Crisis Communication Practices of Japan's Government Right after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

The following article was written as a group assignment for the Introduction to Public Relations class.

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Abstract

Investigation report (FGDI)

This paper explores what the Japanese government had done for public relations right after a huge earthquake that hit the northeastern part of Japan in 2011. More specifically, its media management in three different media categories (mass, social, and international media) is to be examined in detail with two investigation reports recently published on the crisis, several official documents, and some scholarly works on crisis management. Actual management practices by the government such as the frequency of the Prime Minister's press conference and its uses of Twitter and Facebook during the crisis are to be examined in detail, and finally its crisis communication policy that only confirmed facts should be provided is critically analyzed referring to other crisis management studies including the one written by Arjen Boin. By the end of the argument, this paper will provide better understanding of what the Japanese government could have done better during the disaster for the public relations.

Introduction

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitute earthquake hit the northeastern part of Japan. People all over the country had faced the threat of radioactive pollution right after the Fukushima power-plant accidents had happened by tsunami on the following days. During that time, the Japanese government had to deal with this unprecedented crisis and at the same time convey its urgent messages to the publics using various kinds of media in order to inform them of crisis situation and give them a relief. A year has passed after the quake and two investigation reports on the government's crisis management during the disaster were released. One is published by a private think tank (Fukushima Genpatsujiko Dokuritsu Iinkai [FGDI], 2012) and the other is by the National Diet of Japan (The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission [FNAIIC], 2012).

Purpose of Study

In this paper, the practices of crisis communication by the Japanese government during the crisis are going to be examined in three different media categories (mass, social, and international media) mainly with the two investigation reports and several related scholarly works on crisis management.

Justification of Study

This paper is written to contribute to the better understanding of what the Japanese government could have done better during the disaster for the public relations and what it should now do for the preparation for the next huge disaster. The paper may also contribute to the study of crisis management by a government as a case of a media management at a huge natural disaster in the digital era.

Review of the Scholarly Literature

Crisis Management by a Governmental Organization
A volume of preceded scholarly literature can be found regarding crisis management theories and practices. Among them, Arjen Boin's work (Boin, 2009) mainly focuses on the challenges that a governmental organization would face at a huge natural crisis. Through the examination and analysis of how the Louisiana State Government had dealt with Hurricane Gustav in 2008, Boin points out the main characteristics of today's transboundary crises and illustrates the five main tasks that an administration must do for its crisis management and policy making.

Reports and Records on Japan's 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

Investigation report (FNAIIC)

After a year has passed since the earthquake, there are two full investigation reports on the government's crisis management available so far. One of them was released by a private think tank called Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (FGDI, 2012). The investigation committee members had interviewed more than 300 people who involved in the crisis management. They analyze risk-communication process among the Prime Minister's Office, TEPCO, and the on-site center at the nuclear plants in Fukushima and examine how the government had actually conveyed its messages to the public during the disaster. Prior to the publication, they released the summary of the report in English (Funabashi and Kitazawa, 2012). In this summary, the authors severely criticize the crisis management done by the staffs at the Prime Minister's Head Office as we shall see in detail later in this paper. The other report was released by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission established by Japan's Diet. The investigation team had interviewed more than 1,000 people who involved in the crisis management. However, this report does not spare many pages for the crisis management in public relations during the disaster. Still it points out the professional negligence of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) as a main cause of the human disaster, and strongly suggests that the government should have had a clear guideline of information disclosure at a crisis (FNAIIC, 2012). There are also some English materials that were released by the governmental office available on the web including the PowerPoint slides presented by a public affairs official at a global communication conference (Shikata, 2011) and an op-ed under the name of the Prime Minister which was covered on several international newspapers all around the world (Kan, 2011).

Other Scholarly Literature on the Tohoku Earthquake
Because very few complete investigation reports are available at the moment, there is very small amount of scholarly literature that focuses on the crisis management by the Japanese government. One of the few works that deals with a crisis communication issue is the paper written by Ronald L. Carr, Cornelius B. Pratt, and Irene C. Herrera (Carr, Pratt, & Herrera, 2012). In here, the authors examine the disaster and how Japanese publics reacted to the government through SNSs with a sense of distrust. They point out that the public's frustration had emerged to a perceived level with a great help of new social media.

