This is Part 17 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.
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30 March. Evening.
This morning bicycle off to the university’s suburban campus. My first visit there since the quake. Doesn’t appear to have suffered much damage. Some walkways separated from a plaza’s surface, thrust up five centimeters in some places. Small piles of rubble. All the buildings are roped off. We are told we have to report to a specially set up disaster table to sign in before we enter buildings where our offices are. No one is at the desk. Someone from academic affairs tells me the procedure. It seems there is huge water storage tank on building number two’s roof. That supplies water for lavatories on campus. That is broken. That is the main damage. Until that is repaired there will be no classes. It is estimated that classes will start up after the Golden Week national holiday from April’s through the first days of May.
Elevators are not in use. I’m told I’ll have to climb the stairs to my fifth floor office. My office is a wreck. Looks like a cyclone hit it. Earthquake. Books are all over the place. A cabinet with tea cups is fallen over, broken glass and pottery. Computer toppled off my desk but the screen is unbroken. Wait for another day to see if it works. My purpose today is to fetch an electric range for cooking at home. It works on electromagnetic waves? I’m not sure, but it is much more powerful than the antique range we have at home, one of those jobs with little coils that turn orange.
Ask at the campus business office if there is an emergency plan or any information posted for students concerning radiation danger. As yet there is neither but they will be sure to bring it up at today’s meeting. Students are not yet allowed on campus I’m told. Maybe on the school’s website?
There are daily dean’s meetings and we get emails regarding the proceedings. So many things to work out. Accounting for an entire student body, their safety and whereabouts. What to do about students with no way of commuting to school. Find home stays for them all? If their homes have been damaged or destroyed it might be difficult for their parents to continue paying tuition. Some sort of scholarship, then?
Flash! Just now Morie is back from radiation therapy. At the door with her is a young man from the gas service. The gas will be turned on and he has to be here to check our gas range and hot water to make sure everything is working properly. It does. We are lucky because this young man’s partner is urging him to quit for the day. It’s 5:30! Let’s go home. Morie pleads with the other. He stays. The other goes off into the twilight, to their car maybe. Morie gives the one who stays two apples.
How happy we are. Now we can bathe. Morie does a happy gas dance. She misses a bath so much. Everyone is worn and weary from this disaster. Quaked out. Besides that she has the breast cancer treatments. The bath for her is relaxation, stress release, as it is for many Japanese.
Many friends abroad are worried about radiation here in Japan and worried about radiation from Japan contaminating their food, water, and air. Japanese are worried too. Some are angry. Angry and sad. Angry at the nuke masters, angry at their government, angry at stupidity. Some feel guilty that their country is causing trouble to people in other countries.
250,000 foreign nationals have left Japan in fear of radiation. The radiation in Sendai has been dropping every day since the 16th, when it was highest since the accident, and posed no health risk even then, according to Japanese assessments, which are based on data set forth by international organizations such as the WHO.
Morie tells me how shocked she is to see so many young people at the radiation therapy clinic. 15 year old kids, 20 year olds. It makes me wonder whether people have been taught to fear radiation but not chemicals in foods, chemicals in tap water, chemicals in shampoo, chemicals in toothpaste, chemicals in underarm deodorants, chemicals is hair dye, chemicals invading our daily lives that many seem to care nothing about. What else could it be causing cancer in people so young? Before the chemical invasion did young people get cancer so much?
Are smokers more at risk from cigarettes than they are from radiation here in Sendai? Does radiation cause panic because we connect it with horrific events such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki? We don’t associate toothpaste with an atom bomb. It doesn’t have the bite, the chemical explosion in our daily lives.
For years and years we filter our drinking water, until we find a mountain spring from which we fetch water, these past 5 or 6 years. If we can, we avoid vegetables grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides.
A friend in Seoul once told me he goes outside for a smoke and he isn’t even a smoker.
It seems that temporary dwellings are being built for those whose homes are destroyed by the tsunami. 20,000 prefab dwellings is a number in my head. Where did I hear that? I may be wrong.
For those who are directed to evacuate from the Fukushima nuke I can’t say what, if anything, is being done. Is there a plan for handling the many who leave their homes within the 20 kilometer radius? How do they get out if gasoline is not available? Are thousands and thousands of people bussed away? To where? Are there emergency dwellings somewhere? Is food and water waiting? Or are they just told to leave the area and left on their own to fare as best they can?
A student from there tells me that she and her family are with relatives in Fukushima City.
The last installment, Part 18, coming soon.
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my hut
with its morning-glories
a palace
best,
Don
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