This is what I found recently as memories on Facebook, of all places, written while I was covering Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility operating the nuclear power plant in Fukushima that sank into meltdowns after the March 11, 2011 tsunami. I didn’t even remember having written this. It brings back memories so horrible they are almost absurd, even comical, if they weren’t so real and literally catastrophic. I don’t remember why I didn’t share these 12 posts on my then brand new web site, although I went on to write a whole play about the nuclear disaster: NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA. What made the TEPCO Correspondence so endearing, while also chilling, to read for me now is that, well, it all really happened. I was there, every day, watching the events unfold, filing the news, all the while praying Japan would be saved. But in retrospect, we were lucky as reporters. At least we were busy. One day, a TEPCO official in charge of media runs into the room, where all the media people practically lived at that time in TEPCO headquarters. He comes in running and shouting that a system at one of the reactors has broken down. There might be yet another meltdown. All we do is busily file alerts. But then he runs back in again, shouting: It’s fixed. It’s fixed. I’m telling you: A big cheer went up in that room. Sometimes there are moments like that. When what is happening is bigger than the next news story, and all we can do is rejoice as people.
TEPCO Correspondence: Notes From a Writer Beyond the Headlines
By YURI KAGEYAMA
April 2011
1
Heard at TEPCO: Company spokesman Junichi Matsumoto’s description of “a meltdown,” when asked by a reporter for “an image” _ “The core is DORO DORO gooey and BOTA BOTA drip-drop melting to the bottom of the reactor.”
2
On my way to NISA, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, from Kasumigaseki subway station, I pass by the bookstore that sells government reports and booklets. The shop window had a big poster for a book about nuclear power that said: “Peaceful Energy.” It made me want to cry.
3
Japanese are sensitive to the fears about radiation. Our nation is the only one in the world to have experienced atomic bombings. I have grown up hearing horror stories and seeing photos not only of charred bodies, disfiguring burns and skeletal buildings but also about illnesses that crept up years later, sometimes extending over generations.
4
That is why the poster is touting the glories of nuclear power as “peaceful.”
5
We have been told there is a five-layer protection against radioactive leaks at nuclear plants _ the pellets are encased in coatings, and inside rods that are in a vessel, which in turn is inside another chamber, and that is encased in a building. The building bit is what blew up to bits at reactors 1 and 3 shortly after the March 11 tsunami.
6
So there goes that layer.
7
The pellets are believed to be doing all that doro doro and bota bota inside the core. So much for those layers. The massive leak of highly radioactive water near reactor 2 means without a doubt that the chamber layer has been compromised, if not something even closer to the pellets.
8
So where are those five layers of safety that were supposed to protect the people of Japan?
How could they have said there would be a fivefold guarantee of safety if all the layers were so fragile?
9
There is talk of unifying the now separate news conferences by NISA amd TEPCO on the nuclear crisis. NISA spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said there were complaints about inconsistencies in the message. I hope they take all the questions. With so many parties involved, on such a complex topic, coverage is likely to remain arduous.
10
For the first few weeks after March 11, TEPCO officials kept telling us: This is not Three Mile Island.
As Fukushima Daiicihi began spewing highly radioactive water into the sea and radiation was detected in spinach, tap water and the air we breathe, they stopped saying that.
11
But they kept telling us: This is not Chernobyl.
The government declared FD a Level 7, the same as Chernobyl, on April 12.
They no longer tell us what this is not _ they just look sad and helpless.
12
Some reporters are frustrated by the briefings at TEPCO, the flipflopping, the don’t knows, evasive answers, sometimes the wrong numbers, off by a few decimal points. “Is this Iwo Jima?” one angry reporter said. “Maybe all we can hope for is a kamikaze (divine wind) to blow and save us,” another said sadly.
Tokyo Correspondence: Notes From a Writer Beyond the Headlines
I kept a blog from 2007 before I started this site in 2011. Here’s the link below. I’m also sharing after this TEPCO CORRESPONDENCE: Notes From a Writer Beyond the Headlines. Those are my posts on Facebook in 2011, while I was covering the utility behind the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s amazing to run across bits of your past self _ and what you wrote then. Both so clearly you and not you at all. Yet totally the truth. And all that makes you you.
Having just returned from visiting the U.S., I was struck by how bathrooms (both toilets and bathing facilities) are really super nice in Japan _ clean, everything works, the hot water actually comes out in ample quantity, the tiles aren’t cracked, overall pleasant design/appearance if not just outright intelligent etc. _ and all this is available for those living in cheap housing, staying at affordable at hotels/inns, and of course public spaces.
When you think about what Freud theorizes, the state of toilets speaks a lot about the thinking in a society, about its views on “equaltity,” what is treasured, and the innermost darkest obsessions. (maybe, anyway).