Media Management of Mass Media

Tsunami flooring in Sendai Airport

In mass media, there are several incidents that had caused the public's disappointment and sense of distrust against the government. According to the investigation report, the Prime Minister then Naoto Kan had press conferences after the crisis only on March 13, 15, 18, 25, April 1, and 12 (FGDI, 2012). The number of the conferences was few and the frequency dropped rapidly toward the end. Kan's appearance in media was intentionally avoided by the media relations team in order to hedge the risk of his making a slip of the tongue since he had hostile feeling against media long before the disaster happened. Another example is a strange personnel replacement of a spokesperson in the government. On March 12 around 2:00 p.m. at the press conference of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Koichiro Nakamura, who was responsible for publicity at that time, stated that there was a possibility of meltdown in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. On the same day at 5:15 p.m., there was another press conference, which became the last one for Nakamura to attend. A new director of publicity was assigned right after that. Although the government officials denied that Nakamura was replaced due to his improper speech about the meltdown, it was one of the momentums that people held doubt about what the government announced. The publics also cast doubt on the government's ambiguous announcement on public safety. The Chief Cabinet Secretary then Yukio Edano had often said to the publics that “There is no immediate effect” regarding the effect of radiation to the health. However, this announcement sounded too ambiguous for many people and the possibility of long-term radiation effect was immediately raised as a counterargument. Edano told the investigation team in his interview that he had tried his best to speak as simple as possible avoiding technical terms in order to make his announcement understandable to the general public (FGDI, 2012). Furthermore, observational data of radioactive diffusion was not released immediately when it was needed. The System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) remained largely unused during the crisis despite the fact that there was widespread environmental contamination by radioactive material between March 11th and 15. The SPEEDI data was not officially provided to the Prime Minister's Office until 23 and evacuation orders were issued without the data (Funabashi & Kitazawa, 2012). As a result, only 20% of the residents living near the plants knew about the nuclear accident when they received the evacuation order on March 12th (FNAIIC, 2012).

According to FGDI, around 70% of the respondents of a public-opinion poll said “insufficient” about the information provided by the government during the crisis. The other poll indicates the public's strong dissatisfaction with the public relations activities by the government. Moreover, about 60-70% of people did not support its crisis management (FGDI, 2012). Public opinion became more negative after the TEPCO admitted that the nuclear meltdown had actually occurred right after the earthquake. The public support had largely gone down as negative criticisms for the government's initial response to the disaster had increased. (FGDI, 2012).

Media Management of Social Media

Prime Minister's Office

According to FGDI, many people were using the Internet right after the massive earthquake and tsunami. They used social media as a communication tool since telephones had not been available for a while right after the earthquake. The Japanese government also took action on the web using social media. It created a website on the same day of the quake and had its own Twitter account (@Kantei_Saigai) two days later for sending out disaster information. It was a quick action that many people, especially the evacuees at the disaster-hit area, really wanted at that time. In its twitter feeds, it mainly announced what the Press Secretary had said at press conferences. Tweeting had been managed by three young officials who worked in the public relations department of the government. They worked 24 hours a day in rotation. By March 21, the number of followers of the government's account was about 260,000 and became 300,000 by the 28. These figures show how curious people were about the actions that the government had taken at the time. The government also tried to fulfill the public's needs. It had tweeted 48 times on March 14 and 62 times on the next day. However, the numbers decreased after that. On March 23, it had only tweeted 23 times. The government's Twitter account was only used for sending disaster information to the followers, not replaying to them.

At the other departments like Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIAC), the staffs there acted together to build an online system that enabled the official administrators to acquire a certified Twitter account smoothly and at the same time list their accounts on a social media portal site as a public institution.

Even with the various efforts mentioned above, the government did not seem to earn public's trust much. According to a poll in the report, 28.9% of people decreased confidence in the information released by the government, whereas only 7.8% increased it. On the other hand, 23.1% still saw the governmental announcement as a valuable resource (FGDI, 2012).

