Editorial from The Japan Times  |  Monday, April 11, 2011

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After studying ancient rocks, a Japanese geologist warned that a disaster was imminent -- to no avail.
From the Wall Street Journal  |  By Peter Landers  |  April 09, 2011

The giant tsunami that assaulted northern Japan's coast surprised just about everyone. But Masanobu Shishikura was expecting it. The thought that came to mind, he says, was "yappari," a Japanese word meaning roughly, "Sure enough, it happened."

"It was the phenomenon just as I had envisioned it," says the 41-year-old geologist, who has now become the Japanese Cassandra. Dr. Shishikura's studies of ancient earth layers persuaded him that every 450 to 800 years, colliding plates in the Pacific triggered waves that devastated areas around the modern city of Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture, as well as in Fukushima Prefecture.

One early tsunami was known to historians. Caused by the 869 Jogan quake, its waves, according to one chronicle, killed 1,000 people. Dr. Shishikura had found strong evidence of a later tsunami in the same region, which probably took place between 1300 and 1600.

The mayor of the isolated Japanese city of Minamisoma, Katsunobu Sakurai, speaks to Irish Times reporter and Japan resident, David McNeill 

LIKE MOST Japanese men, Katsunobu Sakurai read apocalyptic comic-book stories about the future when he was a boy. He never expected to live through one of those stories.

A common plot sees a modern city reduced overnight to a ghostly husk as fears of nuclear contamination empty it of people. Businesses shut and food, water and petrol run out. Old people left behind begin to die. The city mayor makes a desperate televised appeal for help. Such is real life in Sakurai’s city of Minamisoma.

More than 71,000 people lived here before March 11th. Today there are fewer than 10,000. About 1,470 are dead or missing, the remainder are scattered throughout Japan in more than 300 different locations, “as far as we can tell”, says Sakurai, who took over as mayor in January.

Dangling from his neck are two radiation counters, a reminder that the nightmare that descended on his city last month has yet to end.

Nation must pool wisdom to prepare for 'unforeseeable'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

About a month has passed since a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern and eastern parts of the nation. A powerful aftershock, measuring upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7, jolted the region Thursday, causing power outages over a wide area.

People affected by the disaster have surely passed many long, hard days, unable to feel completely at ease.

The number of people killed or unaccounted for in the wake of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake now stands at more than 27,000.

As many as 460,000 people were evacuated to shelters at one time. The number has been decreasing--some returned to their homes after the water receded, some are staying with relatives, and others have moved outside their home prefectures in group relocations.

However, more than 150,000 people are still living in shelters.

We hope local governments will maintain close contact with disaster victims and continue to extend all necessary support, including housing, goods, medical care and employment.

To the list of destructive forces that have wracked Japan — earthquake, tsunami, radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant — can be added liquefaction, a phenomenon that occurs when the earth’s violent shaking forces sand particles, once packed tightly, to shift apart and allow water to seep in.

Moments after the quake, Urayasu literally began sinking into the ocean.

“It was like we were surfing,” said Chiharu Asami, 58, who operates a newspaper delivery service. “We could see the ground shaking and the telephone pillar sank two meters. The muddy water came right away, up to my ankles. Even when the water went away, the mud stayed for a week.”

David Nakamura  | The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 06, 2011

URAYASU, JAPAN — Nearly four weeks after Japan's great earthquake, most of the 100,000 residents of this low-lying seaside town still have no plumbing. They relieve themselves in plastic bags — mixing in chemicals to harden the waste and hide the smell — and throw the bags into the garbage. Fortunately, trash collection, unlike sewage, water and gas services, has not been disrupted.

As the earth continues to shake in Japan, researchers int the United States are looking at the country's ground soil, to figure out how the United States can better protect itself during future earthquakes certain to strike the US, West Coast.

"I'm a member of an organization, the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Organization," said U.C. Davis Professor Ross Boulanger, Ph.D.

Boulanger recently led a team of researchers in Japan, looking at how the dramatic earthquake compromised the ground in neighborhoods around Tokyo.

