Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters

Black Wave

Black Wave

How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters

Daniel P. Aldrich

The University of Chicago Press

CHICAGO & LONDON

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2019 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2019

Printed in the United States of America

28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19    1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-63826-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-63843-0 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-63857-7 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226638577.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Aldrich, Daniel P., author.

Title: Black wave: how networks and governance shaped Japan’s 3/11 disasters / Daniel P. Aldrich.

Description: Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018052337 | ISBN 9780226638263 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226638430 (pbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226638577 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan, 2011. | Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Japan, 2011. | Disaster relief—Japan—Tōhoku Region—Citizen participation. | Disaster relief—Government policy—Japan. | Disaster victims—Social networks—Japan—Tōhoku Region. | Social capital (Sociology)—Japan—Tōhoku Region.

Classification: LCC HV555.J3 A54 2019 | DDC 363.34/9580952090512—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052337

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

List of Tables and Illustrations

Preface

1  Introduction: The Story of Three Disasters

2  Individual Level: Neighbors Saving Lives

3  Village, Town, and City Level: Vertical Ties Bringing Resources

4  Prefectural Level: Networks Making a Difference

5  National Level: Governance Challenged

6  International Level: How Institutions Save Lives

7  Conclusions and Recommendations: Building Trust and Tying Us Together

Appendix 1: Interviewees and Surveyed Residents

Appendix 2: Statistical Tables

Notes

Sources

Index

Tables and Illustrations

Tables

4.1.  Comparative Damage across Prefectures

4.2.  Social Connections in the Three Prefectures

5.1.  National Reconstruction Progress

6.1.  Four Disasters and Their Outcomes

A.1.  Descriptive Statistics for Mortality Dataset

A.2.  Mortality Regression Analysis Results

A.3.  Logistic Regression Coefficients for Council Member Outreach

A.4.  Descriptive Statistics for Recovery Study

A.5.  Components of NIRA Recovery Index

A.6.  Sources for Recovery Data

A.7.  Estimated Regression Coefficients for Recovery by 2012

A.8.  Estimated Regression Coefficients for Recovery by 2013

Illustrations

1.1.  Map of affected cities and prefectures in Japan

2.1.  Comparison of mental distress between the general Japanese population and Futaba evacuees after 3/11

2.2.  Comparison of mental distress between Futaba evacuees and residents of other Tōhoku villages

3.1.  Variation in mortality outcomes across communities

3.2.  Correlation of tsunami height with mortality

3.3.  Relationship between pre-tsunami crime rate and mortality

3.4.  Predicted probabilities of municipal council members reaching out to members of the national House of Representatives

3.5.  Conditions immediately after the disaster and two and three years later

3.6.  Relationship between number of powerful politicians representing a municipality and speed of recovery

4.1.  Recovery after 3/11 in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima

6.1.  Relationship between government expenditure on social safety nets and disaster mortality

6.2.  Relationship between Polity IV Democracy Score and disaster mortality

Preface

The tragic events that we know colloquially as 3/11 began the afternoon of March 11, 2011, but have continued to affect survivors and rivet the world for more than seven years. A trio of disasters¹—an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—paralyzed Japan, a country ranked among the world’s most advanced, industrialized democracies with some of the best building regulations and best-trained engineers. Hundreds of miles of breakwaters and seawalls defended the coastal population of Tōhoku, the region most affected by the disaster. Concrete barriers and planted pine forests along nearly half the shoreline served as additional layers of protection against massive waves. But the tsunami set off by the 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake not only killed more than 18,400 people² but also caused full fuel meltdowns in three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

