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fukushima days that shocked the world s01e01
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00:07Friday, March 11, 2011, started as a very ordinary day.
00:16The feeling that the world is being seen in the world, I feel like it's a quiet feeling.
00:21It's like the quietness of the嵐 in front of the sky.
00:28There was this big, deep, bass rumbling.
00:37We had no idea what was going on.
00:45I was really scared of the揺れ.
00:53And then we were just watching this wave, thinking, oh my goodness, this is really bad.
01:19The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of the workers, was handling radioactive waste, and all the lights go out.
01:38Suddenly we were at the center of the world's biggest story.
01:49The scientific squalling coalition of the Probably
01:53And then we were watching this wave house.
02:05If it only went way more, please Umama Daiichi,
02:15I managed to find my portfolio 25th of January 2011, so about two months before it happened.
02:28I was nine years old, I was born in Japan, so even though my mum and dad are French and
02:34English, I would say in my heart, because I lived there for 13 years, I was born there,
02:38I grew up there, I would say at heart I'm Japanese.
02:47I was the Tokyo bureau chief for the Financial Times newspaper, I'd been working there for
02:53a few years, having been a correspondent in China and Taiwan, in the region as well.
03:01Japan has a very distinct and very interesting society and a very rich culture, so it's a
03:09great place to live and work.
03:17Around 300 kilometres north of Tokyo lies the coastal city of Ishinomaki.
03:27Richard Halberstadt taught English at the university.
03:31I was born in Reading, in the UK, but I've lived in Japan for over 30 years now, here in
03:39Ishinomaki City.
03:43Ishinomaki is the very typical small city, its main industry is fisheries, and the reason I
03:53came to like it is not so much because of the place, but because of the people who were
03:57really warm and welcoming.
04:08Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
04:13Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
04:29Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
04:44Riyoko Endo was a nursing assistant.
05:01March 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.
05:29After that, the children gave me the power of my grandma's parents, and 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, and 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,
06:24and we'd start getting articles in decent places 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,
06:46where Yu Moroga was preparing for an afternoon, delivering medical supplies.
06:53We had no idea what was going to happen next to the location or something.
06:59They needed to be sitting in their place.
07:01I was looking back somewhere.
07:12They went to the shop at the hotel, and they had to go to the hotel.
07:16They had to go to the hotel, and they were waiting for them.
07:18They had to put everything in the hotel.
07:20They had to get home, and they left up there and left their place soon.
07:21This is a system, and it is also a high-quality system, so we can set up a video camera
07:28for the first time.
07:36When I entered the signal at the first time, the car was going to hit the car.
07:58I was sitting at my desk in our office building on the 21st floor in the Hibiya business district and
08:08suddenly I felt the rattling and the beginning of the sway.
08:27It started to tremble, it started to shake, all the way from nursing we would do drills, we would practice
08:36going underneath the tables, going to frames, like door frames,
08:42as a way to protect. Teacher just said, alright everyone there's no desks, no tables in that room, so just
08:48huddle 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
09:45stronger.
09:47I had a fan that was above my head and a screw came loose and so it was just flinging
09:53and this one screw that was left and 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.
10:36In the city of Kikara Air Force, I worked on the building in Japan.
10:43I was working on a job.
10:53The staff had a lot of a lot of呟.
10:57They were sitting on the desk,
11:01and at the end of the day,
11:03they were sitting on the floor.
11:05It was a little bit of an accident.
11:08I thought it would have been a little bit more than 3 minutes ago.
11:25That's when I think, when everything just got worse, it started to drag on for a while and the shaking
11:33became much worse.
11:34And then we could see our teachers' expressions, that 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, but I remember my main worry at the time was
12:06my brother, because he was at nursery.
12:10And just, you don't know how your family is. You don't know if they're safe, if they've been injured.
12:24I mean, the power of the earthquake was extraordinary. And we in Tokyo felt it as something extraordinary.
