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00:07It's a very ordinary day.
00:08Friday, March 11th, 2011, started as a very ordinary day.
00:28There was this big, deep, bass rumbling.
00:37We had no idea what was going on.
00:53And then we were just watching this wave, thinking, oh my goodness, this is really bad.
01:06This is really bad.
01:19At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of the workers was handling radioactive waste and all the lights go
01:28out.
01:37Suddenly we were at the center of the world's biggest story.
01:41.
01:46.
02:15So, yeah, I managed to find my...
02:18..so, a portfolio.
02:2125th of January, 2011,
02:23so about two months before it happened.
02:28I was nine years old. I was born in Japan.
02:32So even though my mum and dad are French and English,
02:35I would say, sort of, in my heart,
02:36because I lived there for 13 years, I was born there, I grew up there,
02:39I would say, at heart, I'm Japanese.
02:47I was the Tokyo bureau chief for the Financial Times newspaper.
02:52I'd been working there for a few years,
02:54having been a correspondent in China and Taiwan,
02:58in the region as well.
03:01Japan has a very distinct and very interesting society
03:06and a very rich culture,
03:09so it's a great place to live and work.
03:17Around 300 kilometres north of Tokyo
03:20lies the coastal city of Ishinomaki.
03:27Richard Halberstadt taught English at the university.
03:32I was born in Reading, in the UK,
03:34but I've lived in Japan for over 30 years now,
03:38here in Ishinomaki City.
03:43Ishinomaki is the very typical small city.
03:49Its main industry is fisheries,
03:51and the reason I came to like it
03:53is not so much because of the place,
03:55but because of the people who were really warm and welcoming.
04:08Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
04:28Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
04:41So I got to go back to my house and my wife and my mother, and my mother, and my
04:46mother, and my children, and my children.
05:00March 11th is spring vacation for the university, so we weren't teaching or anything like that.
05:07But for some reason, I don't know why, when I woke up, I didn't really have much to do at
05:12the university, but thought I'd go in anyway.
05:29And then, I think I went to school.
05:44It was just like any other Friday.
05:47My brother, he was three years old, I think.
05:52So then he was still going to nursery.
05:54I was getting ready for primary school.
05:56And my mom would cycle me.
06:00I loved school a lot.
06:02We had Karaoke Friday, which was a thing we had in the afternoons that I was really looking forward to.
06:07It was really fun.
06:16It had actually been a fairly quiet period for news in Japan.
06:20And one of my colleagues was wondering when things would heat up again and we'd start getting articles in decent
06:26places in the paper.
06:29We had no idea what was going to happen next.
06:37Along the coast, 40 kilometres west of Ishinomaki, is the sprawling city of Sendai.
06:45Where Yu Muroga was preparing for an afternoon, delivering medical supplies.
06:55where they were on the road.
06:57So they went to school.
06:59And that they had been kicked out of the house.
07:03And they'd have a lot of time.
07:03So they'd be in the business, and they'd have to take a lot of time to work.
07:16This is a system that can be recorded for 24 hours, and it is also a high-quality video camera.
07:28I was able to set up a camera on the front of the car.
07:35When I entered the signal at the front of the car,
07:40the car was going to hit.
07:46I felt like the engine was knocking on the car.
07:58I was sitting at my desk in our office building on the 21st floor in the Hibiya business district
08:07and suddenly I felt the rattling and the beginning of the swaying.
08:27It started to tremble, it started to shake.
08:33All the way from nursing we would do drills, we would practice going underneath the tables,
08:39going to frames, like door frames, as a way to protect.
08:44The teacher just said, all right, everyone, there's no desks, no tables in that room,
08:47so just huddle together in the middle of the room and we'll just wait for it to pass.
09:08When the shaking started, then it was just so bad that I had to just clutch hold of my desk
09:17to just stay standing.
09:27All the books were flying off my shelves, which was pretty terrifying.
09:38And when it goes by and it's still continuing to shake and then the trembling gets worse and worse and
09:44stronger.
09:47I had a fan that was above my head and a screw came loose and so it was just flinging.
09:53And this, that one screw that was left.
09:56And I was thinking for myself, I hope that doesn't fall on me.
10:06It was very quickly apparent that this was a powerful earthquake and it was growing in power.
10:24The magnitude 9 earthquake was the strongest ever recorded in Japan.
