Evacuation Leaving Danger

Most Japanese thought a captain who escaped from his sinking ship, leaving high school students on board, as a symbol of low safety standard and moral in South Korea. The worse happened in Japan, however. Asahi Shimbun exclusively reported that most workers of Tokyo Electric Power Company evacuated from First Fukushima Nuclear Plant, against director’s order to stay, in emergency of fatal accident three years ago. That was revealed as a description in a memo of interview to the director who died after the accident.

The Governmental Investigation Committee of Fukushima Nuclear Accident interviewed to Masao Yoshida, who was the Director of First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant at the time of the accident, for thirteen times from July to November in 2011. That undisclosed record is as long as twenty-nine hours and sixteen minutes, and kept in Cabinet Office. Since Yoshida died in cancer of esophagus last year, the record contains high value as a few voices of people who dealt with the accident.

In the series of accident, the first, third and fourth buildings, containing nuclear reactors were blown out. But it was the second reactor that caused evacuation of the workers. In the morning of March 15^th, four days after the plant lost control over the reactors, when Yoshida heard sound of explosion from the second reactor and found pressure of suppression control room became zero. The workers realized a possibility of fatal exposition to radioactive materials.

Against the order of Yoshida to stay in safer place inside the plant, six hundred and fifty workers out of all seven hundred twenty moved to Second Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant located ten kilometers away from the First plant. Someone in the workers asked bus drivers to go to the Second plant. Some moved with their personal cars. Group managers who were responsible for commanding at the accident were included in those evacuees.

All workers must have recognized that Japan was on the verge of failure, if total breakdown of the plant had caused vast evacuation in the capital of Japan. Evacuees returned to the First plant six hours later, but the second reactor exhaled white gas and fire occurred in the fourth rector during their evacuation. They cannot escape from accusation of abandoning their duties.

The interview report must be disclosed. Although the government is reluctant to it, activities of workers in the plant have a great significance in determining what really happened there. It is a matter of modesty to history.