12:32But if you were along the coast, much closer to the epicentre, it was, for many people, absolutely terrifying.
12:42And right on that coast sat one of the world's largest nuclear power stations, Fukushima Daiichi.
12:54Decontamination worker, Yukio Shirahige, was in a building at the edge of the site.
13:00The main thing was that was a main job that happened to me at the moment.
13:08And to go there, the workers''.
13:10And the way, the workers' work was the place on the factory of the city and the resource.
13:16And on that, I think that the workers' system were in the room for the mansion.
13:19At the same time, the workers were in the room, and the structures were in the room for the unit.
13:25There was an impact on the building.
13:28In the Ukechima area, there was a lot of rain, so I realized that it would be better than that.
13:40However, the area is getting worse, and I can't stand up on the ground.
13:54When the earthquake hit, safety systems automatically shut down the three active reactors.
14:01So very crudely, the earthquake caused damage to the plant,
14:09but nothing 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.
14:25And it's one of the features of nuclear power plants of the type used at Fukushima Daiichi,
14:33that they need electricity 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,
14:56there were emergency generators starting to kick in and providing electricity to pump in the coolants 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,
15:31I 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,
15:37yep, 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,
15:48I just remember feeling this panic of,
15:52it doesn't matter if something falls on me, it falls on me.
15:55I've just got to get to my mum's office.
15:59I wasn't sitting on my bicycle,
16:01I 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,
16:14I need to get to my mum, I need to get to my mum.
16:23300km north, in coastal Sendai city,
16:28Yuma-roga was still on the road.
16:43The river does not have any background on the road.
16:48There is no water is in the middle of the road.
16:51But the river is filled with snow.
16:58There is no water is still on the road.
17:00But the river has no water.
17:04There was still a little rain and a little rain.
17:08There was a lot of rain on the bottom.
17:15There were a lot of rain on the bottom.
17:16The wind was still a little bit.
17:20So I was very worried about it.
17:35We didn't have any news that we had no idea what was going on, and I didn't really have
17:43a chance to be worried about anyone, because everything was just happening all at the same
17:48time, and it was all so surreal that we were kind of just more occupied with coping for
17:55ourselves.
17:56Ryoko Endo was on the fifth floor of the hospital.
18:30My mom's office is on the fourth floor of the office building, but the lifts aren't working,
18:38so I was running up the stairs, and I remember just bursting into her office.
18:45It was such a relief to see her.
18:48I just ran straight into her arms, and I think I just cried.
18:54We cycled home together, and I remember seeing my brother, and that feeling of, thank goodness
19:03he's all right.
19:08The earthquake's epicentre was traced to the ocean floor, around 80 kilometres east of
19:14Ishinomaki.
19:17So the immediate aftermath of the earthquake for us was realising that we were actually
19:25not at the centre of it.
19:29And as soon as the Japanese television was reporting, as they did quite quickly, that the epicentre
19:38was off the coast, then it became possible that a damaging tsunami could be on the way.
19:50We 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.
20:09So we all moved to a big classroom on the third floor.
20:16There was so much happening that it wasn't really...
20:20My head couldn't cope with everything that was going on, really.
20:45As 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
21:11going on, because for all we knew in that moment was that we had an earthquake, but what
21:17we didn't realise 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,
21:39oh my goodness, this is really bad.
21:42What's that?
22:06In Sendai, Yumurogo was driving across town, more than two kilometres
22:12from the coast.
22:56But, at that time, the road was going to get going.
23:03I thought I could still be able to do a few seconds.
23:04I thought I was going to be okay, but it was a few hours later, the car was going to
23:12be moved.
23:15When I was driving my car, I was going to hit the front of my car, and I was going
23:19to hit the front of my car.
23:22...
23:26...
23:26...
23:26...
23:26...
23:26...
23:27...
23:27...
23:28...
23:29...
23:30...
23:30...
23:30...
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, it was clear that the
25:00tsunami 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.
25:21There was a lot of noise.