10:30Local government officer Teruo Okono was working near Ishinomaki.
10:44北上総合署という市役所の文書というところで地域振興のお仕事をしていました。
10:52The staff were so angry and silent.
10:57and they were so angry.
11:02They were so angry.
11:05I've experienced a little bit of a揺れ.
11:08The time was 3 minutes earlier.
11:25That's when I think, when everything just got worse,
11:30it started to drag on for a while, and the shaking became much worse,
11:34and then we could see our teachers' expressions,
11:36that that's when I think we knew something was wrong.
11:53We didn't realise how bad this was and how bad it was going to be.
12:00Of course, I worried about my mum and my dad,
12:03but I remember my main worry at the time was my brother,
12:07because he was at nursery.
12:10And just, you don't know how your family is.
12:15You don't know if they're safe, if they've been injured.
12:24I mean, the power of the earthquake was extraordinary,
12:27and we in Tokyo felt it as something extraordinary,
12:32but if you were along the coast, much closer to the epicentre,
12:36it was, for many people, absolutely terrifying.
12:42And right on that coast sat one of the world's largest nuclear power stations, Fukushima Daiichi.
12:53Decontamination worker Yukio Shirahige was in a building at the edge of the site.
12:58I was on the scene of the scene.
13:05I was on the scene of the scene of the scene.
13:11I think it's been a bit of a disaster.
13:16It's been a disaster.
13:18It's been a disaster.
13:21It's been a disaster.
13:42When the earthquake hit
13:54safety systems automatically shut down the three active reactors so very crudely the earthquake caused damage to the plant but
14:09nothing that alone would have caused a crisis
14:15For example one part is that it destroyed a pylon and broke the connection that the plant had to the
14:23national grid
14:24And it's one of the features of nuclear power plants of the type used at Fukushima Daiichi that they need
14:35electricity to keep the reactors and the spent fuel that's kept in cooling ponds cool
14:44After the chain reaction has stopped it needs to be cooled down for a long time
14:52Even though there was no power coming in from outside there were emergency generators starting to kick in and providing
15:02an electricity to pumping the coolant of the reactor
15:09With diesel generators keeping the fuel cool plant operators hoped the worst was over
15:18But the six minute long quake left the whole country on edge
15:25When the shaking eventually stopped
15:30I think the teachers were trying to figure out what to do
15:34I'd asked my teachers if I could be let go and they said yep that's fine
15:38So I got my bicycle and I started to cycle to my mum's office to try and find her
15:46As I'm trying to get up this hill I just remember feeling this panic of
15:52It doesn't matter if something falls on me it falls on me I've just got I've got to get to
15:56my mum's office
15:59I wasn't sitting on my bicycle I was standing trying to get there as quickly as possible
16:07Trying to dodge through people who are coming out into the streets as well
16:11And just feeling this feeling of panic and I need to get to my mum
16:15I need to get to my mum
16:22300 kilometres north in coastal Sendai City
16:28Umaroga was still on the road
16:43Umaroga was still on the road
16:44I don't know if it's for the first time
16:45I had no idea of thinking about that
16:46So it wasn't easy to find out
16:47I was afraid to find out
16:49The first time that I was free
16:49It was not even within the road
16:49In doe a lot of lonely people
16:50It was too hard to find out
16:51And if it was one day
16:52After all, this time I just had to find out
16:53The road
16:53I had to find out
16:53I managed to try to find out
16:55That's going to be hard
17:02I feel like the wind was still on the ground.
17:07I felt like the wind was still on the ground.
17:15The wind was still on the ground and the wind was still on the ground.
17:20I felt that I was worried about it.
17:34We didn't have any news. We had no idea what was going on. And I didn't really have a chance
17:43to be worried about anyone because everything was just happening all at the same time.
17:48And it was all so surreal that we were kind of just more occupied with coping for ourselves.
17:56Riyoko Endo was on the fifth floor of the hospital.
18:00It was a big explosion, and there were a lot of things.
18:05The patients were scared, so we were scared.
18:10It was a lot of danger, but we had a lot of problems with the patient.
18:13We were able to remove them from the hospital, and we were able to remove them from the hospital.
18:20And we were able to remove them from the empty room.
18:21I think we were able to lose them from just one hour.
18:25We were able to remove them from a hospital.