Overall, the government had insufficient PR organizations at the disaster. First of all, the government did not have proper staffs who knew about social media very well. There was no specialist from a social media industry until it finally employed a blogger who are assigned to interact more with the public in September (FGDI, 2012). In a word, most of the PR practices that the government did were one-way communications to the public and were not intended to get feedback from them.

Media Management of International Media

Prime Minister then Kan

Regarding press releases to international media and non-Japanese residents in Japan, the Japanese government had kept providing information mainly in English. In dealing with international press, the Global Communications Office of the Prime Minister's Office played the main role. For example, the Head of the Office Noriyuki Shikata had had 65 interviews with the international press between March 11th and 30. Even after a month from the disaster, the Office post an op-ed titled “Japan's Road to Recovery and Rebirth” under the name of the Prime Minister then Kan (Kan, 2011) in order to lure foreign investment and business to Japan again. It was run on the Washington Post and other 128 media in 62 countries and areas (Shikata, 2011). For image management, the Office also placed an ad to express its thanks to other countries for helping Japan at the disaster on 216 media in 63 countries and areas including International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Regarding social media relations, the Office made a new Twitter's account for English speakers right after the earthquake on March 14 and started tweeting about disaster information. It was just two days after the Prime Minister's Office started tweeting the same information in Japanese. The number of the followers expanded to more than 22,000 in two weeks. On the 23, the Global Office also made special pages of the 3.11 Earthquake on Facebook and started providing information there in English (Shikata, 2011). Even with these government's efforts to release appropriate information and messages about the crisis and recovery situations in Japan to the world, foreign media had often reported the disaster sensationally with distorted, negative images and wrong information.

Analysis

Map of seismic intensity

As all the practices of public relations in three different media categories mentioned above suggest, the Japanese government did lose the publics' trust to a certain degree as a result. This was also attested by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Adviser then Hiroshi Tasaka (FGDI, 2012). The aforementioned poll showing that 60-70% of the public gave little credit to the government's accident response also supports the fact. What may have worsened the situation was the weakness and inefficiency of its “amateurish level” crisis communications (Funabashi & Kitazawa, 2012). It is clearly shown, for example, in the use of social media. The staff at the Prime Minister's Office did not know much about how to use it for the purpose of communicating with the public. It basically had one-way communication and did not try to receive and analyze what the public actually needed at the time of the crisis (FGDI, 2012). It could not even deal with the criticism raised by citizens and local governments through SNSs (Carr, Herrera, & Pratt, 2012). Most of all, however, the main reason for the management failure may lie in its crisis management policy (FNAIIC, 2012). The staffs in the Prime Minister's Office stuck to a policy regarding information disclosure. It was clearly stated by the Chief Cabinet Secretary then Edano at the press conference on March 13th, two days after the earthquake. He told the press that the government was trying to exclude uncertain or unidentified information from the press releases and only gave the certain, confirmed information swiftly (FGDI, 2012). This policy seemed totally fine as an official stance, but it actually worked very negatively to the public. Because of this policy, the government had often been seen as if it had not revealed important truth to the public (FNAIIC, 2012). Regarding crisis management, Arjen Boin points out that one of the most crucial leadership tasks during a crisis is to explain what is happening and what leaders are doing to manage the crisis. With the convincing rationale they offer, the public supports for their crisis management efforts (Boin, 2009). This is what the Japanese government should have done for the public first even if there had not been enough concrete facts to announce. Even the incomplete information should have been delivered to the public if it was used for the government's decision making (FNAIIC, 2012). Since the government did not fully put forth every effort on this point, it was seen to have very weak attributions of crisis responsibility and was perceived merely as a victim of the natural disaster (Carr et al., 2012). In other words, the Prime Minister's Office could not take a lead at all in its crisis management and was finally seen less credible and lack of leadership by its own public.