Here ICYMI is the AP Story I did when the Wim Wenders project was first announced and he talks about the film’s setting and the deep meaning of “restrooms”
This came from a corner of my desk when I was cleaning up recently. It’s a letter I wrote to Isaku as part of a school requirement. I still like this letter, and I will keep it.
Spring 1998
Isaku
When you were still unborn, you were already someone I knew very well. I could feel you thinking inside my stomach, sucking on your thumb, looking at your tiny toes, jumping with surprise _ with me _ when something startling happened, like a dog barking out of the blue.
I hope I don’t embarrass you with this letter, which Brother John O’Donnell tells me you will have to read before your schoolmates. But I would like you to know that I love you very much. And nothing will change that, ever.
These days, I feel you are sometimes unsure about your future. That’s understandable. Like other Sophomores, you are still so young, yet important decisions are coming up on you fast.
Having two nationalities, two cultures and languages may seem a bit confusing, but it merely opens up more choices for you. You don’t have to close the doors of opportunity too hastily. You have plenty of time. Be strong and believe in yourself, although it is OK to be weak, and you are not alone. Many people, including your teachers and friends who care about you, are there to help you.
I hope you do your best in your studies and try to grow up to be a fine young man. The world is a beautiful place, but it is filled with many problems and needs young people like you to care and at least give it a good try to bring about a change for the better.
I thank God every day for making you part of my life. I thank God for keeping you safe.
It is only after becoming a mother and watching you gradually grow into adulthood that I finally know why God chose to come to us as a little boy who grew up among us. He knew that would make it so easy for us to love Him. It seems such a very simple and so obvious a fact, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
NEWS FROM FUKUSHIMA: Meditation On An Under-Reported Catastrophe By A Poet is an Official Selection. Screening at LetLive Theater in Los Angeles SAT March 2, 2024 7:30 p.m. I am happy, grateful, honored. Thanks to my theater and film directors, Carla Blank and Yoshiaki Tago, my brilliant tireless multicultural cast, my dedicated crew and team, everyone who stuck with and believed in my writing.
This is something I just happened to find in my desk, typed up (yes, typed _ remember those days?). It’s an essay about why I am a reporter, and why I report in the English language that I wrote I think in the 1980s. Perhaps I was applying for work? It is long before I joined The AP. I am not changing the wording, but have put it down exactly the way it is typed on the sheet of paper, except for the four changes made in red in pen that were already there. I might write it differently today. But I feel exactly the same. So here goes:
Ever since I can remember, I have been of both worlds _ American and Japanese. As a child of a Japanese “salaryman” who had dreams of pioneering science by crossing borders, years before the Japanese business Establishment decided “internationalization” was fashionable, I was constantly thrust back and forth between two very different, sometimes clashing, cultures.
I will not pretend that the experience was always pleasant. It was often stunning, confusing and painful. One moment, for instance, I was expected to be the submissive, demure Japanese girl, who laughed shyly covering her mouth. The next moment, I found myself having to turn into an assertive, no-nonsense American, who could outtalk and outperform any male.
Gradually I have come to accept this dichotomy. In a sense, I now cherish it as a privilege. I took to switching cultural allegiance for convenience. I would claim my “Japaneseness” when watching Ennosuke Ichikawa Kabuki, but I would, with no qualms, claim “Americanhood” while appreciating soul rhythms at an Earth, Wind and Fire concert.
It is, after all, an eyeopener to perceive that many of society’s rules are arbitrary. What passes as positive in one culture may be absolutely taboo in another, and vice versa. As a perpetual outsider, one can see through much of the false pretentious aspects of social norms and values and hope to grasp more accurately the universal human essence.
Reporting in English about Japanese matters, therefore, came naturally to me. Explaining the East to the West has been my persistent pastime. It is something I do well, I think, because it is part of my fate.
Earlier this year, I flew to Iwo Jima to cover the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s annual services for the war dead there. The sandy island speckled with gnarled tropical vegetation appeared, at first glance, barren except for the military bases.
Yet, upon closer inspection, strange voices seemed to fill the hot, dry air _ chants verging on song, rising and falling. So many people, both American and Japanese, have died here, the voices seemed to be saying. Their blood covers this island. Even if it has been washed away, the fact of history that thousands died here will never be erased, the windlike voices were saying.
Two monuments stand on Iwo Jima _ the one put up by Americans with the Stars and Stripes and the other of gray stone built by Japanese with a graphic depiction of the map of Japan. As though staring into two alien worlds with unmoving granite eyes, the two monuments remain apart on opposite sides of the same hill.
The visit held a revelation for me. Obviously, Japan and the U.S. are two separate countries that have even waged war against one another. Today, many of the misunderstanding and barriers that divide the two nations are still close to insurmountable. But thanks to a slightly aberrant upbringing, the two worlds are totally at peace within myself.
It is this unconditional yet effortless peace between Japan and America I know so intimately that I want to keep in mind when I work as a reporter.