3/11 Disaster

Question 1

Overview of the disaster

Answer 1

• Date: March 11th, 2011
• Earthquake: Strongest earthquake ever recorded hit Japan 130km east of Sendai which reached 9 on the Richter scale and was felt in Russia Taiwan and China, with there being many aftershocks
• Tsunami: Resulted after tectonic plates shifted, bringing water 10km inland and was around 10m high. It covered the city of Sendai and hit the coasts of Fukushima, Iwate and Chiba
• Nuclear Disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant: All 3 reactors successfully shutdown but the loss of power caused cooling systems to fail in the reactor, leading to an explosion in reactor 1 and 3 and radiation leakage.
• Reactor 2 exploded a day later

Question 2

Outline the main players

Answer 2

• PM Kan
• Chief cabinet secretary Edano Yukio
• Masano the Chief at Plant
• Civilians and SDF relief forces
• TEPCO medalling
• LDP tampering

Question 3

Pros and Cons of PM Kans Response

Answer 3

PM Pros:

• Independent advisors: Appointed independent advisors as knew TEPCO advisors would be inadequate and bias.
• SDF troops: He mobilised 100,000 SDF troops to help clean up
• Press meetings: Regular press meetings to keep japan up to date
• External contribution: Communicated with different countries well, accepting and coordinating US military assistance
• Visits: Daily visits to the area and demanded workers must stay and sacrifice themselves if necessary (and visited himself don’t forget)

PM Cons:

• Public support: only had 20% public support going in to leadership, came out with around 40%
• TEPCO heroics: time spent proving TEPCO caused the problem should have been spent on rebuilding and communicating on contaminated zones

Question 4

Initial response of the Politicians

Answer 4

• Governor of Tokyo: “Japanese should avail of this tsunami to wash away the greed”
• LDP Slogans and Upper House: used the time to strike against the DPJ whereby they used slogans accusing PM Naoto Kan of poor leadership and proposed a no-confidence resolution. They also tied up legislation, making decision making slower as they controlled the upper house decisions.
• Diet slow response and 1/3rd control: responses was recorded to be too slow, inefficient and had an excessive confidence in pre-existing infrastructure. The slow response was arguably due to pM Kan being unable to control the diet, whereby he only controlled 1/3rd of the lower house, resulting in it therefore being unable to override upper house decisions, making it slower.
• DPJ new and mutiny: had no pre-existing fail-safe to deal with disaster, which arguably the LDP would have had (with them being in power for around 55 years prior). Also had betrayal from within against Naoto Kan, whereby close allies divided the party and made decision making even slower.

Question 5

Response of the Government during the crisis and public opinion

Answer 5

• Poll: 6% deemed governments performance during crisis as ‘substantive’ and diets as 3%
• Premade structures: government saved by premade structures in the 90s
• Food control: governments slow response on taking measures to prevent radioactive food being shipped, contamination rose in large areas, with the governments approach being to simply rely on traders to voluntarily deem their foods unsafe
• Lack of information: no public information as to how bad some areas were. Shows miscommunication and poor planning whereby many residents became exposed without knowing, which could have been prevented.

Question 6

Response of the Government post-crisis on reconstruction

Answer 6

• Cost: 210billion
• Building: Very little building being done a year later as RDC (reconstruction design council) unable to decide as to how to gain the resources needed to begin the process. This again may be tied to the government as it is their slow bureaucratic system and political responses which caused this

Question 7

Outline the roles to which the heroes of the crisis played and the role of TEPCO

Answer 7

TEPCO involvement:

• Giant: one of Japan’s leading industrial giants who did not want their reputation ruined

Heroism

• TEPCO Workers: Remained working even at the cost of their lives
• Plant Manager Masao: defied both TEPCO and PM’s advice to stop pumping sea water, and told pump manager in advance of meeting with TEPCO heads to carry on no matter water
• SDF and Civilians: Came together to assist the less able both during and post initial crisis
• US aid: increased support troops

Question 8

Scholars? Which one for which section?

Answer 8

Kingston (Crisis management)

Wagner (Post-crisis reconstruction)

Duus (Politicians Response)

Green (Politicians Response)

Curtis (PM Kan)