Conclusion

The impact of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and the following nuclear crisis in Japan were unexpected for all the staffs in the Prime Minister's Office. They could not handle them successfully, especially in the field of public communications. Due to a chaotic situation, communication problems in the Office, and inefficient uses of social media, the government had gradually lost the public's credit. The situation had gotten worse with its media-relations policy that it only conveyed the limited, confirmed information. The information policy only made the public and international media respect less of what the Japanese government said. There are still some investigation committees working on their final reports on the government's crisis management during the crisis. The English translations of the two investigation reports are also going to be published soon. Through these investigations and examinations, the Japanese officials and public will learn what went wrong during the crisis and know what can be prepared for the next possible natural disaster in the future.

Analysis on the Communication Process in the Prime Minister's Office during the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

The following article was written as an assignment for the Business of Media class.

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Introduction

Investigation report

What people can do after a huge disaster is limited. One of the most important things left to do for them is to record what happened, analyze it, learn what they could have done before the crisis happened, and find out what they can do before the next big disaster occurs. In the same way, people can also learn much from the experience of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. Japan's government faced a desperate situation and went through an extremely difficult time to deal with the crisis. A year after the disaster, an investigation report (Fukushima) was released by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, which was established by a private think-tank, Rebuilt Japan Initiative Foundation (It also released the summary of the last chapter of the report (Funabashi and Kitazawa) in English). In this report, the Commission members interviewed more than 300 people who were involved in the crisis including the top government officials such as Prime Minister at the time Naoto Kan (The top executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) declined their request to be interviewed). In here, what had actually happened at the Prime Minister's Office in the first week of the crisis is described in detail. Through examining the communication process inside the Office at the early stage of the crisis from structural and personal-characteristic perspectives, I would like to propose a desirable system for crisis management that will surely correspond to a crisis and work functionally in a huge disaster in the future.

Members in the Prime Minister's Office
Before analyzing communication process during the crisis, I would like to provide background information in minimum about the important members in the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo. There were 7-8 core members of top officials and experts. Basically, they made all the important decisions during the first seven days of the crisis. They were Prime Minister Kan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Banri Kaieda, three assistants to the prime minister, TEPCO's fellow Ichiro Takekuro, and Chairperson of the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) Haruki Madarame.

Structural analysis on communication process

Prime Minister's Office

First, I would like to analyze the communication process among groups from a structural point of view. The final report points out that the most important point to discuss in the crisis management by the government in this crisis is the communication gaps between the government and nuclear industry (Funabashi and Kitazawa 1). There was several communication channels established during the crisis including the ones between the Prime Minister's Office and TEPCO, the Office and the nuclear experts, the Office and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the NSC, the Office and the TEPCO's on-site office at the nuclear plants in Fukushima, and the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo and its on-site office. In many cases, most of these channels did not function well to convey information rapidly from the on-site workers to the top government officials, and pass down the orders other way round. The information was not supposed to be transmitted in these ways. According to a crisis manual prepared by the government and TEPCO for a nuclear accident long before the actual accident happened, there should have been nuclear emergency response headquarters, so-called the “off-site centers,” immediately being established near the Fukushima plants when a nuclear accident happened. They were supposed to serve as frontline headquarters. However, the center had never been set up because tsunami hit the planned location on March 11th. Instead of this two-hierarchical model between the off-cite centers in Fukushima and the headquarter in Tokyo, the actual information process at the early stage of the disaster had at least four levels to convey the information from the bottom to the top: From the Fukushima plants to the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo, from there to the NISA, and then from the NISA to the Prime Minister's Office (Fukushima 104). This multilevel structure of the communication channels actually prevented the Office members from having the smooth flow of the information and making quick decisions. In many cases, the information was blocked and not conveyed to the Office immediately. This situation became one of the causes that TEPCO and NISA lose the Office members' trust at the early stage.

Even in the government, there was an information divide between the Crisis Management Center on the mid-second floor and the Prime Minister's Office on the fifth floor in the same building. For example, prediction data projected by the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) was delivered to the Crisis Management Center, but had never passed on to the Office at first (Fukushima 105). These information blockages caused the Office members to intervene more with micro management at the on-site center in Fukushima. Finally on 15th, Kan decided to set up a joint response headquarter at TEPCO and assigned one of his assistants Goshi Hosono as the chief of the center and ordered him to station there. This new headquarter enabled the Office members to gather information much more quickly than before. At the same time, they were also able to pass on the orders from Kan to TEPCO and the on-site office in Fukushima immediately (Fukushima 106).