Estimates put the disasters—known in Japanese as the Higashi Nihon Daishinsai—among the costliest in recorded human history with more than $235 billion in losses.³ In the affected area, 125,000 homes were destroyed, and 270 railway lines and hundreds of roads were closed.⁴ Beyond loss of life and property damage, the cost of radioactive decontamination and compensation for evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture will probably run more than ¥21.5 trillion ($202 billion).⁵ Fukushima Dai-ichi’s owner and operator, a private utility called the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and the central government face some 2,000,000 individual claims for compensation along with 500,000 claims from corporations and smaller firms.⁶ Radioactive cesium and iodine spread to some 14,000 km² (5,400 square miles) of land. Microparticles of uranium and cesium have been found miles from the plant. At the peak of evacuation, some 470,000 people left their homes in the Tōhoku region due to the nuclear meltdowns and the tsunami,⁷ including 160,000 from Fukushima Prefecture alone, nearly 10% of its population.⁸ As of fall 2018, more than seven years after the earthquake, 75,000 people remain in interim housing, including temporary housing units, government-owned housing, and the homes of relatives.

This book tackles several pressing mysteries. Perhaps the biggest one is how so many people survived one of the most catastrophic events of the last decade. Despite the massive height and broad impact of the tsunami, some 96% of those living and working in the inundated areas in Tōhoku made it through. Smaller-scale earthquakes and tsunami have killed far more people in nearby countries such as China and India. Yet even with such a high survival rate overall, some towns and cities in northeastern Japan suffered significantly more than others. Accordingly, I investigate why survival and mortality rates varied so much across the Tōhoku region.

Further, the rebuilding process has not moved in lockstep across the area, nor has it proceeded according to government mandates. As one resident told me when talking about the variation across his prefecture, You can’t reduce our cities’ recoveries to a simple pattern.⁹ At the same time, the Japanese government has highlighted signs of recovery such as the upcoming 2019 Rugby World Cup matches,¹⁰ the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, and the closing of disaster recovery budgets.¹¹ But these artificial milestones remain unconnected to the day-to-day needs of survivors and the speed of their recoveries.

Since that moment in 2011, Tōhoku residents, regional and national decision makers, nongovernmental organizations, and scholars alike have struggled to make sense of the events and their aftermath. As someone who lost my home, car, and possessions to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I have long been interested in what makes individuals, communities, and regions resilient to disaster. How people from the hardest-hit prefectures (Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima) made it through the tsunami and rebuilt their lives remains a critical question for scholars and governments alike. Few agree on what allowed some residents to escape the deadly 20 m (65-foot) tsunami while others succumbed. Some commentators have argued that geography was destiny, as certain coastal areas were more exposed to the waves than others.¹² Others have pointed to demographics, seeing the very young and very old as the most likely to perish.¹³ A few scholars have stated that the best recoveries from disaster depend on strong and competent national leadership.¹⁴ But these arguments are at best partially correct.

Further, some survivors returned to their hometowns, while others decided to begin their lives afresh elsewhere. People who lived near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in communities such as Futaba cannot yet return, although the government has lifted evacuation orders for towns farther away, such as Namie, Iitate, Hirono, Naraha, and Kawauchi. The central government has promised repopulation for other Fukushima villages, such as Ōkuma, by 2020.¹⁵ Some evacuees from Fukushima and elsewhere remain in temporary housing (kasetsu jūtaku) scattered across Japan as of late 2018. Even if the government lifts entry bans and helps rebuild housing near the damaged nuclear power plant, a large-scale return seems unlikely. Radioactive decontamination of the soil and homes continues, and decommissioning the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture will take at least four decades. The few industries left operating in the region near the ruined nuclear plant focus on radioactive waste and cleanup, for which the costs are enormous.

Scholars have argued that it would be far cheaper to relocate and buy homes for all evacuees than to decontaminate properties in an attempt to convince them to return.¹⁶ Similarly, relocating the homes of people who lived in vulnerable coastal villages to higher ground would cost around ¥80 million ($730,000) per person.¹⁷ Despite the economic inefficiencies of its approach and broad public opposition to atomic energy, Japan’s government continues to encourage relocation to higher elevation areas, invest in radiation cleanup, and push for new nuclear power plants and reactor restarts.¹⁸