18:30my mom's office is on the fourth floor of the office building but the lifts aren't working so
18:38I was running up the stairs and I remember just bursting into her office it was such a relief
18:47to see her I just ran straight into her arms and I think I just cried we cycled home together
18:55and and I remember seeing my brother and that feeling of thank goodness he's alright the
19:09earthquake's epicenter was traced to the ocean floor around 80 kilometers east of Ishinomaki
19:17so the immediate aftermath of the earthquake for us was realizing that we were actually
19:24not at the center of it and as soon as the Japanese television was reporting as they did
19:36quite quickly that the epicenter was off the coast then it became possible that damaging tsunami could
19:46be on the way we were all gathered together first in the university canteen and then when the tsunami
19:58warning was issued then that meant we should get to higher ground so we all moved to a big classroom
20:13on the third floor there was so much happening that it wasn't it wasn't really my head couldn't cope with
20:21everything that was going on really
20:44as a journalist I don't want bad things to happen
20:52I like reporting good news but it was always in the back of my mind that it might be on
20:59my watch that a very large disaster might happen
21:06one of the first things we did was to switch on the television and see what on earth was going
21:11on
21:11because for all we knew in that moment was that we had an earthquake but what we didn't realize was
21:18that it was that it was so big that then it had caused a tsunami
21:28and that's when I remember just seeing the wave making its way to that northern coast thinking oh my goodness
21:39this is this is really bad
21:44it's
21:45it's
21:46it's
21:58it's
21:59it's
22:07it's
22:10it's
22:40it's
22:41it's
22:41it's
22:43it's
22:55it's
22:57it's
22:58it's
23:01it's
23:03I thought it was still okay for the first few seconds, but I thought it was still okay for the
23:07first few seconds.
23:07But after a few seconds, the car was gradually流ed.
23:15When my car was behind, and when I was in front of the car, I was in front of the
23:20car.
23:56The tsunami struck a long swathe of Japan's east coast.
24:02Swamping harbours, rivers and low-lying areas.
24:44I was still thinking we might be reporting mainly on deaths from falling buildings.
24:53But from the reports that were coming through from Japanese media,
24:59it was clear that the tsunami was likely to be the real killer here.
25:10Near Ishinomaki, Teruo Okono was sheltering in his office a few hundred meters from the coast.
25:20The tsunami struck a lot.
25:30The tsunami struck a lot.
25:32I was able to see the outside situation.
25:38I was able to see the outside sound.
25:43I was able to see the tsunami that came out.
25:50I was able to see the tsunami that came out.
25:54I first realized that this was the first time I got to see.
26:01I'm going to go!
26:05I'm going to go!
26:07The car is coming from the ground floor.
26:12The car is coming from the ground floor.
26:14The car is coming from the ground floor.
26:15The car is very loud and the panels are broken.
26:19The air is broken.
26:20The air is broken.
26:29The building has a lot of movement in the middle of the building.
26:34The building has a lot of movement in the middle of the building.
26:50There were a lot of black waves that came to me, and there were a lot of black waves that
26:53came to me.
26:58When I was in the hospital, I was able to throw out the tsunami in the middle of the storm.
27:06That's what I remember when I was in the middle of the car,
27:12I remember that I was in the middle of the car.
27:30My car was just about 50 by 50.
27:37It was like a boat, so I didn't see the car in the middle of my car.
27:52If you were to protect the car in the middle of the car,
27:57or if you were to go to the top,
28:02I was thinking about how good it was.
28:14The car was slowly running, and the car was back and running.
28:20The building was in the building and in the building.
28:36After the door opened, the water came into the door.
28:41I thought it was impossible for a car in the car.
28:44I took the door and took the door to the back of the door.
28:47I was able to get out of the door from the door to the door.
28:58I thought it would be difficult for a car.
29:00I thought it was impossible.
29:01I thought it was impossible to breathe.
29:03I thought it was very easy to drink water and I thought it was very easy to drink water.
29:16I thought it was impossible to drink water.
29:20I felt that I had a feeling that I could drink water.
29:24I thought I could do something else.
29:25I thought I could drink water and drink water.
29:32That's why I don't think I'm going to be able to reach the water.
29:34I never want to hear that water.
29:38I'm going to let you know how I feel all the water.
29:40I'm going to sleep.
29:43It's not my day.
29:49I'm going to sleep.
29:53I'm going to sleep.
29:59I didn't know what to do with my洗濯機.
