By Toru Hanai

Chubu Electric Power Co.’s Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station in Japan is located at water level next to a beach. It is also widely reported to be one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear plants as it sits close to a major fault line – not unlike the one that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

I had an offer of an exclusive tour of Chubu Nuclear Power Station where an 18-meter (60 ft) high and 1.6 km (1 mile) long tsunami defense wall has been built at a cost of $1.3 billion.

Being located beachside I immediately thought of basing the main photo for this trip on this famous “ukiyoe” print by the artist Hokusai:

-The Great Wave off Kanagawa-

Hokusai (1760-1849) was a ukiyoe painter and printmaker during the Edo period. I guess that many people have seen this ukiyoe print.

I left Tokyo early with waders for fishing and a compact digital camera in a waterproof housing to get the photo I wanted. I was in time for the high tide.

I entered the sea with my compact camera protected by its housing and my most favorite camera, a Canon 5D Mk3. The waves moved much more quickly than they appeared to from land. It was so strong it was hard to stand, much less take a photograph.

Wonderful white waves crashed only a little in front of me, and I moved towards them for the picture regardless of the danger to my equipment.

The white spray lasted for only an instant. I had to decide whether to aim for “a good photograph” with my waterproof compact camera which is less responsive, or chose the more responsive camera and risk drowning it?

I chose to use my 5D Mk3.

Photographers get absorbed in their work when a good subject is in front of them.

A good wave came.

It crashed into a pillar standing in the sea and splashed high enough to hang over the building of the No. 5 reactor. The wave crashed on me, too.

I got wet through – fortunately it was only me. The camera was safe.

March 11 is here again in Japan.

A year after the tsunami devastated Higashi Matsushima city in Miyagi, seven-year-old Wakana Kumagai visited the grave of her father Kazuyuki with her mother Yoshiko, brother Koki, and her grandparents.

I first met Wakana last April, just weeks after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and huge tsunami devastated Japan’s northeast Pacific coast. The school year begins in April here in Japan, and Wakana was carrying her new, shiny red school backpack as she visited her father at a temporary graveyard that housed those who died from the tsunami. She gracefully bowed to her dad, showing off her new bag and her dress she wore for the first grader’s ceremony as if she were at a ball, and told him that she just attended her school for the first time. Her graceful bow struck my heart.

The next time I saw Wakana was on September 11, half a year after the disaster. Seeing her pray at the spot where her father’s car was found, Wakana looked like she had grown up a little bit. I heard that she was writing letters to her father, saying “Daddy, I want to see you but there’s nothing I can do about it, right?”, then placing them in an urn containing her fathers’ ashes, which was still at their house because there were not enough spots for graves. Her message for her father sank into my mind.

And that day came again.

On March 11, Wakana clasped her little hands together in front of her father’s grave that the family had finally managed to build in November after waiting for months. A siren rang from afar, letting people know that it was 2:46 p.m. – the very moment that the earthquake struck and changed the fate of so many, including Wakana and her father.

It has been a year since then.

That day a year ago, Wakana’s mother Yoshiko received a call from her husband. “The tsunami is coming. Take the kids and evacuate to the elementary school. I’ll follow you guys shortly.”

They waited for him to arrive in the snow, but he never did. Four days later, he was found dead near the school his family was at. He was 31.

After visiting the grave, they went to visit the spot near the sea where their house used to be. The pile of rubble had been cleared completely, and a mere foundation of what used to be a house remained, as slight proof that someone did once live there.

But Higashi Matsushima city has decided that this area should no longer be a residential neighborhood due to safety concerns.

“I want to go back,” Wakana shouted in tears after Yoshiko told her a week ago that they will not be able to live near the sea anymore.

“When will we go back?” Wakana still wants to go back to that place, the place where adults fear to return because it reminds them of the tsunami, her mother said.

“It was the place where she grew up in. It was the place where she spent time with her dad who she loved so much. If the house is rebuilt there, maybe her dad will come back. If she goes back by the sea, maybe everything will be the same as before — I think she feels that way,” said Yoshiko, Wakana’s mother.