25:29There was a lot of noise.
25:42It was a strange sound.
25:45I saw the tsunami that came from the outside.
25:48I saw the tsunami that came from the river.
25:53I first noticed that the tsunami came from the river.
25:59Here we go!
26:02Here we go!
26:08The building is coming from the front door.
26:12The building itself has a lot of loud noise.
26:16The panels are broken.
26:19The wind is broken.
26:29The building was starting to be very difficult to move.
26:37When I was in the middle of the building,
26:40I was able to escape the window from the door.
26:50The big black waves were coming from the door.
26:52The big black waves were coming from the door.
27:15自分が役所から投げ出されて津波の中に巻き込まれるというところは、今でも駒送りに自分がどのような体勢で入っていったかというのは今でも記憶しています。
27:29My car was about 50-50, but I was like a boat in the middle of my car, so I
27:40was like a boat in the middle of my car, so I didn't have a boat in the middle of
27:43my car.
27:51I was surprised if I could be protected by the car in a car, or if I could be protected
27:56by the car, or if I could be protected by the car, and I was surprised to be in the
28:07head.
28:14The car was getting started, and it was back.
28:20It was in the building, and it was in the building.
28:37By the way, I thought it was impossible to go into the window and take a look at the window
28:38from the window.
28:40So, I thought this would be impossible for the window.
28:46I thought the window was ripped from the window to a window.
28:58I thought it would be impossible to get out of the window, so that I was just going to get
29:03out of the window.
29:06I thought I would be so tired.
29:07It was a cold, and it turned into a wild soul.
29:10It was a deep breath that was still På theериaboo-like night,
29:17and in the moment, there were a lot of thoughts.
29:24I felt that I wanted to do that.
29:26I wanted to see how it went, with a water bottle and my face.
29:31I had to be able to pour the water.
29:34I feel like I was feeling a little better, and I felt like I was feeling a little better.
29:48I felt nervous, therefore, when I was in the middle of the night, it was hot.
29:57I was feeling like I was feeling like I was in the middle of the night of the night.
29:57so I didn't know what I was going to do.
30:00It was like a洗濯機 in the middle of my hand.
30:09But I couldn't move my hands.
30:14I couldn't move my hands.
30:16I couldn't do it.
30:17I couldn't do it.
30:18I couldn't do it.
30:23I was talking to my family.
30:25That's what I'm saying.
30:27I was talking to my family.
30:28And my family was thinking,
30:33I'm talking to my body.
30:36I was talking to my body.
30:37So, I finally got to go through my body.
30:39I was talking to my body.
30:43I was talking to my body.
30:48And finally, there were a lot of things that were going through and caught up with the tsunami that was
30:59going through.
31:04And then, there was a voice that came from there.
31:12That was the voice of my son.
31:19And I realized that my father was my father's father.
31:23She said, oh, my father's father's father's father.
31:30My father was my father's father.
31:31And I realized that he was a father's father's father.
31:34to the end of the room,
31:38and the building of the house for the Daryl,
31:40and the building of the Daryl,
31:45I think I got the same words in my life.
31:50And I got the same words in my house.
31:51I got the same words in my house,
31:58and I got the same words in my house.
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
32:43fleeing, and 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.
34:00While Ryoko waited for news, further south Fukushima Daiichi was also directly in the path of the
34:07tsunami.
34:09Yuki Oshirohige was sheltering on the land side of the site.
34:1245 metreの場所にいると津波は確認出来ていません。誰かのスマホかなんかの動画でですね、津波が来ているのを見たぐらいですね。
34:19I saw a video on the camera that I saw in the video.
34:28The impact of the tsunami and the impact of the tsunami and the impact of the tsunami,
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, it is, it is like a rise of the sea level
35:15with 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,
35:35and 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.
36:28Tsunami has been working in the U.S.
36:28I didn't think I was going to be able to do anything right now.
36:39100 kilometres 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 either to where I live
36:59or to anywhere else I wanted to go.