The main culprit is liquefaction -- the same phenomenon that caused so much damage and sparked a huge fire in San Francisco's Marina District during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

"That's the soil taking on the appearance of a liquid. It's weak and soft at that point. That's why structures can move and deform on it," said Boulanger.

Boulanger took some photos in the Kanto plains region north of Tokyo. They show tanks that floated to the surface, roads that sank, structures left leaning as much as 3 degrees and others that settled well below ground level.

"The serious problem in some of these areas is the fact it breaks all the utilities, everything that is underground. So you have thousands of homes with no gas, no water and no sewer," said Boulanger.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato has expressed anger at the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., saying both "betrayed" the people of Fukushima Prefecture with repeated assurances about the safety of nuclear power plants.

"We feel we were betrayed [by the central government and TEPCO]," Sato said during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun on Thursday, nearly a month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the outbreak of a series of accidents at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant.

"The central government and TEPCO repeatedly told us, 'Nuclear power plants are safe because they've got multiple protection systems,' and, 'Earthquake-proof measures have been taken,'" Sato said.

"TEPCO used the term 'beyond our expectations' [to describe the natural disaster], but they can't establish effective policies for nuclear energy safety unless they take into account things that are beyond their expectations," Sato said.

Sato pointed out that more than 100,000 evacuees remain in a state of high anxiety, worrying about radiation exposure every day. "I want to cry out: 'Do the government and TEPCO understand our feelings?'"

"I'd like to tackle the rehabilitation [of disaster areas] based not on the idea of recreating Tohoku as it was before, but of creating a much better Tohoku and Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan

According to government sources, Prime Minister Naoto Kan also has decided to appoint the governors of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures--the three most severely damaged by the disaster--to ensure voices from the private sector and disaster areas are heard.

Kan is personally selecting members of the recovery initiative commission, which is to be launched Monday, one month after the disaster.

National Defense Academy President Makoto Iokibe has been informally appointed panel chairman. Members also likely will include Keio University President Atsushi Seike and Takashi Mikuriya, a professor of political science at the University of Tokyo.

"I'd like to tackle the rehabilitation [of disaster areas] based not on the idea of recreating Tohoku as it was before, but of creating a much better Tohoku and Japan," Kan told Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai, who visited the Prime Minister's Office on Friday.

Architect Tadao Ando and scriptwriter Makiko Uchidate will be among the members of a government panel that will draft recovery programs for areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, it has been learned.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has spurred the government to restrict rice planting in soil with more than 5,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, the first time maximum radiation levels have been set for soil.

Radioactive cesium levels exceeding 5,000 becquerels per kilogram have been detected in farmland close to the nuclear plant and farmers in these areas will likely be barred from growing rice this season, government sources said.

The Fukushima prefectural government announced Wednesday that rice paddies in Iitatemura have shown as much as 15,031 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. Part of Iitatemura is within 20 kilometers to 30 kilometers of the plant, where residents have been instructed to stay indoors.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said it plans to decide on the rice planting restrictions after conducting soil inspections and consulting with the prefecture. According to the ministry, rice production in Fukushima is fourth in the nation at about 450,000 tons.

In the battle to contain radiation spewing from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station, Japanese authorities have deployed helicopters, riot-police water cannon and a 58-metre steel hose-arm normally used to spray concrete into high-rise construction sites.

Jakarta Post | Sunday 04/10/2011

ASEAN has offered Japan assistance in strategic policies to help the country recover from an earthquake and tsunami in March that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

“We meet today [Saturday] to enhance cooperation and respond quickly at a time when one of us faces a grave disaster,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the Indonesia-initiated ASEAN-Japan meeting at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta on Saturday.

“Indonesia believes that a nation such as Japan, which has a strong work ethic, advanced science and technology and a good system in mitigating disasters, will be able to recover and rehabilitate itself quickly.”

He said Southeast Asia and Japan, which were prone to natural disasters, needed to cooperate with and strengthen solidarity with each other.

After the two-hour meeting, Indonesian foreign minister and current chair of ASEAN, Marty Natalegawa, said ASEAN foreign ministers and their representatives expressed their sympathy, solidarity and support to the government and people of Japan in their recovery and reconstruction efforts.