Japan - Emperor Prays, Trains Stop as Japan Remembers March 11 Disaster

Japan’s Emperor led millions of the country’s citizens in a minute’s silence to remember the more than 19,000 people killed or lost in the earthquake and tsunami one year ago.

The magnitude-9 earthquake that struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11 last year triggered a tsunami, 39 meters (128 feet) tall at its highest point, which crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant and laid waste to entire towns as it came ashore along hundreds of kilometers of Japan’s Pacific coastline. More than 340,000 people are still living in temporary homes, official data show.

“This is a difficult period but we must overcome it,” Emperor Akihito said at a ceremony at Tokyo’s National Theater attended by 1,200 people including Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. “Many volunteers went to the devastated areas, living in tough conditions while supporting refugees. We must be thankful for them and those who worked to quell the nuclear disaster at the site.”

The radiation that leaked from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima plant has left areas of land uninhabitable for decades, while support for the government plummeted as reconstruction was hindered by political in-fighting. Only 6 percent of the 22.5 million tons of debris left by the tsunami has been cleared.

About 30,000 people gathered in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park for the one-minute silence, said organizers of the “Peace on Earth” event, which includes celebrities such as musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. People listened to live music and signed a petition to urge the government to abandon nuclear power.

Trains Halted

Some train services in Tokyo halted temporarily as part of the memorial. Tokyu Corp. (9005), which operates bus and train services mainly in southwest Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture, said it increased a planned stop to 4 minutes from 1 minute to allow passengers time for “silent prayers.”

Similar memorial events took place throughout the devastated areas. National broadcaster NHK showed images of a service in Okuma Town, inside the no-go zone around the nuclear plant. Mourners in white protective clothing offered flowers and prayers at a roadside, televised pictures showed.

In Kesennuma, where city officials are embarking on a 10- year recovery plan to repair the city known for its fishing port and seafood processing, a Pillars of Light ceremony -- three giant searchlights symbolizing hope, the future and indomitable spirit -- will be broadcast over the Internet.

“What I’ve learned is that you still have to try to live life,” Takeyoshi Kidoura, the international business manager at Kidoura Shipyards in Kesennuma, said in an interview. “Many people have lost their families, but life has to go on.”

Energy Alternatives

In Sendai city, north of Fukushima, more than 300 business leaders from the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, the nation’s second-largest business lobby, held a silent prayer before discussing the impact of the earthquake on the economy as well as alternatives to nuclear power.

Only two of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors remain online following the accident in Fukushima, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, with the last scheduled to be turned off for maintenance next month.

“This nuclear accident has had a tremendous impact on agriculture, fisheries and tourism businesses,” Hironori Saito, vice chairman for Fukushima Economic Research Institute, said at the event. “The big issue is how Fukushima’s population will change. More than 160,000 people are unable to go back to their hometowns.”

Nuclear Free

The population of Fukushima prefecture may already have fallen to 1.92 million from 2.02 million before March 11, and may halve in the next 30 years, Saito said.

“It is clear that no amount of precautions will make a country completely safe from nuclear energy,” former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who oversaw the government’s response to the accident, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last week. “I have reached the conclusion, therefore, that the only option is to promote a society free of nuclear power.”

Environmental group Greenpeace International criticized the government’s handling of the radioactive contamination from the Dai-Ichi plant, saying that residents are still at risk. Areas of Fukushima City, with a population of 1 million, were contaminated as much as 1,000 times the level of background radiation levels from before the accident, the group said in an e-mailed statement last week.

“The day of March 11th is forever etched on the hearts and minds of every Tepco employee,” Toshio Nishizawa, president of Tokyo Electric, said in a statement today. “No matter what tasks we are presently engaged in, safety must be our top priority.”

Lacking Support

Public support is below 20 percent for both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party, a poll from broadcaster NHK shows. The figures slid after the two focused on leadership and election-timing battles instead of cooperating on the post-quake recovery and food-safety standards.

DPJ support last month was at 17.6 percent, the first time below 20 percent since the party formed in 1998, while the LDP’s stood at 16.9 percent, according to a Feb. 10-13 NHK poll. Levels have stayed below 20 percent since December. About half of those polled said they don’t back any party.

“The government’s activities haven’t progressed as fast as we had hoped,” Yasuchika Hasegawa, head of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives and chief executive officer of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., said at the symposium in Sendai today. “The recovery agency was only fully established last month, 11 months after the disaster. I feel the recovery will be a very long, time-consuming process.”

Stuart Biggs

Bloomberg

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