Day by Day: A Personal Story From Japan

APRIL 28, 2011, 5:00 AM
Day by Day: A Personal Story From Japan

By CHRISTOPH BANGERT
When we asked Christoph Bangert to write a journal-style account of his trip through Japan in late March and early April, he hesitated at first, thinking that his life was not the story. However, because he is so frequently asked for details about his travels, he gave it a try.
Uster, Switzerland. Friday, March 11. 8:35 a.m.

My wife, Chiho, and I are both still wearing our pajamas. We’re staring in disbelief at our computer screens: 8.8. It’s massive.

After several attempts, Chiho gets through to her 70-year-old mother in Mishima. She has never experienced an earthquake that lasted so long. She says it went on and on. And on. But the family is fine.

Chiho logs onto the Web site for the Japanese national broadcaster, NHK. Tsunami waves are swallowing houses, cars, fields, people — everything. It is as if the entire scale of things had gone wrong.

“I have to go,” I say, without looking up from the screen. “You have to go,” Chiho says.

I’m writing e-mails to a handful of editors. New York is still sleeping, but I get a message into Stern Magazine in Hamburg. I have a hard time concentrating on the errands I’m supposed to be running. Narita Airport, near Tokyo, is closed. Flights are canceled, but the airport is not damaged. I expect it will reopen soon.
2:29 p.m.

Harald Menk, my picture editor at Stern, calls to say that a writer, Marc Goergen, is on the way to the airport. If I can make it onto the same flight, I have an assignment. I immediately get on the phone with the airline. The system puts me in the loop. I hate that music so much.

Without saying a word, Chiho gets my large bag from the basement and starts packing my clothes. I’m still listening to that awful music on the phone while I’m stuffing cameras, cables and hard drives into my camera bag.

We’re used to this sort of departure by now and everything runs pretty smoothly; there’s no panic. Our 18-month-old daughter is running around the apartment shouting, “Ikoka, ikoka, ikoka!” (Japanese for, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”) I haven’t told her yet that I can’t take her with me.

I get the last available seat on the airplane — and have an assignment. I kiss Chiho and Anna goodbye, and run.
3:24 p.m.

Fifty-five minutes after receiving the first phone call from Harald Menk, I’m on the train to the airport.

I make the plane. Just.
Frankfurt. 7:20 p.m.

During a stopover, I cancel all my appointments and meetings for the week. I call Chiho and ask, “Do you miss me already?” She laughs. “Ganbatte,” she says, using a Japanese term that could be translated as “do your best,” but maybe also as “godspeed” or “good luck.”
Somewhere over Russia. 11:38 p.m.

I have trouble sleeping on airplanes. I’m watching two Harry Potter movies in a row. Still no sleep. I go talk to the German rescue workers and TV crews in the front of the plane. They know as little as I do about the latest developments.
Narita Airport. Saturday, March 12. 4:05 p.m.

I’m arriving on one of the first planes that are permitted to land. I meet up with Marc and rent a Japanese cellphone.
8:47 p.m.

Mitsuhiro, our fixer, arrives. It took him eight hours to drive from Yokohama to Narita Airport — a one-hour drive under normal conditions. Train service is suspended and major highways are closed. Tokyo has come to a standstill. Rental cars are impossible to find. The cellphone system is nearing collapse.

Chiho worked all night to find a fixer and translator. They are almost as hard to find as rental cars — and prices are skyrocketing. Translators are getting paid up to $1,000 per day. Mitsuhiro is a documentary photographer and a graduate of the International Center of Photography, which Chiho and I attended. He managed to secure a tiny, metallic green, economy rental car called a Toyota Spacio.
Narita City. Sunday, March 13. 3:07 a.m.

I wake up disoriented. We start driving early. The disaster area is huge and far away from Tokyo. Japan is mountainous and densely populated. We are only permitted to use minor roads. The traffic is horrendous.

When we finally make it to the coast, we interview and photograph tsunami survivors in Yotsukura, about 25 miles south of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Sendai. Monday, March 14. 9:20 p.m.

After a 12-hour drive we reach Sendai, with an empty tank. We have been listening to the radio all day. Reactor No. 3 has blown up. NHK Radio is playing a slow instrumental version of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” NHK is a news station and never plays music. Not a good sign.

I get phone calls from the writers. “Leave now!” they say. I call Harald and explain why I want to find out more before I make a decision. He tells me to be very careful, but says that he trusts my judgment.

Hotels, restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets in Sendai are closed. We are staying with Takako and Tetsuya, good friends from New York days. Takako is a documentary photographer who also graduated from I.C.P. Their small apartment resembles a refugee camp. Friends, neighbors and employees are staying with them because their neighborhood has electricity and (icy cold) running water. We sleep on the floor in the living room. In return for the groceries we brought with us from Narita City, Takako and Tetsuya cook wonderful meals for everybody: nabe, hayashi rice and okonomiyaki.
Tuesday, March 15. 10:30 a.m.

