Читать книгу Meltdown - Yoichi Funabashi - Страница 16

2:46 P.M., MARCH 11, 2011. Prime Minister Naoto Kan was attending a meeting of the Upper House’s audit committee. The morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun had run a scoop on the question of Kan’s political donations.

PRIME MINISTER SUSPECTED OF ACCEPTING ILLEGAL DONATIONS FROM SOUTH KOREAN RESIDENT; NO ANSWER FROM PM SIDE.

That was the front-page headline.

“An Asahi Shimbun investigation has discovered that in 2006 and 2009, Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s political funding organization accepted a total of 1.04 million yen from the former director of a Japanese-based Korean financial institution. The former director’s family members and several related parties have explained that the former director is a South Korean national. The Political Contributions Regulation Act forbids donations from foreign nationals.”

Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara had resigned just five days earlier for receiving 250,000 yen from a Korean citizen. Politicians who violated the Political Contributions Regulation Act were subject to penalties, including a suspension of their civil rights, even if the money was returned.

For the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) opposition, it was a unique opportunity to overthrow Kan’s incumbent government, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). LDP Upper House member Kotaro Nogami (Toyama Prefecture) had pursued this question that day in the audit committee.

“The morning edition of today’s paper has run a very serious story.”

Kan went on the defensive.

“Since the name was Japanese, I thought it was a Japanese national. I had no idea that it was a foreign national, as the newspaper reports.”

The LDP had no ammunition other than the newspaper story, so Kan managed to weasel his way out of it.¹

The earthquake took place as LDP member Hiroshi Okada (Ibaraki Prefecture) was standing up to ask a question, showing to the live-coverage cameras the table he had created on a panel. Just as the government expert, Yasuyuki Takai, the bureau chief of the Equal Employment Opportunity, Children, and Families Bureau at the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW), began to answer, “The material distributed by the member …,” the chandeliers in the committee room began to shake violently.

Takai choked in mid-sentence and looked up at the ceiling. The chandelier screeched as the glass parts rubbed up against each other. As one, the cabinet members and Kasumigaseki central government bureaucrats all raised their voices in a groan. The stenographers hid under the table in a mad rush. Kan remained in place, grabbing the arm of his chair. He looked around in a daze.

“Please take refuge under the tables.”

Audit Committee Chairman Yosuke Tsuruho (LDP, Wakayama Prefecture) said as much, but remained in his chair, clinging to the desk. After the shaking finally died down, Tsuruho declared, “We will take a temporary break,” and stopped proceedings at 2:50 p.m.

Surrounded by security police (SP), Kan left the room and headed to the Diet entrance. His official vehicle took a long time to arrive. Kan could not hide his frustration. He ignored the reporters who were peppering him with questions.²

When Kan arrived back at the Kantei, Tetsuro Fukuyama, deputy chief cabinet secretary, was waiting for him in the basement crisis management center. At the time of the quake, Fukuyama had been watching the live coverage of the audit committee in his fifth-floor office. He could see the chandeliers shaking violently on the television. Both the prime minister and the chief cabinet secretary were looking up at the ceiling uneasily.

It was standard procedure during a crisis that the prime minister, chief cabinet secretary, and deputy chief cabinet secretary, in that order, should direct the crisis management center to respond. Fukuyama flew into the adjacent secretariat of the deputy secretary. Six staff members greeted him, still on their knees. Some were clinging to desks. Instructing an aide to “contact Ito-san [Tetsuro Ito, deputy chief cabinet secretary for crisis management] and tell him to get the emergency response team to the crisis management center,” Fukuyama himself headed to the crisis management center. As the elevators were not working, he ran down the stairs.³

The crisis management center was a large room with a high ceiling and a round table in the middle. Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Minister Banri Kaieda and other members of the cabinet had all been attending the audit committee meeting. Kaieda returned to METI from the Upper House. In the car, the SP told Kaieda, “The epicenter is in the sea off Sanriku, magnitude higher than eight, more than a thousand dead.”

They were listening to police reports over the small earphones they always wore.⁴

2:50 P.M. Tetsuro Ito, deputy chief secretary for crisis management, set up an earthquake response center (headed by himself) and assembled an emergency team of bureau chiefs from the related ministries. Most of them arrived within fifteen minutes.⁵

With the prime minister’s chair still vacant, the round table was surrounded by the deputy chief secretary for crisis management, his aide (security and crisis management), and senior officers from the National Police Agency (NPA); the Ministry of Defense (MOD); the Fire and Disaster Management Agency; the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Tourism (MLIT); the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MICA); the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA); and the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC). Their subordinates were all seated behind them.

In MOD’s case, their operational planning director was always part of the emergency team, and it was standard procedure for him to head straight to the crisis management center. NPA was to send their public security director.⁶

There were ten huge screens on the walls. Yukio Edano, chief cabinet secretary, was the first cabinet member to make it to the crisis management center. He had also been at the audit committee meeting, but immediately asked Chairman Tsuruho to “please at least let me go back to the Kantei,” and quickly left the Diet building with his permission.