Beyond the individual and neighborhood levels of survival and recovery, some towns and cities seem to be doing quite well, while other communities have yet to reopen railroad stations and downtown businesses. A handful of cities and towns in Tōhoku—such as Rifu and Sendai—have attracted new residents and actually grown, whereas most cities along the coast have lost population. Many former residents have abandoned coastal villages and moved inland to larger cities, accelerating two long-term trends that have vexed most of Japan: rural depopulation and aging.¹⁹ To attract new residents and convince evacuees to return, communities near the ocean have built seawalls, moved residential areas to higher ground, and launched programs promoting return and economic recovery. One popular attempt to increase livelihoods in these peripheral communities involves promoting local foodstuffs, handmade local crafts, and specialty alcoholic drinks through what one observer has called rebuilding through rebranding.²⁰ TEPCO itself has sought to jump-start Fukushima revitalization by building clean coal energy facilities and sending in employees to clean up the community and interact with local residents.²¹

Some cities have sought to work independently on their rebuilding plans, ignoring recommendations from the regional and national governments and moving quickly to institute their own visions. A number of towns, such as Watari in Miyagi Prefecture, have used the disasters as a chance to upgrade local industries such as agriculture. Hoping to keep strawberry production as a core industry, Watari invested in high-tech greenhouses complete with computer-controlled irrigation, automated light systems, and in-house beehives. Other towns followed the guidelines offered by Tokyo-based national bureaucrats for their economic development and rebuilding. Similarly, prefectures—the Japanese equivalent to North American states—have experienced varying levels of ongoing recovery. Fukushima Prefecture lags behind Miyagi Prefecture, with Iwate Prefecture in second place, in terms of restoration and recovery.

Despite the variation and nuances in recovery, media coverage of the disaster and ongoing rebuilding has ignored the diversity of experience among prefectures, communities, and individuals and has been hamstrung by stereotypes and well-worn cultural tropes. Popular media stories in the West about Japanese resilience in the face of the 3/11 disasters regularly emphasized cultural attributes as contributing to recovery at the national level and ignored local and regional variation in outcomes and responses. We hear of Japanese stoicism²² from observers who watched residents waiting patiently in food or water distribution lines and saw evacuees waiting hours to use phones set up at nearby mobile NTT East offices.²³ But they may have missed angry residents publicly challenging government officials at what had previously been rituals of assent²⁴ and cursing TEPCO executives who came to shelters to bow and apologize for causing inconvenience after the meltdowns. Few have remarked on the use of rock music, cartoons, and public performances to mock both Tokyo’s attempts to reassure citizens over radioactive exposure and the government’s insistence on restarting nuclear power plants.²⁵

Observers content to use a culture of acceptance as their frame have also overlooked lawsuits seeking ¥100 million ($96,000) per child filed by bereaved families whose children died at the Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki.²⁶ Outsiders may have ignored the litigation²⁷ from those whose loved ones perished at the 77 Bank in Onagawa²⁸ and the demands for compensation from the residents of Iitate, some 45 km (28 miles) from Fukushima Dai-ichi, for psychological distress and radiation exposure.²⁹ Whatever role a national Japanese culture has played in the recovery process after the triple disasters, it has not been consistent across the affected region. As one study argued, Focusing on the characteristics and qualities of the Japanese people and Japanese society as a whole is highly problematic as an intellectual framework for understanding the response to and recovery from the 3/11 disasters.³⁰

Claims about the importance of Japanese culture during crises also fail to acknowledge the importance of the governance structures and formal institutions undergirding outcomes at the individual, town, and prefectural levels. We need to understand Japan’s experiences with the disaster and its social and political consequences in broader, international comparison as well. Certainly residents of Japan facing a mass catastrophe encounter different challenges than those living in Haiti, India, or China. Whereas Haiti was a failed state before its devastating earthquake, struggling to deliver the most basic of services to its residents, Japan sat among the OECD nations and had invested heavily in education, health care, and transportation systems. Its rigorous building codes, solid governance framework, and highly professionalized bureaucracy³¹ put it head and shoulders above struggling countries facing similar, or even less severe, catastrophes. Viewing Japan’s experiences side by side with those of other disaster-affected nations can illuminate important aspects of its regulatory and political systems.

