The devastated coast of Minami Soma City
On Monday I took a two-day business trip to Minami Soma City, in the disaster-affected area of East Japan. Minami-soma city was hit by the tsunami, and although there does not seem to be much online footage of Minami Soma City’s experience, the effect on nearby Soma City (just north of Minami Soma) can be seen in this terrifying video (the main wave is at about 8 minutes). Minami soma city is just 23 km from the Fukushima Number One nuclear power plant, so soon after the tsunami hit the town was included in the government’s 20-30km voluntary evacuation / limited outdoor activity zone. Its population reduced enormously in the weeks that followed, and has now returned to just over half its pre-tsunami numbers. The town is also home to about 6,000 displaced persons, living in temporary housing. My purpose in visiting – along with some of the students of my department – was to help the local hospital with some research they are doing into the health of these displaced persons and of the residents of the town generally.
As part of my stay I was taken to the area where the tsunami hit, which is a stretch of coastline extending a few kms inland from the sea. These photos show some of the damage that I saw there. The full set can be viewed in my flickr account.
Entering the ruins
When we drove into the area I thought perhaps it used to be farmland, because aside from the piles of rubble it is completely flat, but in fact this whole area used to be houses and businesses. The ground is flat like fields because it was scoured clean of all but the largest structures, and the resulting rubble has been gathered together into great piles of debris (visible in the photo above). This gives the area the impression of being a moonscape or wasteland, where once houses used to be, and the area from which one enters the destruction zone is lined with these piles of rubble. If one drives for a few more minutes, one can reach the sea wall and look back over the entire devastated area, as in the picture below.
Sunset over the devastation
The sea wall itself is about 4m high on the outside, made of huge slabs of concrete. On the seaward face there is a small stony beach and then some lines of tetrapods (concrete structures that act as further wave barriers). The sea wall survived the tsunami, but was heavily damaged and didn’t serve to impede it. Parts of it were broken off and swept away, and its landward side was heavily damaged. I think the wave just ran over the top of it. We walked along this wall and the two photos below show the wall in both directions. The photo at the top of this post, of Miss A returning to our car, was taken from the top of the wall.
Looking south in the lee of the sea wall
On the sea wall, looking north
Facing North (the second picture of the sea wall), one can see the only surviving structure near the sea – that strange orange building that has been hollowed out but withstood the wave itself. I guess other smaller objects survived but have subsequently been removed in the clean up, because as we left the area we entered the rubble zone and passed huge piles of broken stone that must have been taken from this area. We also passed a graveyard of cars. In amongst all this neatly-arranged debris there were also a few boats.
A fire engine
We spent the night in the hospital, in one of the unused wards. Staff levels have declined at the hospital, though the patient load has as well, but business seems to be going on pretty much as normal there. In fact, this is one of the strangest things about Minami Soma City: once you pass over the low line of scrub and hills that separates the unscathed part of the city from the damaged area, life goes on pretty much as normal. It’s as if nothing ever happened here, except that it’s quieter than a normal town and a lot of the businesses are on reduced hours or shut. It’s not a ghost town, though, and everything is perfectly normal there – we went out drinking and having fun with the other doctors in the evening, and everything was just like any other rural Japanese town, if a little quiet.
You are 23km from Fukushima Number One plant
As the sign in the hospital says, Minami Soma City is quite close to the power plant, and the only road leading to it from Fukushima passes even closer. It’s quite hard to get to Minami Soma City – there are only 3 buses a day from Fukushima, so it’s either a long bus trip to Tokyo (probably 6-8 hours) or a bullet train to Fukushima city and then one of those three buses. The buses were also not able to run at first, because of the exclusion zone, but now they’re open and the journey to Minami Soma City takes us through several deserted towns in the exclusion zone. I think a few people might still be staying on in these towns but they were largely deserted, and the only people I saw were a work crew in full radiation suits, cleaning an outside area in the driving snow. The only other signs of life in the area were animal prints in the gathered snow.