After Edano, Kan also rushed into the center. He was followed by the minister of state for disaster management, Ryu Matsumoto. Kan joined Edano, Matsumoto, Fukuyama, and the others at the round table.⁷

There was always someone shouting something into the microphones. The police department was reporting the number of emergency calls, the fire department the number of ambulance callouts and fires. MLIT was reporting rail transportation and road conditions, and the Meteorological Agency was reporting the magnitude and seismic intensity scale of every aftershock.

Each of the officers was reporting via their own microphone. There were already more than a hundred people from every ministry crammed into the room. People were shouting everywhere. It reminded Fukuyama of the floor of the old stock exchange. He had worked as a salesman for Daiwa Securities in the heady days of the economic bubble in the late eighties, and had then run for office in Kyoto and been elected to the Upper House. Prior to his current post, he had been senior vice minister of foreign affairs.⁸

At the moment of the earthquake, Shuichi Sakurai, director general of the Defense Ministry’s Bureau of Operational Policy, was watching the screen at MOD’s Central Command Post. The Somalians arrested for an act of piracy in the Gulf of Oman were being transferred from a U.S. navy vessel to a maritime SDF vessel. It was just at that time that a huge tremor hit.

Sakurai tried to go back to his office to get his ID, but the MOD elevators had stopped. He could not get into the crisis management center without it. He climbed up to the twelfth floor of the ministry, then came back down. By the time he made it to the crisis management center, almost all of the other bureau chiefs had assembled. They were each reporting on the damage sustained.⁹

3:02 P.M. Yoshihiro Murai, the governor of Miyagi Prefecture, asked the district commander of the Tohoku SDF for a disaster mobilization of the SDF. The screen showed an SDF emergency helicopter. All of the television stations were broadcasting images of the tsunami. All kinds of information were being sent into the crisis management center.

“Automatic shutdown at Fukushima Units 1 and 2.”

“Tohoku Expressway completely closed.”

“The emperor and empress are safe.”

3:14 P.M. The government set up an emergency response headquarters at the Kantei, consisting of cabinet members (headed by Prime Minister Kan), and the first emergency HQ meeting was held in the crisis management center in the basement. It was the first time in the postwar period that the government had established an emergency headquarters. Each cabinet member read out, in turn, the memos they had prepared. At the end, Edano said, “Please keep gathering information. Damage may exceed that of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.”¹⁰

The results of a quake and tsunami simulation were passed to Edano. They showed “the atrocious figures of 6,000-8,000 dead.”¹¹ As the meeting finished and the cabinet members were all getting to their feet, one of them said, “There aren’t any cameras here. We’d better hold another emergency response headquarters meeting in front of the cameras.”

Edano momentarily looked nonplussed, then said, “Well, then, would all of the cabinet members please gather in the fourth-floor main conference room?”

Kaieda remembered feeling a strong sense of What on earth do you mean? but joined the other cabinet members and climbed to the fourth floor. Holding another meeting in this new location, Edano read out the exact same memo he had just finished reading earlier. Next, the other cabinet members read out their memos and repeated the same statements. On his way back to METI in the car, Kaieda was furious.

Why did we have to hold the same meeting twice? They worry too much about the mass media! ¹²

At that moment, Fukushima Daiichi was being hit by a thirteen-meter-high tsunami. It was around 3:36 p.m. When a tsunami hits a thirty-meter cliff face, water splashes up as high as fifty meters.¹³

3:42 P.M. In accordance with article 10.1 of NEPA, TEPCO had reported a specific event requiring notification to METI, NISA, and the relevant local governments. In the crisis management center, an official from NISA announced over his microphone, “Fukushima Daiichi has lost all AC power!”¹⁴

An emergency meeting of senior officials was being held at METI. Senior Vice Minister Motohisa Ikeda and Permanent Secretary Kazuo Matsunaga, among others, were in attendance. Just as Eiji Hiraoka, NISA deputy director general, was reporting, “The control rods in each reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Station have been inserted into the fuel rods and have shut down,” a junior official handed him a memo. The memo said, “We have an article 10 event.”

If it was an article 10 event, they had to set up a local response headquarters and designate the vice minister as its head. They had to get Kaieda’s approval as quickly as possible. When Kaieda returned to METI, information of a fire at the Keiyo Complex had just come in. This was followed by reports of blackouts everywhere.

“What’ll we do if we have a mega-blackout in Tokyo?”

Entering his office, he heard from the SP that all members of the cabinet were to assemble at the Kantei. Changing into his disaster gear, he headed immediately to the Kantei.

4:13 P.M. In the fourth-floor main conference room, where the rerun of the emergency headquarters meeting had taken place, Kan was speaking on television.

“I am asking everyone to remain calm. Especially those close to the coastline, please remain alert to tsunamis and head to high ground. It is at precisely times like these that we must help one another …”