37:01So I ended up just sleeping at the university with many of the other staff.
37:09Yu Muroga took refuge in a warehouse above his wrecked van.
37:16The Rosario of the city did not start to die.
37:17So I was to save the oven.
37:26I was living in a bit of a cold in the afternoon.
37:30I didn't even know how it was.
37:30I was always following the events of my home,
37:31or home, or in the car and all of this.
37:40The door was in the door, but the house was red and the sound was red.
37:48The叫び of the voices were called, including a message that was a message.
37:57The light was there, and the light was on the head, and the light was on the light,
38:01They were in fear of me.
38:11I hated sleeping and going to sleep
38:16because, at least if I were awake,
38:19then I could quickly move or find my parents or get to safety.
38:26And so when aftershocks had happened in the middle of the night,
38:29have to run down the corridor to find my parents but I always had this sense of
38:36anxiety and it started to get worse and worse and even through all of that I've
38:44always wanted to protect my brother I think with our um he's over even though
38:53I've overcome like all the events thinking about him it's still the thing
38:58that gets me no it's upset I think
39:15Teruo Kono woke up in the house where the tsunami had dropped him
39:24that was the one that I wanted to do to see in the face of how the tsunami had dropped
39:28him
39:28that was when I was in the face of the tsunami, I thought it was a very intense
39:33lot of people were in the face of the tsunami that I was in the face of the tsunami
39:45I think that was an attempt to crash back and say as I can't see the tsunami
39:49I don't think there's any sound in my mind, but I don't think there's no sound in my mind.
39:59I think there's no sound in my mind.
40:00I think there's no sound in my ears.
40:03It's a world that I've heard of.
40:07It's a world that I've heard of.
40:12There are many people who are looking to find their family.
40:20When the tsunami comes down, they get away from their family.
40:24It was a very difficult time to get out of the building.
40:33When I was in the morning, I had a little bit of water on the ground.
40:42I was able to get out of the building and get out of the building.
40:49I was able to get out of the building.
40:52There was no way to go, and there was no way to go, and there was no way to go,
40:57and there was no way to go.
41:10Financial Times Bureau Chief Muir Dickey headed for the Disaster Zone.
41:17We have a responsibility as a journalist to report the big stories as best we can, and I felt that
41:25we needed to go to the area.
41:27It was very challenging to get there, but that was proud to be on the ground to see what's really
41:32happening to people.
41:35Here behind me is a sign put there to show visitors and residents of this area that beyond that point
41:42is at risk of tsunami flooding.
41:44But the waters this time came far, far further.
41:50The earthquake had caused relatively little damage to property, but it was relative normality compared to the sudden shock.
42:07If you came down off the hills towards the coast, you could see a line drawn across the land, and
42:16on one side of it where the tsunami had hit, just absolute devastation.
42:21It looked to me, and to many other people who saw it, as if we had walked into the kind
42:30of scene that you see in old newsreel of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the nuclear bomb, that kind of
42:38levelling of whole towns.
42:43The evidence is everywhere of the tsunami.
42:45The 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, including Mizue, who was heading for her family farmhouse in the hills.
43:10There were people with no approval.
43:12One road is not available
43:13and there were a lot of cars.
43:16People were able to get off the gasoline.
43:22The pedestrian was like,
43:25because the traffic had been locked in before.
43:31There were jetмines of the mountains which were left.
43:34The wind took off the mountain.
43:36There were all an iceburne in front.
43:38I had a very scary feeling.
43:44Finally, Mizue reached the safety of her farmhouse.
43:47But 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.
44:37Saying, 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.
44:50Turn the car around and drive south.
45:04It was 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 was wearing a mask on the hospital.
45:25I didn't see anything yet.
45:27I had a gas mask on.
45:29I had a very protective mask.
45:31I wore a secure protective mask.
45:37I had a very clean protective mask.
45:41would 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.
46:22To be continued...
46:40To be continued...
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