Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

On August 7, 2011, I have the honor of sharing my experience in Japan with a broader audience.  Here is the unabridged version of what I will share with the audience:

Speech Draft 7/30/11 (revised 8/5/11)

Good afternoon.

My name is Sean Egusa and recently I had the honor of sharing an amazing experience with 87 brothers and sisters on Azumano Travel's Flight of Friendhip as we traveled to northeastern Japan to lend a hand to the recovery efforts after the devastating events there of March 11, 2011.

At 2:45 local time, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred 43 miles of the coast of northeast Japan. The earthquake was so powerful that it shifted the main island of Japan 8 feet and shifted the earth on its axis.  The earthquake also sent a series of tsunami waves towards the Japanese coastline and it was for just such an eventuality that the Japanese had extensively trained and prepared.  The coastline was even fortified with man-made seawalls, designed to withstand the power of Poseidon.

Take for example, a section of the coastline just 140 miles north of Tokyo, where a 15 foot seawall protected the reactors of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant.  That is, the seawall was built to protect against waves 15 feet and lower.  47 minutes after the 9.0 earthquake, Mother Nature delivered a 47 foot tidal wave and that's when things started to go wrong.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, one of the most powerful marketing campaigns ever developed that is a particularly natural human reaction in natural disasters.  The ironic thing to me though is that the events following March 11 around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant created more fear, uncertainty and doubt than the double whammy Mother Nature delivered, and it continues to this day.

But let me take you back to what I witnessed with my own eyes...

8 weeks ago I slogged through piles of mud mixed with fish, squid, children's toys, tatami mats, family heirlooms with 20 strangers who are now some of my favorite people I know. I saw people from age 13 to 75 not care who they were, how much they made or what lot in life they came from pull ampan man story books, silverware, tatami mats, trees, sinks from the same pile of foul-smelling slime-ridden rotting mud, the mud that lent a particular stench to the atmosphere and is still present on both my boots and in my nostrils every time I close my eyes and remember standing there. One of those unexpected but very tangible memories of the trip.  And it is in those moments, as I stood where, 3 months earlier, a 10-15 foot wall of water had plowed through the town of Ishinomaki in northeastern Japan. 

I stood in the midst of surreal devastation.  (reading of a haiku written by a colleague)

Earthquake, tsunami
Sight and smell I can't forget
I am not the same

I would actually take pictures of the baytown of Rikuzentakata and compare them side by side with photos of Hiroshima's ground zero.  In Hiroshima, one lone building was left standing amidst what once was a bustling city center, while in Rikuzentakata, a lone pine stood where a forest once dominated the skyline.

I find it interesting that humanity can be so intent on creating that which could destroy us – as if we were trying our best to play our role in some self-fulfilling prophecy.  But while we gawk in our infantile understanding of what power is, Mother Nature reminds us of who is in control.  Not us…

To put this in perspective, the tsunami generated by the earthquake, in less than an hour, delivered devastation along 420 miles of Japanese coastline.  To put that in perspective, think about the entire coastline from Astoria, Oregon to Eureka, California hit by at least a 10 foot wall of water, more likely 20-30 feet, but in some places up to 80 feet.

I make this case not to provide any security or sense that what we do, what we create doesn’t matter, but my case is simply why complicate things more when we can’t even protect against the natural disasters of floods, tornados, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, that already plague this planet?

But while Japan has already come far along the road to recovery from the impacts of the earthquake and tsunami, it still struggles with grasping the entirety of the impacts from the meltdowns at Fukushima.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima and have dinner with relatives who had survived the great war.  On August 6, 1945 my uncle was stationed on some lonely island fortress in the south Pacific while my aunt, a junior in high school, was helping reinforce fortifications along the coastline as Japan prepared for the naval assault it knew had to come to end the war.  But most of her classmates were still back in school…  in Hiroshima.

I am not sure if it is that I feel some modicum of personal guilt for what I have seen through my relative’s eyes or whether it is just the natural guilt any living soul might feel as they stroll through the Hiroshima Peace Park.  We all have our own demons, but I may have a few more than you folks before me.

For you see, in the early hours of December 7, 1941, my great uncle Takashige Egusa led a task force of 88 dive bombers into an enemy harbor creating a chain of events that, 44 months later, ended in the mushroom clouds of nuclear devastation.

My mother still cries when she sees footage of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it has made me realize that, natural disasters aside, it is a bit sadder for all of us when we see a tragedy that we have bestowed upon ourselves. 

Thank you.