30:05But I couldn't move my hand and my body.
30:14I couldn't move my hand.
30:16I couldn't do it.
30:17I couldn't do it.
30:18I was talking to my family and I was talking to my family.
30:27I'm going to move on to my family.
30:31I'm going to move on to my husband's face.
30:33I'm going to move on to my head.
30:37I'm going to go to my head.
30:48And finally, there were a lot of things that were coming out of the building, and they were caught by
30:55the tsunami of the流れ in the same way.
31:00And it's called the hearing of the child.
31:05And then I told myself,
31:07I was like,
31:07I was like,
31:08I was like,
31:11I was like,
31:18I got my mind,
31:20I was like,
31:21I got my mind,
31:21and I was like,
31:24I was like,
31:27I think the school family連続ed at finding a student's school building.
31:32And they said,
31:33I'm going to say,
31:34I'm going to say that,
31:37and that's where I'm going.
31:38I've got a naif.
31:46I got to say I was going to say that,
31:51but I thought that,
31:53It was a miracle that I had in the room where I was sitting on the floor.
32:17Thousands had drowned, and thousands more were missing.
32:26There are many stories of people who had lost loved ones, very likely because those loved
32:38ones had been trying to look after each other or trying to find them, rather than just fleeing.
32:45And that's a kind of very human dilemma.
32:55There were people who were having to stand by very close to their neighbours, sometimes
33:02their loved ones being washed out to sea without anything they could do to save them.
33:13Ryoko Endo hadn't heard from her husband or her three children since before the earthquake.
33:25Ryoko Endo
33:26Ryoko Endo
33:39Ryoko Endo
33:45Pyro
33:47Ryoko Endo
33:53and I couldn't even get a phone call, so I couldn't get a phone call.
34:00While Ryoko waited for news, further south, Fukushima Daiichi was also directly in the path of the tsunami.
34:09Yukio Shirahige was sheltering on the land side of the site.
34:1435m of the place where the tsunami was not confirmed.
34:19I was able to watch the video of the tsunami that came from the camera.
34:28It's a very difficult situation.
34:36The impact of the tsunami and the impact of the tsunami,
34:38the impact of the tsunami and the impact of the tsunami.
34:43I can't see it.
34:47I'm not sure what I'm hoping to do.
35:02Fukushima Daiichi was protected by a five-and-a-half-meter-high tsunami defense wall.
35:09You know, tsunami is not just like a wave.
35:13It is like a rise of the sea level with a very strong force.
35:19So, tsunami came over the defense shield, flowed into the power plant, pushed away all the cars and the other
35:32installations around the reactor, and then it hit the reactor building.
35:42No one knew if the plant could survive a direct hit.
35:51Meanwhile, the extent of the damage to coastal communities was dawning on residents, like social worker Mizue Kano.
36:03The
36:03On the right hand, I was working in the state of the city.
36:09I was working in the state of the city.
36:11I was working in the state of the city.
36:13I had the information that was sent to the tsunami.
36:18All the phone lines were destroyed.
36:24I couldn't get a phone call.
36:28I didn't think I was going to be able to call it.
36:39100 kilometers north, residents of coastal cities like Sendai and Ishinomaki
36:45were facing a freezing night without power.
36:50The whole central area of the city had been flooded
36:54and that meant I couldn't get back into the central area
36:57either to where I live or to anywhere else I wanted to go.
37:01So I ended up just sleeping at the university
37:05with many of the other staff.
37:09Yu Muroga took refuge in a warehouse above his wrecked van.
37:14There was a lot of rain in the 5th and 5th of the day.
37:17There was a lot of rain in the 5th and 5th of the day.
37:20There was a lot of rain in the 12th of the day.
37:26But it was very cold.
37:29There was some rain in the 6th and 6th of the day.
37:36There were no rain in the 7th of the day.
37:41I had many rain in the 4th and there were some rain in the 9th.
37:50I was like, help me.
37:56The people who have the light are going to the heli,
38:00and they are like, help me.
38:11I hated sleeping and going to sleep because at least,
38:17if I were awake, then I could quickly move
38:22or find my parents or get to safety.
38:26And so when aftershocks would happen in the middle of the night,
38:29I'd have to run down the corridor to find my parents.
38:32But I always had this sense of anxiety,
38:39and it started to get worse and worse.