Recognizing the shortcomings of telling the story of survival and recovery at any one level of analysis, this book uses data from a variety of levels, beginning with the individual and moving up through the city, prefectural, national, and international levels to place the story of the 3/11 triple disasters in context. Grasping the nuances of Tōhoku’s recovery process will require an in-depth focus on formal and informal institutions as well as the choices made by, and the connections among, individuals. Where earlier it was challenging to grasp the long-term arc of policies and recovery,³² now, some seven years after the tragedies of 3/11, we have better data and a clearer view of what has come since then. To look into these questions at multiple levels of recovery and rebuilding required a new approach to the questions of survival and recovery.

My earlier studies of social capital and resilience in the United States, India, and Japan, for example, rarely touched on the stories of individuals whose decisions and experiences drove broader patterns of recovery.³³ The books and articles I wrote on nuclear power plant host communities³⁴ and the response of civil society to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident³⁵ rarely used the voices of local residents. In the past, when looking into how social networks influenced the ability of people and places to bounce back after crises, I focused almost exclusively on micro-level data and decisions without investigating the ways that towns, prefectures, and national political institutions influenced those outcomes. Engaging with residents and using their words and opinions is critical not just because it is the ethical thing to do. It’s important because it reminds us, as Andrew Littlejohn has pointed out, of the real suffering and emotions that accompany events like Japan’s 3/11 disasters. Many investigations of the Tōhoku disasters have not placed their research in this broader perspective.

Interviews with and anthropological studies of survivors tell us a tremendous amount about the lives of a handful of people before and after the disaster; however, we lack a broader understanding of how their experiences compare with those of others across the affected area.³⁶ Many newspaper articles on the disaster focus on the missing, the dead, and the heroic. These reports are important. But surely the geographic, political, and social context influenced residents’ decisions and altered their lives before and after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Scholars have emphasized how strongly the broader context of reception influences the decisions made by survivors about return, migration, and recovery.³⁷ The social ties and institutional context in Japan—that is, networks and governance, which vary from city to city, prefecture to prefecture—have proved important factors in influencing rebuilding, and it is on them that my focus remains throughout this book.

Villages, towns, and cities sit one level of analysis up from individual experiences. Yet many descriptions of town recoveries make it difficult to understand whether the experiences of often-referenced towns are the result of their efforts or of less obvious factors.³⁸ Journalists have spent hours in towns that set up businesses in temporary buildings downtown, relocated residences to higher ground, built new railroads and stores, and put people back in homes and workplaces. But reporters have demonstrated less interest in looking into the ways that prefectural spending decisions and interactions between town officials and regional and national decision makers shaped town recoveries. Observers also have few insights into the ways that connections between local leaders in Tōhoku communities and power brokers in Tokyo and abroad helped accelerate reconstruction.

Some may expect this book to focus on only a single aspect of the triple disasters, whether the earthquake, tsunami, or nuclear meltdowns. Instead, I write about all three crises, as their effects often overlapped.³⁹ Along with looking at the casualties and physical recovery from the events, I also analyze the mental and psychosocial consequences of radioactive exposure for residents. Biological studies of species in the area have revealed genetic abnormalities.⁴⁰ The results of ongoing cancer screenings across Fukushima are still coming in, but they show higher than expected rates of thyroid carcinoma among the 300,000 people who have been tested.⁴¹ Some argue that there is no direct link between these testing outcomes and the nuclear accident,⁴² but parents have voted with their feet, moving out of the area with their children in droves. One mother from Iitate said that she believes only half of what the doctors say about the risks she and her children face.⁴³

Further, residents from the area face not just the potential of death from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia, but measurable physical and mental illness caused by anxiety about their health, separation from friends and family, and uncertainty about their old homes and their livelihoods. When some locals from towns such as Futaba evacuated the area near Fukushima Dai-ichi due to government orders, they unintentionally relocated to towns, such as Iitate, in the plume of spreading radioactivity. That town, like several other destinations for evacuees, had no such mandate to depart, but was also exposed to radiation. Hypertension and diabetes, along with childhood obesity, have risen across the area.⁴⁴ Residents face the accompanying challenges of alcoholism, mental illness, depression, and suicide. I hope that this research on these less visible but palpable health outcomes can bring the social consequences for Japanese society as a whole, and for the residents of Fukushima in particular, into better focus.

