AON) Regardless, it was the fourth-most-severe earthquake registered anywhere in the world since 1900.

      Perhaps the worst quake impact was on the Tohoku region’s electrical power infrastructure, which was devastated. A total blackout, lasting for days to weeks, plagued all of Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi Prefectures along the Pacific coastline. All nuclear plants in the region had shut down automatically, and all non-nuclear thermal power plants failed with swift suddenness. Transmission towers along the coast were severely buckled, and some collapsed, snapping the high voltage lines. Rolling blackouts were implemented along the coastline, as well as inland, for many months while the transmission system was repaired.

      Three nuclear power stations – Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Daini and Onagawa (Miyagi Prefecture) were the ones most severely shaken by the quake because of their relative proximity to the temblor’s epicenter. The operating reactors at the three locations automatically shut down, the reactor core’s fission chain reactions rapidly quenched (SCRAM), and all off-site electrical power supplies were severed due to the destruction to the electrical infrastructure along the eastern Tohoku coast. All nuclear power plants have emergency power systems which start automatically at the first detection of a serious power loss. The emergency diesels at all three eastern Tohoku nuclear stations started and supplied emergency power – exactly as the systems were designed to do. Millions of people in the Tohoku region were suddenly experiencing an electrical blackout due to the quake, but the nukes were

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