The final report concludes that the two biggest problems regarding the crisis management system are the malfunction of the off-cite centers and bureaucrats' poor management ability to deal with a sudden crisis (Fukushima 394). This is just what Arjen Boin says in “The New World of Crises and Crisis Management: Implications for Policymaking and Research” (2009). Here Boin refers to the political-administrative challenges of preparing government agencies to deal with sudden adversity as one of the three types of challenges that the government faces in a crisis (Boin 370). According to Boin, what is required in the crisis management is flexibility, improvisation, redundancy, and the occasional breaking of rules (Boin 373). These points are still remained as the structural problems of Japanese government's crisis management system.

Personal analysis on communication process
Next, I would like to analyze the communicating process between individuals in the Prime Minister's Office from a personal-characteristic point of view. The point can be summarized in Kan's poor crisis management ability and risk-communication skills. His characteristics can be summed up in the following four points:

1. Poor risk-communication skills. Many members in the Office told the Commission members that he often shouted to others, which made many officials and advisers shrink under his direction. NSC Chairperson Madarame said that he could not fully tell what he should have told Kan then because of Kan's harsh attitude toward him (Fukushima 110).

2. Deep involvement into the micromanagement. At the night on March 11th (the first day of the crisis), Kan tried to arrange power-supply cars at the Fukushima plants by himself. He even asked the staff about the size, weight, and length of the batteries they needed over his cell phone. The report concludes that his conducts such as asking about minor technical details only further complicated the process (Funabashi and Kitazawa 10).

3. Personal advisers outside the government. He no longer believed what the experts and advisors from TEPCO and NISA said any more at the early stage (Madarame lost his trust because he told Kan on the 11th that there would be no hydrogen explosion, which actually had occurred on the following days). He often called experts and advisors that he knew. He called them and asked their advices even in the middle of the crisis. One of the Office members said that the ‘experts' and ‘advisors’ who had no responsibility and authority should not have involved in the decision-making process in such a way (Fukushima 112).

4. Top-down management style. He tended to play a leading role in decision making on various issues in detail. In the report, the Commission evaluates some of his behaviors that actually led the situation getting better. One of them is the fact that he refused TEPCO's request to pull all its workers from the Fukushima plants. Kan and other officials immediately rushed into the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo and made a speech in front of 200 TEPCO's employees saying that there was no way TEPCO could accept defeat and they should put their lives on the line to salvage the situation (Fuhabashi and Kitazawa 8).

Prime Minister then Kan

By Kan's action and statement mentioned above along with the decision to establish the joint crisis-management center there, the report says that the government bore the ultimate responsibility for bringing a nuclear accident under control (Fuhabashi and Kitazawa 8). On the other hand, it also points out that Kan's management style to get involved in detail also made unnecessary confusion and stress around him. (Fukushima 98). As Boin points out, usually it is not clear who has a responsibility of the crisis and who must deal with it (Boin 368). However, even if it is hard to collect, analyze, and comprehend the necessary information to develop a so-called “common operational picture,” to develop a capacity for fast-paced information processing under stressful conditions is necessary for high reliability organizations such as a government (Boin 372). In this sense, Kan's decision to establish the joint operation center at TEPCO turned out to be a better solution at the time even if his heroic statement and action at TEPCO are assessed as inappropriate in crisis management.

Desirable communication system in crisis

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Based on the facts and analysis examined above, I would like to illustrate a desirable crisis-management system briefly. One of the big problems is that the top officials did not know the right procedure for the crisis. As mentioned earlier, there was a manual for a nuclear crisis, but it was not used at all as it was supposed to. One of the Office member Tetsuro Fukuyama said that he did not even know such a manual existed and bureaucrats did not tell him about it, either (Fukushima 101). They did not even know how much and how far they had to get involved. This is one of the main causes of the risk-management failure in this crisis. As the report suggests (Fukushima 389), a totally new organization specified only for crises such as FEMA in the U.S. should be designed so that the government staffs can define their roles precisely by law and would not get confused during the crisis.