While my past articles, chapters, and books have included extensive tables of numbers and difficult-to-grasp social science terms, I wanted to take a different approach for this work. This book moves between qualitative and quantitative methods in what scholars call a nested analysis to fill in the gaps of each method and to better guide the analysis.⁴⁵ No single approach, whether interviews, participant observation, focus groups, case studies, or regression analysis, can provide a holistic perspective on complex issues. Further, publishers, editors, and critics alike point out that social scientists can make the most interesting subjects dull and lifeless. Overemphasizing methodology—how we know what know—rather than what we have learned may be partially responsible. So in this book I’ve tried to submerge the methodological skeleton underlying the claims by placing it in the appendices. For those readers with an interest in ordinary least squares regression analysis coefficients, you’ll find them buried there. Similarly, I’ve put a list of the people with whom I or my colleagues have spoken (identified by name, if possible, or by organization if not) there as well.⁴⁶ Throughout the text I’ve used maps, figures, and graphs, instead of lists of numbers, to make my points.

This project has grown out of a series of visits and several extended stays in Japan, beginning with a short trip in the late spring of 2011 following the disasters and culminating in a year-long stay as a Fulbright Fellow from late summer 2012 through fall 2013, a full summer (May–August) in 2015, and fieldwork and teaching in Tōhoku in 2017 and 2018. I was also fortunate to go on a variety of fact-finding missions over the past few years with organizations such as the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), and the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC). I interacted with local nongovernmental organizations in Tōhoku, including Ibasho, Ishinomaki 2.0, and PlanMiyagi. Speaking with survivors, interviewing heads of NGOs and decision makers in Japanese, carrying out fieldwork in many Tōhoku villages, gathering quantitative data through surveys, and reading local newspaper and blog accounts of the disaster underscored for me how often our research lacks depth and background. For details on the many people I’ve spoken with and interviewed through summer 2018, see the list of interviewees and institutions in appendix 1.

As all authors know, books are never the products of their writers working in isolation. Instead, I have been fortunate to benefit from the help, mentorship, and guidance of a large number of individuals who have given of their time and expertise. Thank you to Howard Aldrich, Yael Aldrich, Simon Avenell, Leo Bosner, Jinko Brinkman, Kent Calder, Stephanie Chang, Rosie Clawson, Kyle Cleveland, Kevin Crook, Christian Dimmer, David Edgington, Shin Fujihira, Mariko Gakiya, Ted Gilman, Kazuaki Hagi, Ken Hartman, Dan Homsey, Laurie Johnson, Rieko Kage, Machiko Kamiyama, Emi Kiyota, Kathy Krauth, Claire Leppold, Kaori Linderman, Andrew Littlejohn, Liz Maly, Peter Matanle, Tomoko Matsushita, John Morris, Hiroyuki Nakata, Dan Neely, Ilan Noy, Eiji Oguma, Rob Olshansky, Yoshikuni Ono, Susan Pharr, Jim Platte, Liesel Ritchie, David Satterwhite, Yasuyuki Sawada, Jennifer Sklarew, David Slater, Gavin Smith, Amina Sugimoto, Ezra Suleiman, Kathleen Tierney, and Irwin Weiser.