38:42And even through all of that,
38:44I've always wanted to protect my brother.
38:48I think with our...
38:52Even though I've overcome all the events,
38:56thinking about him is still the thing
38:59that gets me the most upset, I think.
39:03What had they come through?
39:15Taro Okono woke up in the house,
39:17where the tsunami had dropped him.
39:24That's what I was thinking about.
39:26When I was thinking about the depression, I was thinking about the depression.
39:34I was thinking about the depression.
39:39It was very scary, and my body was blown up.
39:50I don't think there was any sound in my mind.
39:56I don't think there was a lot of different kinds of things.
40:00But I heard that it was the world of no sound.
40:03The world, the world, the world, the world, the world.
40:11There are many people who are looking for their family to find their family.
40:20When they come to the tsunami, they are離able to get their family.
40:33When I was in the morning, I had a little bit of water on my feet.
40:42I was on the ground and I was on the ground and I was on the ground.
40:49It was a road that was broken and I didn't know where the road was.
40:57I didn't know what to do.
40:58And then, everyone said,
41:00I'm going to go back to the disaster zone.
41:10Financial Times Bureau Chief Muir Dickie headed for the disaster zone.
41:17We have a responsibility as a journalist to report the big stories as best we can.
41:24And I felt that we needed to go to the area.
41:27It was very challenging to get there,
41:30but that was prouder to be on the ground to see what's really happening to people.
41:35Here behind me is a sign put there to show visitors and residents of this area
41:40that beyond that point is at risk of tsunami flooding.
41:45But the waters this time came far, far further.
41:50The earthquake had caused relatively little damage to property,
42:00but it was a relative normality compared to the sudden shock.
42:07If you came down off the hills towards the coast,
42:11you could see a line drawn across the land.
42:15And on one side of it where the tsunami had hit,
42:18just absolute devastation.
42:21It looked to me
42:24and to many other people who saw it
42:26as if we had walked into the kind of scene
42:30that you see in old newsreel of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the nuclear bomb,
42:37that kind of levelling of whole towns.
42:43The evidence is everywhere of the incredible power of the tsunami.
42:47Buildings have been mashed and mangled beyond repair.
42:50Trucks picked up, carried distances and then dropped on piles of debris.
42:54Those who didn't flee in time had little chance.
43:02Those who could fled the devastation,
43:06including Mizue,
43:07who was heading for her family farmhouse in the hills.
43:11They were like,
43:12they will never get it.
43:14They should be running away with cars in the hills,
43:16and they can't be driving.
43:22They can't be rid of them.
43:25The pollution has snowed up on trees,
43:27but making the wind low wind and passing rivers.
43:28They had to be a load that road,
43:34because the wind was popped up.
43:36So the wind was all caught.
43:44Finally, Mizue reached the safety of her farmhouse, but the nightmare was far from over.
44:10My colleague and I were driving into southern Fukushima Prefecture.
44:17We weren't actually in communication with the outside world.
44:22And we went through an area which did have mobile signal.
44:29And I saw my BlackBerry light up with multiple messages from editors in Hong Kong saying, call, call, call.
44:40So I rang and I heard the line which felt like something out of a movie.
44:47They said, there's been an explosion at the nuclear plant, turn the car around and drive south.
45:04It was a sort of a Chernobyl moment.
45:07My view was that, oh, this is not the worst case yet.
45:13There was a lot of fear in Japan.
45:17People were scared.
45:20The Prime Minister was scared.
45:24I've never seen any gas masks.
45:29I've been wearing a great mask.
45:31I've been wearing a nice mask.
45:32I've been wearing a nice mask.
45:37If this were to be a really significant release of radioactivity,
45:40would you have to evacuate Tokyo?
45:44The news on the radio was talking about the Fukushima reactor,
45:48but we were so busy trying to look after ourselves.
45:52He was just crying and shouting.
45:55And I couldn't do anything for him.
45:58I was in high school, but I didn't see my children's姿.
46:03I didn't see my children's姿.
46:04I didn't see my children's姿.
46:07I didn't see my children's姿.
46:08I didn't know anyone else.
46:38I didn't know anyone else.
46:39They were so busy crying, but I was wrong.
46:40I'll show you a little?
46:40Come here.
46:40picking up so far.
46:40Now I'll ask you guys for the class.
46:40You have to do that for случied to Bank Britannic.
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