Japan persevered, although a year ago it seemed that she received a wound from which it is impossible to recover

I see this inscription all the time in Tokyo: it is on buses, on the doors of supermarkets, on youth T-shirts, on street vending machines selling cigarettes and drinks. "Gambaro, Nippon! (Hold on, Japan!) ”- these two words became the embodiment of the country's faith that it will overcome the most difficult trials that have fallen to it since Hiroshima and Nagasaki ...

I see this inscription all the time in Tokyo: it is on buses, on the doors of supermarkets, on youth T-shirts, on street vending machines selling cigarettes and drinks. "Gambaro, Nippon! (Hold on, Japan!)" - these two words were the embodiment of the country's belief that it will overcome the most difficult trials that have fallen to it since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A year has flown by since that terrible March 11, when an earthquake of magnitude 9 struck off the northeast coast of Japan - the strongest in the history of observations in this country, where the ground under your feet, believe me, shakes almost daily. A powerful earthquake caused a series of tsunamis, the height of which reached 40 meters. Entire cities were swept away, and the list of dead and missing included about 19,000 people. A separate nightmare is called Fukushima-1. The tsunami destroyed the power and cooling system at this nuclear power plant, causing the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

How to evacuate 35 million

I remember very well those crazy days in Tokyo, when due to the destruction of roads and the paralysis of the transport system, the Japanese capital was without gasoline, food was swept away in stores, bottled drinking water, toilet paper and much more disappeared. We constantly monitored the direction of the wind - whether it was blowing from the side of the nuclear power plant located 250 km to the north, where the power units were shaken by hydrogen explosions, and the liquidators, who forgot about sleep and rest, tried to prevent the worst in clouds of radioactive dust. Then we instantly learned new frightening words: microsieverts per hour, becquerels per kilogram, iodine-131, cesium-137 ... Some foreign embassies fled from Tokyo, and I worked out a plan to evacuate the office - to one of the cities in southwestern Japan. It was not a panic: Naoto Kan, who was then the country's prime minister, recently admitted that in the most difficult days he and his advisers seriously thought about how he would take the people of Tokyo to safety. In the zone of which, it must be explained, 35 million people live.

But the worst did not happen, and Japan survived, although a year ago it seemed that she received a wound from which it is difficult to recover. Amazing things, for example, happened to the economy of this country, which experienced huge difficulties after March 11. Due to natural disasters, many production chains were destroyed, factories and conveyors stopped for a while. But now the worst is behind us: last Friday, the main stock index in Tokyo rose to pre-earthquake levels, with stock prices jumping 10 percent over the past month. Experts are predicting a 20 to 30 percent increase in profits for Japan's private companies this year, and its cars are back at the top of popularity ratings in the US.

Where to build thinking houses?

The devastated areas in the northeast have been largely cleared away, the evacuees (there are more than 340,000 of them!) no longer huddle in assembly points, where a year ago there were problems with both toilets and hot food. Those who are richer bought or rented new housing, those who are poorer moved to one of the 50,000 temporary houses that were built for free and distributed by the authorities. It's a bit crowded, but people still got separate housing with kitchens, bathrooms and air conditioning. The refugees will not have to pay for a roof over their heads for two years.

However, the population and the press are constantly scolding the government: 22.5 million tons of concrete, wood and metal debris remained in the disaster zone, and just over 6 percent have been disposed of so far. The construction of new stationary cities is proceeding slowly. The authorities want to build them on high ground, where you can no longer be afraid of the tsunami. However, many people find it difficult to part with the habit of living on the coast. In addition, in Japan they want not just to restore the destroyed, but to build fundamentally new settlements based on the most modern technologies - for example, using renewable energy sources, with "thinking" computerized houses that will choose the optimal mode of living for their owners. There is a battle of projects, often fantastic ones.

What's in Fukushima?

The Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant is a very long time. Three damaged reactors, where nuclear fuel melted, are brought into a state of so-called cold shutdown, when the temperature there is consistently kept below 100 degrees Celsius. Their cooling system works stably. The station retains a fairly high level of radiation (from contaminated debris), but there have been no radiation emissions for a long time. The complete dismantling of damaged reactors will take decades. There are a lot of problems: where, for example, to put radioactive waste, where to bring it and how to dispose of the radioactive earth that is cut off during decontamination? These works are now stalled: an unusually large amount of snow fell in Japan in winter, it hid the contaminated soil. So far, only a significant part of the school yards, playgrounds and sports grounds have been cleared - something that is related to children. Residential areas affected by radiation in 104 cities and villages, primarily in the now closed 20-kilometer zone around the nuclear power plant, are promised to be largely decontaminated by March 2014. But some areas will remain uninhabitable for many decades. In addition, 70 percent of the infected area is impenetrable and uninhabited mountain forests. What to do with them - will decide later. In total, the area of ​​land contaminated to one degree or another is estimated at 13.8 thousand square kilometers, which is 3.7 percent of the national territory.

In the towns adjacent to the restricted zone, life is not easy: people even prefer to go to nearby shops by car, close windows tightly, especially do not allow children to walk on the street, and stop hanging washed clothes in yards. 63 thousand people have already moved from Fukushima to other prefectures.

“I would also leave, but so far the work is holding,” says Rika Nakamura, the mother of a three-year-old girl. — We have stopped using tap water, and we prefer to buy vegetables from areas located far from the nuclear power plant. The authorities are reassuring us, but no one knows what will happen next.

Children will be examined for life

In Fukushima Prefecture, mass medical checks of the population are now underway: they so far show that there are no people who received dangerous doses of radiation there. In 15 municipalities in the immediate vicinity of the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, 15.5 thousand people were examined. The vast majority of internal exposure is below 1 millisievert, only two people found 2 millisieverts. According to the authoritative opinion of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, such doses can be ignored, the threat of cancer increases by 0.5 percent only if the total gain is more than 100 millisieverts.

However, long-term human exposure to low doses of radiation is poorly understood, and in any case, people will be constantly tested. Particular attention is paid to children and adolescents under 18 years of age, it was decided to examine them free of charge throughout their lives.

What is KIZUNA?

In the summer in Japan, independent commissions to investigate the causes of the accident at nuclear power plants will complete their work. It is already clear that experts will blame both the owner of the station, the country's largest energy company TEPKO, and government agencies for not taking measures to protect against a tsunami, believing that "there will be no wave of this height." Lawsuits are also possible, and the police are still carefully guarding the headquarters of the owner of Fukushima-1, the TEPKO company, which regularly hosts anti-nuclear actions. They also took place on the anniversary of the disaster: 10 thousand people gathered in the center of Tokyo, who then surrounded the parliament building in a human chain.

And over their heads on the Tokyo TV tower at that time the word KIZUNA lit up in neon. This hard-to-translate term is also constantly repeated now in Japan. It means "strong ties between people, human solidarity." And so it was after the disaster on March 11 last year: the Japanese amazed the world with their patience and desire to help each other. There were no cases of looting or attempts to cash in on the shortage in the disaster zone. Nearly $7 billion has been raised to help victims of the disaster, the Japanese have agreed to higher taxes to finance reconstruction, and members of the government and members of parliament have cut their salaries in gratitude for this. It seems to me that these people have something to learn, I'm sure they can be respected. "Gambaro, Nippon!"

Tokyo