I had excellent research assistance from Elicia Cousins, Saki Kitadai, Yusuke Kuroishi, Kai McGuire, Keishi Nambara, Violet Ranson, Yuto Sakakibara, Masayuku Sawada, Takahiro Yamamoto, and Daisuke Yoneoka in Japan. Jennifer Adams, Gavriel Tzvi Aldrich, Ben Averbuch, Anne Culbertson, Allie Hastings, Michele Hemler, Masayoshi Miura, Keishi Nambara, Ishra Noor, Courtney Page-Tan, and Miyuki Tsujikawa supported this research in the United States. Thanks especially to the graphic artists who helped make the ideas come alive: Rachel Faibish, Steven Braun, and Bahare Sanaie-Movahed. John Morris and Machiko Kamiyama provided a sanctuary for good conversations, rest, and regrouping while I was in Sendai. Courtney Schley helped point out all of the ways I could say things more clearly.

Several different institutions supported the research necessary for this publication. The Colorado Natural Hazards Center under the direction of Kathleen Tierney provided a Quick Response Grant for research in the summer of 2011. I was honored to receive a Fulbright research fellowship under the auspices of the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission (JUSEC) during the 2012–2013 academic year; thank you to Jinko Brinkman, Mizuho Iwata, and David Satterwhite for great administrative support. The East Asia Institute under the guidance of Young-Hwan Shin provided support for comparative research in China in the summer of 2013. Purdue University’s Kinley Trust grant supported me in the summer of 2014. I appreciate the institutional support provided by Rosie Clawson and Irwin Weiser at Purdue University and by Mitchell Orenstein, Uta Poiger, John Portz, Matthias Ruth, and Tom Vicino at Northeastern University. The Center for International Research on the Japanese Economy (CIRJE) at the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Economics provided funding for writing and research during the summer of 2015.

I received feedback from colleagues at presentations at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), the University of Tokyo, Tōhoku University, Taisho University, Academica Sinica, Beijing Normal University, Fudan University, Harvard University, Lincoln University, Canterbury University, Brookings Institute, Ishinomaki Senshu University, the Program on US-Japan Relations at Harvard, the Natural Hazards Conference, Oxford University, Northeastern University (especially the students in my Dialogue of Civilizations course on disasters and recovery), and the University of Wellington. Talks at the UNISDR Conference on disasters in Sendai, the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA), and the World Bank helped to refine and clarify my ideas, as did informal and formal talks with colleagues at Northeastern University, including Max Abrahms, Steve Flynn, and Jennie Stephens. A Mercatus Center–sponsored book conference under the leadership of Virgil Storr brought together Stefanie Haeffele, Arnold Howitt, Tonya Neaves, Eileen Norcross, William Siembieda, and Solomon Stein, who put hours into helping me up my game. I appreciate their input and the work of Rob DeLeo, Tim Fraser, Liz Maly, and Courtney Page-Tan in improving the final drafts.

The chesed of the Borei Olam sustains us often in ways that we fail to sufficiently appreciate. My wife, Yael, remains the core of my world and the reason I’ve been able to relocate our family some 14 times over more than 20 years of marriage. Her strength, sense of humor, intelligence, and dedication to our shared vision make it a delight to be married to her. All that I have—personally and professionally—comes from her.

Our children, Gavriel Tzvi, Yaakov, Yehudis, and Dov Ber, are a blessing and we should continue to shep nachas from them. My immediate family—Howard and Penny Aldrich, Steven, Allison, and Jackson Aldrich, Dalia Carmel, Suncha and Louis McCoy, Michael Spring, and my various uncles and aunts—Carol, Craig, Cheryl, Chuck, Chris, Curt, and Cathy, among them—help me stay focused on what matters. My grandparents, Fifi and Jack Daum, Howard and Dorothy Aldrich, and my great-uncle Herb Goldstein have left this world but remain in our thoughts. My sister-in-law, Nicole McCoy-Spring, passed away after a long battle with cancer before I could finish this project. She lived a life of optimism, giving, and outreach to others across racial and religious lines. Our memory of her should continue to be a blessing and her resilience should inspire us. I hope this book can refocus our research and spending priorities on factors that make a difference in reducing mortality, building resilience, and accelerating recovery.

