3.11 media

Over the last couple days I have read many stories about the Tohoku Earthquake. Some of these stories are about the brave survivors, the amazing clean up work, and the mass prayers and ceremonies for both the living and the deceased. However, many of the ones most pushed, reported, or published were highly offensive. They made me ashamed of some of my country members, who apparently only care that they are/might be affected by this tragedy.
This goes especially for those who only see this as a platform for their personal agendas. Whether they are against the fishing boats, feel the Japan's way of life is wrong, claim Japan is over populated, or anything else does not give them the right to slander our neighbors. The fear mongering and hateful way that this natural disaster has been portrayed, especially by English speaking media, disgusts me.
The main tragedy was the loss of over 20,000 lives; not a nuclear accident. The brave men of Dai-ichi plant are to be commended; and while certain groups could have moved faster or done more, hindsight is always 20/20. Saying things like Japan should be cleaning up the mess in the ocean so we don't have to, destroy all nuclear plants because while we still need electrical power we don't want to deal with the consequences, or that anyone deserved the Tsunami for any reason is selfish. Let us stop accusing each other of things and help one another.

BBC Japanese Tsunami anniversary documentery

This morning I was reading my internet friend Coco's blog, and someone had left this video as a response. Not really sure I would have put it next to a page dedicated to girl's day, but it is very good. This is an hour long documentary about the Tsunami and Fukushima Dai-ichi plant as told by elementary school students on the east coast. Many of these children watched their friends be washed away by the tsunami, or were evacuated from the area near the plant. Warning; definitely cry worthy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_AxnoNrr_8

Since my mother works in a power plant almost just like Dai-ichi she was very interested in what was going on. Brownsferry is a bit different, but all modern plants are built roughly the same way; they have very strict rules on how they are built after Chernobyl.  Nuclear power is very clean and safe if the rules are followed, but no one was planning for such a huge tsunami to hit a power plant. How can you plan for something that has never happened before? After the Tsunami even more rules and procedures were written, some of them by my mother!
She had never really been interested in Japanese culture before the Tsunami, but afterwards she calls the men who stayed to shut down the plant 'my nuclear brothers.' After all, she went through a taste of how scary it must have been for them. A large group of tornadoes ripped through the area about this time last year, and she was stuck in the plant. She had to shut the reactor unit she was watching down, and she couldn't get a hold of any of us siblings. She didn't know we were safe in the basement; she thought I was at college, and that my younger siblings had been sent home with no one there to help them. She had thought we could have been dead, and that our home could've been destroyed. Luckily the tornado missed our house, and I got home safely before the tornadoes came. There were trees down, the power went out, and several houses up the road were damaged, but everyone near us was ok.