![]() ![]() The employees on site were asked to start injecting seawater into Reactor No.1 around 28 hours after the tsunami struck to keep it from overheating and going into meltdown. “At home he doesn’t seem like someone who could handle big jobs… but today, I was really proud of him. “My eyes are filling up with tears,” posted NamicoAoto on Twitter after discovering her father had volunteered for Fukushima duty despite being near retirement. Working 12 hours at a time, they survived off crackers and vegetable juice in the morning and rice in the evening as the high levels of contamination meant it was hard to get food to them. Those selfless and mostly anonymous individuals were labeled the “Fukushima 50” by the foreign media as they worked in shifts of 50, though the actual number eventually ran into the hundreds. The situation would have been much worse had it not been for those workers who kept going while surrounded by potentially deadly doses of radiation. It led to a triple nuclear meltdown, three hydrogen explosions and the release of radioactive contaminants. Reactors 1-4 at the plant proved robust seismically but were flooded by the tsunami which swept over the seawall. The same goes for the gallant actions of a group of employees at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant who put their lives on the line to prevent a nuclear meltdown. The sacrifices made by people like Endo, Onodera and Sato, as well as countless others who risked their lives to save those in trouble, must never be forgotten. He was last seen climbing to a roof to avoid the tsunami but was carried away by the water. Tragically Onodera and the swimmers were never found.Īs days and weeks passed a growing number of stories of individual heroism by mostly ordinary people continued to emerge from the tragedy including Mitsuru Sato, a managing director at a seafood company in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture who rushed to the aid of 20 Chinese students, leading them to a shrine on higher ground before returning to the affected area to look for his wife and daughter. The huge wave overcame the embankment and swallowed the city. When the tsunami alert sounded, she first helped her own students evacuate and made sure they were okay before speeding off in her car to look for a group of swimming club members who were practicing at a pool on the coast around 500 meters away from the school. Like Endo, Motoko Onodera had tied the knot a few months before the disaster and had told the principal at the school she worked at in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture that she was preparing to have a baby. Some feel it should be demolished as it brings back painful memories. ![]() I’m proud of what she did and who she was.” The skeletal remains of the local disaster management center where she and many of her colleagues continued working despite the risk will remain in the town as a memorial until 2031. “She must have wanted to run away,” said Mieko Endo of her daughter who had only just married a few months earlier. Endo wasn’t one of them.Ī posthumous national hero, she was credited with saving a huge number of lives. Of the 40 people who tried to make it to the top, only 11 survived. It’s an abnormal tide, please go to a safe place.” She continued with the warnings for around thirty minutes until her boss said it was time to evacuate to the roof. Heroic ActsĪs the water headed towards the small town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture, 24-year-old Miki Endo called out over the community loudspeaker system warning locals of the imminent danger ahead. The estimated number of people who died or are missing is around 18,500, though some have the final death toll in excess of 20,000. More than one million buildings were damaged with over 400,000 of them either half or totally destroyed. The waves, which reached as far away as Chile and caused large chunks of ice to break off from part of Antarctica, traveled inland 10 kilometers to Sendai. The 9.0 tremblor triggered a devastating tsunami with run-up heights close to 40 meters. The ground started to shake at 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011, and lasted around six minutes, shifting Earth’s figure axis by 17 centimeters, moving the island of Honshu more than two meters eastwards and shortening the length of a day by 1.8 microseconds. Ten years ago the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck off the northeast coast of the Tohoku region 24 kilometers below the surface of the water. ![]()
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