ONE

Introduction: The Story of Three Disasters

At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake shattered the chilly afternoon in Tōhoku, the northeastern region of Japan’s main island, Honshu. Seconds before the ground would jolt, Japan’s earthquake early warning system (kinkyū jishin sokuhō) detected the oncoming seismic P-waves and sent an alert: a quake was coming. Some people standing near municipal loudspeakers in Tōhoku heard a prerecorded announcement about the danger,¹ but most residents did not. Rather than dissipating quickly, like most of the hundreds of small but noticeable earthquakes that hit the country each year, the shaking continued for what many told me felt like eternity. A force equal to 600 million times the energy released over Hiroshima by the atom bomb in 1945 discharged over six minutes some 130 km (80 miles) off Japan’s coast. That undersea megathrust earthquake remains among the top five most powerful ever recorded, and its power measurably slowed the earth’s rotation and moved Miyagi Prefecture some 5 m (15 feet) to the east. In Tokyo, the nation’s capital, hundreds of miles from the quake’s epicenter, skyscrapers swayed slowly like palm trees to the sound of groaning metal.

In Tōhoku itself—the region closest to the epicenter—windows shattered, steel girders bent out of shape, and computer monitors and files toppled from desks. Shelves collapsed, sprinkler pipes burst, floating ceilings caved in, and bricks fell off the front of buildings in Sendai and other Tōhoku cities. Salespeople ushered customers outside, and teachers gathered their pupils in schoolyards and baseball fields dusted by snow. Many homes and buildings lost power. People hid under desks and tables, shielding their heads from falling debris; many outside lay down on the ground or hugged trees to keep from falling over. In Tokyo, water bubbled to the surface in parks built on reclaimed land as liquefaction turned the ground to mud. Once the shaking subsided, roughly 2.5 million people hurried from their office buildings in Tokyo to begin the long commute home, which for many, with trains and subways shut down, would involve hours of walking or waiting in taxi lines that stretched for hundreds of meters.

Three minutes after the earthquake stopped, the Japanese Meteorological Agency (Kishōchō, or JMA) issued tsunami alerts via several different channels. Authorities broadcast warnings in Chinese, English, and Japanese. Their tsunami warnings overrode television broadcasts and blared on loudspeakers, radios, and cellular phones. Mobile phones in the coastal region operated by all of Japan’s networks, including the most popular phones from NTT and SoftBank, emitted a disconcerting squeal followed by a series of messages predicting potential wave heights.

While intended to motivate people to evacuate low-lying areas of the Tōhoku region, the JMA’s warnings radically underestimated the tsunami heights. The 6 m (20-foot) forecast sent for the city of Onagawa, for example, underestimated what would actually be a 20 m (65-foot) wave. Similarly, the first JMA tsunami warning sent to Otsuchi predicted a 3 m (10-foot) wave, although the agency later doubled that figure to 6 m as more data came in. Other cities and villages in Tōhoku also received wave height forecasts that did not match future reality. By the time the JMA revised its tsunami warnings to give more accurate wave heights, many residents had lost power for their radios and televisions or had stopped paying attention.² Surveys by Japan’s Cabinet Office showed that as many as 74% of residents did not hear about the changes in the predicted tsunami heights.³

Along with the broadcast messages, police officers and firefighters began driving around coastal towns telling residents to evacuate (hinan shite kudasai). Many residents in the Tōhoku region began to evacuate schools and businesses, following the protocols drilled into them by teachers and disaster managers. Many schoolchildren had been taught the concept of tsunami tendenko: fleeing after an earthquake without stopping.⁴ Elementary and junior high school students in Kamaishi had just received a lecture on precisely this topic from Toshitaka Katada, an engineering professor who had studied how 10-year-old Tilly Smith saved some 100 lives on a beach in Thailand during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.⁵ Smith, who was vacationing with her family from the UK, had learned the warning signs of impending tsunami in a science class. When she recognized those signs—deeply receding tide and frothing waters—she yelled for other beachgoers