“But it has been a year and I want closure. I plan to stop coming back here. We can only live in a new place and move forward.”

Choufuku Ishisone of Miyako, Iwate prefecture, owns a convenience store.

On March 11, 2011, Ishisone was driving to see his store after checking on his house following the earthquake and saw a black tsunami wave roar over a seawall. He made a U-turn, but the tsunami struck him from multiple directions, sending his car afloat. The engine stopped. He jumped out of the car in a hurry but lost his footing in the tsunami and was swallowed up in the thick, black water.

He managed to avoid cars, ships and other debris carried by the tsunami but the water level continued to rise steadily. Grabbing onto a power line pole as he was swept past, he scrambled up so desperately that he was about five meters high before he knew it.

“I want to be saved! That one feeling kept me climbing,” he said. “Then I thought I had to get off the pole somehow, but the water didn’t go down, which was very irritating.”

It began to snow, chilling Ishisone, whose clothes were wet. As some three hours passed and it grew dark with no signs of rescue, Ishisone climbed down the pole and swam to a city office annex building. Finally he thought, “I’m safe.”

“The real lesson is that if there is an earthquake, you must head for high ground without hesitation,” he concluded.

It will soon be one year from that day – March 11, 2011.

Greetings among friends who meet after a long absence begins with, “Where and what were you doing on March 11?”

On March 11, 2011, I was photographing Prime Minister Naoto Kan during a committee session at the Parliament building in Tokyo.

At 2:46 p.m. the world started to shake really slowly.

I felt fear as the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, not only because of the intensity of the shaking but also the duration of it.

I was absorbed as I continued to take pictures of the prime minister reacting to the quake.

Two minutes of the building shaking made it very difficult to capture him in a frame. I watched as the chandeliers shook. I felt conflicted on whether I should run.

I did not see the tsunami directly on March 11, 2011 but I obtained photographs from a source in Miyako, Iwate prefecture. One image showing a giant black wave flowing over a five meter seawall reminded me of the fear and surprise that I felt as I watched the same scene filmed on TV.

In northern Miyako city’s Taro district there was a 10 meter high tsunami wall with a total length of 2,400 meters, the biggest in Japan. The city’s inhabitants called it “the Great Wall” and trusted it.

Clearly the tsunami exceeded “the Great Wall”.

There were many tsunami victims in this district because they put too much confidence in “the Great Wall” and didn’t evacuate.

I went to all the same places from where the tsunami was photographed. As I stood there, I was overwhelmed with the unbelievable sense of the tsunami attack.

We must not forget that there are many victims between the two photographs that we show in these combination images.

I am happy if these photographs are used for that.

Six months after Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami, I went back to visit six-year-old Wakana Kumagai who lost her father in the disasters in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi prefecture.

I photographed Wakana when she visited her father’s temporary grave at a mass burial site in Higashi-Matsushima on April 21, after attending an entrance ceremony at her elementary school. I was struck by how positive and optimistic Wakana behaved.

Five months later, Wakana bowed her head in prayer with her mother Yoshiko and brother Koki at the exact spot where the car of their late father Kazuyuki was found. The family crouched in prayer at 2:46 p.m. as Japan marked exactly six months since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

“Your daddy got out of the car and went towards where he thought you were to find you,” Yoshiko whispered to her children as they prayed at the site.

Wakana then looked toward the elementary school which acted as a shelter and where they waited for the arrival of their father in the cold as snow fell around them on March 11.

On that fateful day, Wakana’s mother Yoshiko received a phone call from her husband Kazuyuki, just after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck. “A tsunami will be coming,” he said. “Take the children and go to the elementary school (shelter). I will go later too,”. These were the last words anyone ever heard from him.

Four days later, Kazuyuki was found dead, and Yoshiko and Koki met him again in a morgue that housed the victims of the disaster. “It is my daddy,’ Koki said without showing a single tear as he confirmed that the body was indeed his father,” Yoshiko explained as she spoke of how even police officers were impressed by how strong 8-year-old Koki was.