This whole area is obviously struggling with the triple challenges of dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, rebuilding, and the fallout of the nuclear plant. Many people have left and the area is certainly suffering physically and economically. With the one year anniversary of the events coming up soon I imagine a lot of sad memories of the tragedy will be rekindled. But the people there are kind, friendly, and full of warmth and energy not just to rebuild their town but to turn the tragedy into useful lessons for disaster management in the future. I’m hoping through my advice and support to provide some small contribution to that process, and perhaps to be able to learn some lessons about post-disaster management in an aging society. The atmosphere there was one of hope and energy to make a better future, and despite the sad story that these pictures tell, the people there offer a great deal of inspiration to make a better future. Let’s hope that working together the people of Japan can overcome this disaster and, through their experience, offer other countries lessons they can use to overcome their own future challenges.
Compromise and Conceit 
February 9, 2012 at 1:27 pm
There’s a special name for the group of people affected by the nuclear bombs in Japan, right? I’d heard that they felt they were discriminated against due to their exposure.
Do you think the experience with having such a social group in the country has shaped people’s behaviour towards the fallout from the plant meltdown? Are they more likely to leave the area in order to avoid both the radiation and the social stigma that they’ve observed other suffer?
Do you think that there are any differences between the Japanese behaviour towards radiation and the (probable)Western behaviour? From my (highly limited) observations it seems that Japan is being much less hysterical than I’d expect a Western country to be and much more technological/individual in it approach to dealing with the problem.
What I mean by that is that I’d expect large and constant protests to break out in a Western country that experienced the same thing (Occupy the reactor! Except don’t, cause that’s really unhealthy!) and the Japanese seem to have turned to technology to solve their problems/fears (i.e. radiation detectors) by themselves instead of the demands for government supplied radiation detection that I’d expect in a Western country (possibly spurred by the average Western citizens inability to program a VCR – how would they deal with a geiger counter?)
February 9, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Those are some very interesting questions, and connected to some of the research I’m helping with. There is a name for the survivors of the nuclear bombs (I don’t know what it is – maybe genbaku hisaisha?), and I have heard stories about people from the area around Fukushima being discriminated against elsewhere in Japan – children being teased at school for being radioactive, that sort of thing. I don’t know if it’s a significant problem or not, though. Also, obviously the Japanese experience of atomic disasters must surely be informing their response to this one.
There certainly does seem to be a huge difference in response between Japanese and westerners, with most ordinary Japanese being much more sanguine about radiation risk. I guess this is partly because two of their biggest cities are on a bomb zone, so they have living proof that radiation exposure isn’t so terrible. But I think it’s also to do with Japanese scientific education (which is very good) and a different attitude towards risk-taking (possibly partly influenced by living in an earthquake zone?)
It’s certainly not at all hysterical here and the response is quite measured, although when the earthquake happened a lot of Japanese did leave Tokyo, and places like Minami Soma City (though not least because of problems of blackouts, after-shocks and food supplies). But actually there is a big government effort going on to provide radiation testing (the hospital I stayed in is doing free internal exposure tests all day long every day) and to provide health information (through weekly free seminars). None of this is reported in the western press because it’s all released here in Japanese and it doesn’t fit the catastrophe narrative that the western media love.
Maybe though the most powerful force moderating Japanese attitudes is the tsunami: with 30,000 people dead due to it, infrastructure ruined (you couldn’t buy heineken in the weeks after the earthquake because the distribution centre was washed away!!!) and whole communities uprooted, the health effects of the power plant are a distant second in most people’s mind. Perhaps if it was purely human error that led to the radiation release, you’d see a very different social response.
February 9, 2012 at 3:40 pm
An excellent post F., thanks for sharing. One of the great tragedies of the modern news cycle is that disasters, even massive ones, fast become trivialised as yesterday’s news. The reality is of course that for the victims the tragedy continues on for years and sometimes decades.
February 9, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Found it. Nuclear bomb survivors are called hibakusha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha
February 9, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Thanks Paul! hibaku means “to be the target of a bombing” but has taken on a wider meaning of radiation exposure. (In meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday I’ve been using this word a lot!)
David, that’s very true and I’m going to be interested to see how the media cover the 1 year anniversary. My guess is that the western media will focus on a combination of pictures of the waves and debate about the powerplant, and I’m really hoping that the Japanese media will range wider, to cover the rebuilding and focus on survivorship rather than loss. In some ways the Japanese media is more mature, but in other ways it’s even worse than western media (often very uncritical, for example, or focusing on soft scandals rather than targeting the important stuff). So it’ll be interesting to see what is forgotten and what is overdone, on both sides of the Pacific …