EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI AND NUCLEAR CRISIS

On March 11, 2011, the world was shaken with the news of a massive earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country and set off warnings as far away the west coast of the United States and South America.

We had all the more reasons to be concerned for we have our communities in those region. It was a relief to get the updates from Fr. Felix through NUNC and also from Fr. Francisco Carin, saying all our brothers are safe.

“Thanks for being with us at this time. Thanks be to God that nothing has happened to our houses in Nagoya and Osaka, nor in Tokyo. Only a few bookcases fell down. Nothing more. The strongest damages hapened in Iwateken, Ibaragi ken..., in this zone. I believe that the deaths are now counted in the hundreds. The earthquake occured a few minutes before 3pm. Some 100 infants were in the kindergaten in Imaichi, and we moved them out of the building quickly as a precaution. Luckily, everything was OK and we were able to return to normalcy in a few minutes. In Hirakta almost nothing was felt. Johan was in the Tokyo house alone. The seminarian, Nagasaki, was in Gunma. But both are well, although it took a while to get in touch with them because the telephone lines were overloaded with calls and didn’t work. For the moment, nothing more" - wrote Fr. Félix Martínez to Fr. General, on that day.

Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country. As the nation struggled with a rescue effort, it also faced the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl; explosions and leaks of radioactive gas took place in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that suffered partial meltdowns, while spent fuel rods at another reactor overheated and caught fire, releasing radioactive material directly into the atmosphere. Japanese officials turned to increasingly desperate measures, as traces of radiation were found in Tokyo's water and in water pouring from the reactors into the ocean. A month after the quake, nuclear officials put the crisis in the same category of severity as the Chernobyl disaster.

As of April 7, the official death toll had been raised to 12,600, and more than 14,700 people were listed as missing, although there may be some overlap between the two groups. The final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000. More than 160,000 people remained housed in temporary shelters; tens of thousands of others evacuated their homes due to the nuclear crisis.

Missionaries in the China Mission region join all our brothers in Japan, praying for the hundreds of thousands of the victims of the disaster.