The family visited the spot where their house, washed away by the tsunami, used to stand. Searching through the rubble, Wakana tried to look for something, anything, but found only the foundations of their washed away home.

“There’s nothing left,” Yoshiko muttered as she looked through the rubble and debris. Throughout the search, Wakana was there holding her mother’s hand.

Yoshiko had the body of her husband, Kazuyuki, exhumed. He had slept in a temporary mass grave site in Higashi-Matsushima when she had the body dug up to be cremated in spite of the objection of relatives. The body was then taken to a crematory in the suburbs that she found in order to give Kazuyuki a proper funeral service.

“I really wanted to return him home and to be near the children,” Yoshiko said as she explained why she wanted the ashes to be brought back to their home.

The urn containing his ashes is now full of letters that Wakana wrote after her father’s ashes returned home. While most of the letters are the same, one simply says “I know I can’t do anything, but I just want to meet you again Daddy.”

One day, one of Wakana’s dolls was miraculously found in the rubble. The doll was her favorite when she was a baby, to the point where without out it she would immediately begin to cry and complain.

“Maybe it’s a gift from my Daddy,” Wakana said while smiling.

Behind her, the ashes of her father and his portrait look down on the family left behind.

Among the high-tech safety gadgets were the 21 crash-test dummies, lined up neatly in a row, with names like Bio RID II, SID-IIS and THOR. The dummies come in all sizes and shapes to simulate the impact on drivers and passengers from 6-month-old babies to pregnant women. (She comes with a mock uterus with built-in sensors.)

Even though the dummies don’t particularly look impressive, with plastic limbs and wires hanging loose, they cost more than Toyota’s highest-end car model, averaging around 12 million yen ($150,000 U.S. dollars). The dearest of them, called “Hybrid III AM50 High-Meka Dummy” has a price to match its hefty name: 200 million yen ($2.5 million), an official explained. It’s all part of Toyota’s aim to reduce road-related deaths and serious injuries. Back in the 80s, they used to use live pigs for safety tests, strapping the swines into cars with seatbelts, the official said, sotto voce. Today’s pigs have stricter animal rights laws – and the crash-test dummies – to thank.

Six-year-old Wakana Kumagai began to run from the car when she arrived at a temporary mass grave site in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi prefecture.

She had come to meet her father.

On that day Wakana attended an entrance ceremony for her elementary school. Afterward she went with her mother and older brother to the grave site. She showed off her dress and bright red school satchel as she described the entrance ceremony to her father. But her father, Kazuyuki, slept in the soil.

He was only 31 when he died.

On March 11, Wakana’s mother Yoshiko received a phone call from husband, Kazuyuki, just after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. “A tsunami is coming. Take the children and go to the elementary school (shelter). I will go later too” he told her. Yoshiko picked up her two children in the car and, as they made their way toward the elementary school, the car was swallowed up by the first wave of the tsunami. Miraculously the car doors didn’t open with the force of the tsunami and the three family members arrived at Omagari elementary school. The school was a makeshift shelter for those who had survived in the town that was now covered with seawater. The family awaited the arrival of Kazuyuki.

Four days later, he was found dead. His body was discovered near the elementary school where his family had waited for him.

Even this year, cherry blossom season bloomed in Japan.

The lives of us Japanese have changed completely in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the constant fear of radiation following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. So much so that we forgot the coming of spring.

I returned to cover the stricken area again at the beginning of April. The huge piles of debris that were visible immediately after the quake and tsunami were slowly being managed. Roads had appeared again and gradually I saw that there was a town.

The town which appeared was still a world of monotone. But light pink flowers, that elicit a feeling of excitement within all Japanese, appeared in the black and white world.

Cherry blossoms grew from trees destroyed by the tsunami little more than one month earlier. Branches that were swept away when cars whistled by were now full of vitality as the cherry blossoms bloomed wonderfully.

The revival of Japan has only just begun. I cannot help but hope that a day will come soon when we will be able to regain our smile in Japan; a smile such as the cherry blossoms bring.