There is a panic among foreign journalists. Most are evacuating to Tokyo and Osaka; some are leaving Japan altogether. Major news outlets, some based in Tokyo, decide to cover the story from Korea, Hong Kong or Thailand. Western embassies, including my own, relocate to southern Japan.

Meanwhile, most Japanese journalists and photographers continue their work. Among them are Ko Sasaki and Shiho Fukada, for The Times. Some foreign photographers — David Guttenfelder, Adam Dean and Dominic Nahr, among them — decide to stay.

Chiho calls, in tears. She read the news reports about Fukushima. I tell her everything I know about the situation and she calms down. She is the tougher one of us. But she’s also pregnant with our second child. Tears come easily these days.

I feel terrible. Guilty. What am I doing here?

The radiation levels remain very low so far, except right at the crippled nuclear power plant. The numbers are frequently posted on local radio and TV stations. Whenever a scientist or any expert who actually has some knowledge is interviewed, the conclusion is that this can’t and won’t be another Chernobyl. The 12-to-18-mile evacuation zone that the authorities have implemented is believed to be sufficient. With us are one million Japanese people, among them our friends. Mitsuhiro and I can’t see any reason to quit and run away.

I respect the decision of my colleagues who are leaving. You should never question people’s personal threshold for fear, especially in a case where the threat can’t even be seen. At the same time, I feel that the decision-making is not based enough on facts. Some foreign media outlets are exaggerating in their coverage and are using their reader’s deep and justified fear of a nuclear disaster to sell papers or attract clicks. By doing, so these publications are causing an unnecessary panic among their own colleagues who then stop reporting on the people who are actually directly affected by this disaster.
Natori. Wednesday, March 23. 12:05 p.m.

We meet 18-year old Tomohiro Honma at a shelter for displaced people at the Tatekoshi Elementary School. After the earthquake, a tsunami warning was issued over loudspeakers. Tomohiro jumped on his bicycle and fled his home in the Yuriage neighborhood of Natori. His parents decided to take the car. It was the last time he saw them alive. “I looked back and saw a huge brown tsunami wave behind me destroying all the houses,” he says.

He and his sister were reunited four days later. When they visited their destroyed neighborhood, they had trouble finding where their house once stood. “You wanted to say, “‘Hello, how are you doing?’ as if you would visit a stranger.”
Kariwa. Friday, March 25. 12:52 p.m.

Miu Ishi is 7 years old. Her favorite color is light blue. Together with her parents and her brother, Taiyo, she lives in a temporary shelter for displaced people from the Fukushima area, It is in a nursing home in Kariwa.

Namie, her hometown, is only about four miles from Fukushima Daichi. Miu likes it at the shelter, where there is a nice view over the forests and mountains. But she wants to return home as soon as possible — in a week, maybe. The first thing she wants to do back home is ride her pink bicycle with her best friend, Minami. When I ask if she knows why she had to leave, she says her house is too close to “something.” It is very dangerous, but she doesn’t know why. The school bus brought her home and they had to pack her things very quickly. Then they all left.
Rikuzentakata. Monday, March 28. 2:47 p.m.

I’m standing in the middle of tsunami rubble and receive a phone call from my wife. Our daughter has just swallowed a button.
Sendai. Friday, April 1. 11:16 p.m.

I have been working in the area for three weeks now, shooting for Stern Magazine and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I get a lot of phone calls from publications I haven’t heard from in years. Work is plenty if you’re the only one around.

It’s cold in our room and I wake up frequently at night. I have a horrific dreams.

We haven’t had a hot shower for two weeks now. We eat Snickers bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We endure freezing temperatures and snow storms, spend many hours on desperate searches for fuel.

Today we made it to the one and only gas station that still occasionally gives out fuel —literally on the last drop of gas. We were singing and cheering when a meager 10 liters of rationed gasoline was pumped into the tank our pathetic little economy car.

I am deeply impressed by the humility, patience, calm and discipline that the Japanese have shown. If this disaster had happened in Europe or the U.S., there would have been looting, riots and mass panic. Here there is nothing of the sort. No signs like “Looters will be shot” are to be found. People don’t even take food items from half-destroyed supermarkets. And they really need them.
Mishima. Saturday, April 2. 10:36 p.m.

I visit my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. They invite Mitsuhiro and me to stay in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. We use the ryokan’s hot springs. After soaking in the steaming hot water for hours, I feel exhausted, but relaxed. Tomorrow morning, we’ll pack our car and head back north.