HIROSHIMA, Japan — Keijiro Matsushima remembers the day the whole world turned to night. In a flash of fire and blast of shock, his town obliterated before his eyes. It was August 6, 1945.
Now his eyes turn north toward the Fukushima nuclear plant, where Japanese officials confirm a blast of hydrogen blew off the building roof of a second reactor Monday and fuel rods were exposed for two hours in a third reactor, raising the risk of overheating which can lead to meltdown.
To try to avert greater catastrophe, plant workers have vented radioactive steam from the affected reactors into the air.
The earthquake and tsunami also cut power to pumps that usually circulate water to cool the cores. Tokyo Electric has resorted to flooding the three reactors with sea water to try to cool the nuclear cores, pumping the newly radioactive water back into the ocean.
Reflecting on the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final stages of World War II, he wonders about the outcome of the current crisis.
“It feels like the third A-bombing, this time (one that) we Japanese made ourselves,” Matsushima said.
The second explosion brought more fear, especially to Japanese activists who warn of the perils of nuclear power
“Oh, my God,” said Akira Tashiro upon learning of the explosion. Tashiro is regarded as one of Japan’s foremost documenters of nuclear energy and its impact on nearby populations and the environment.
As senior staff writer of Chugoku Shimbun, Hiroshima’s biggest newspaper, he’s spent the past three decades visiting nuclear facilities in at least eight countries, including Three Mile Island in the United States and Chernobyl in Russia.
Tashiro called today’s development “what could become a major disaster.” He says he’s suspicious the government is underplaying the danger to appease the public.
In Hiroshima, he’s not alone in questioning the safety of nuclear power plants, but the majority of Japanese people support the industry and consider it to provide a clean source of fuel, which powers 30 percent of Japan’s energy needs.
Other activists are raising questions about how the radioactive seawater being released back into the ocean would affect the fish, a huge source of food not only in Japan but across Asia. The Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo is known as the largest fish market in the world.
“I can’t say whether the fish will be safe,” says Shouji Kihara, an anti-nuclear activist who was fielding calls from reporters across Japan. He worries not only for the immediate safety of residents within 12 miles of the plant but also for long-term effects for a much wider swath of the environment.
To deal with the shutdowns of the ruined reactors, the country began a series of rotating 5-hour outages.
Television images in the impacted regions show rescue workers searching by hand under debris and peering into cars they reach by inflatable boats.
Heartbreaking stories fill the 24/7 news cycle, grandparents searching for young children, a man riding a bike from town to town looking for his wife, the owner of a saki factory unable to find more than half of his 50 employees.
Matsushima says the images are seared in his mind, taking him back in time to the nuclear catastrophe that leveled his community more than 65 years earlier.
“This time we Japanese people made (the catastrophe),” he says. For those currently in the radiated zone, “I feel very sad about them. This thing has happened again. It’s very disappointing.”
Hagit Limor is a reporter for WCPO-TV, a Scripps station in Cincinnati.