But during Japan’s first match against Cameroon the Samurai Blue seemed to transform themselves in front of my eyes with Keisuke Honda’s goal being the catalyst. Japan was defeated by the Netherlands in their second match but the Samurais demonstrated the unity of the team in their performance and they were victorious against Denmark in their third match. In doing so they completely wiped out the image that I held of the Japan team before going into the competition. I was covering the world’s biggest sporting event, and I was going up against the top sports photographers, but in this World Cup Japan’s victory meant that the formidable teams of France and Italy and the even more formidable photographers accompanying them were going home. Not me.

On June 29, 2010, Japan faced Paraguay in World Cup match 55. Even after extra time the game remained scoreless and a penalty shoot-out would determine the outcome. I moved into position according to the instructions of Chief Photographer UK and Ireland Dylan Martinez, the leader of the Reuters photographers for this match.

A penalty shoot-out is all about luck. The psychologically intense method of deciding a match seems especially hard on the players, but it’s just as tough on the photographers with a split second making the difference between front pages around the world or a postage stamp-sized picture on page S15. Both the players and the photographers tuned out the screaming of the crowd and focused with tense stillness on the battle between the penalty kicker and the goalkeeper. My position was on the opposite side of the pitch allowing me to see the face of the goalkeeper. Japan’s goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima, who had saved many shots up to then, clearly showed the strain. Following the two successful shots by both teams it was Yuichi Komano, Japan’s third kicker’s turn.

At the instant he powerfully kicked the ball toward the goal I pressed my camera’s shutter button reflexively. For a fraction of a second my view through the viewfinder was blocked as the camera captured the picture and prevented me from seeing whether he had scored or not. The next moment I saw Komano holding his head in his hands. Japan’s World Cup team’s and my time in South Africa had ended.

The feud over relocating the Futenma Marine base has shaken ties with Washington and contributed to Hatoyama’s tumbling support rates ahead of an upper house election his Democratic Party must win to avoid policy deadlock.

On his first visit to the southern island of Okinawa since taking office, the premier said he wanted islanders to accept a plan that would keep some of Futenma’s facilities within the prefecture, though he had earlier raised hopes it could be moved off Okinawa altogether.

“Whenever you move a base or build a new one, there will be critical voices from local people,” Hatoyama, dressed in a traditional short-sleeved Okinawan shirt, told reporters after meeting Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima.

“I must accept those feelings, but I would like the people of the whole country to understand and be willing to share the burden, because the bases are necessary for national security.”

He did not give details of the government proposal, but said moving the whole base off the island had proved difficult from a deterrence perspective.

Okinawa plays host to about half the 49,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan. Resentment of the noise, crime and accidents associated with the military presence periodically flares into outrage.

On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the city hall in the island’s capital of Naha demanding Hatoyama keep his promises.

“From before the election, he was promising to move the base out,” said 48-year-old Chikako Toguchi of Nago on Okinawa, referring to last year’s general election.

“That’s why I and a lot of my friends voted for the Democrats. If it turns out he just said that to win the election, he has made fools of the Okinawans,” she said.

FALLING SUPPORT

An angry reaction from Okinawa will further damage Hatoyama’s support, already battered by financial scandals in the ruling party, ahead of the upper house election expected in July.

Polls show voters think Hatoyama lacks the ability to take tough decisions, so he is likely anxious to be seen taking the lead on a thorny issue like Futenma.

The United States wants to go ahead with a 2006 agreement to shift Futenma’s facilities to a site off Camp Schwab, another Marine base in a more remote part of Okinawa.

Domestic media say Hatoyama wants to compromise by shifting some Futenma Marines to the tiny island of Tokunoshima, northeast of Okinawa, while altering plans for a new runway off Camp Schwab to reduce the environmental impact.

The top U.S. envoy on the issue said in a recent newspaper interview he had received a “serious” proposal on Futenma that could move talks forward, but Washington has said it will not accept a plan opposed by local people.

(Additional reporting by Issei Kato, Writing by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)