A worst-case scenario

Damaged reactors after explosions

The other fundamental problem is how to correspond to the changing situation accordingly. This is especially important when the situation is not clear at its first stage. On March 22nd, as the situation was getting worse, the Office members decided to make what they called “a worst-case scenario.” It was supposed to be made by Madarame, but since Kan did not trust him at all, Chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Shunsuke Kondo was secretly assigned to draw it up. According to the scenario, in the worst case, 30 million residents in Tokyo would need to evacuate. It had not been revealed until Kan stepped down from the Prime Minister and referred to it six months later (Fukushima 93). The report concludes that the scenario was made in the middle of the crisis so that the Office members could see the whole picture of the crisis from a wider perspective. On the other hand, it also points out that the tendency of the government unwilling to disclose information triggered the public distrust toward the government as a result (Fukushima 394-395). As Boin points out, a crisis tends to undermine the legitimacy base of governing structures and processes (Boin 369). To stop this situation, they must offer a convincing rationale that generates public and political support for their crisis management efforts (Boin 373). That is what Japan's government failed to acquire in the crisis management during this crisis. I think one of the main reasons that caused the public distrust is its public announcement policy that it only announces facts. According to then Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano, It does not say anything that includes speculation. This is why they did not admit meltdown in the plants at the early stage. This government attitude surely created distrust among the public and made them believe that the government hid inconvenient truth. By transferring the authority to a specialized, independent organization, it may keep its credibility to a certain extent.

Conclusion
As the final report described, the biggest problem with the crisis management by the Office members in the crisis was “the amateurish level of its crisis communications” (Funabashi and Kitazawa 10). All the examples and analysis argued above indicate that the Office members had a very hard time at the early stage to set up an efficient information system that can transform itself according to the on-going situation. Bureaucratic sectionalism was also a big problem for putting the transformation forward. As the report suggests, what is needed on emergency is not a rigid, well-structured plan, but a system that can flexibly made new plans (Fukushima 396). In other words, the system should be designed as a flexible organization that can offer interim and optimum solutions at each phase of the changing situation accordingly during the crisis. As Boin suggests, a crisis can be a good opportunity for policy reform, institutional overhaul, and even leadership revival (Boin 374). This may be the best chance for Japan's government and public to think about the way they did during the crisis and find out what they can best do for the next generation.

International News Reports Now and Then

The following article was written as an assignment for the Newsroom Management class.

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(Note: You can also read the following article in a newspaper style here at Issuu.com.)

Information technology has changed how newspapers report the stories in dramatic ways. In this blog post, I'm going to compare the first reports of the New York Times on two big earthquakes that occurred in Japan in 1923 and 2011. By examining how the same topic was reported in the same newspaper now and then, the differences of the media environments in the early 20th and 21st century clearly show how information technology has changed (and not changed)  news writing styles.

New York Times Sep. 2, 1923 issue

One of the most remarkable points singled out in the comparison between the international reports of the historical earthquakes in Japan is the time spans the newspaper took to report the disasters. The earthquake happened in 1923 is called Great Kanto Earthquake. It was magnitude 7.9 and is now estimated to have killed 105,000 people in the Kanto area of Japan including Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama prefectures. It started at 11:58 a.m. on September 1st Japan time, which was at 9:58 p.m. on August 31st (EST) in New York. The first report of the quake turned up on the top page of the New York Times September 2nd issue (there were five articles about the quake in total). According to the article, the news was first received on September 1st through the associated press and the next report came through radio from Japan at 8:20p.m. on September 1st U.S. time . it took almost a day since the quake occurred and another half-day was needed for the article to be delivered to the readers.

Surprisingly, the time span it takes to deliver the news is not so different from that of today. The biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan's history struck on March 11th, 2011. The quake is called Tohoku Earthquake. It was a 9.0 magnitude and killed nearly 20,000 people. It broke out at 2:46 p.m. Japan time, which was midnight at 0:46 a.m. (EST) on March 11th in New York. The first report on the New York Times online was released on the same day March 11th U.S. time, but the same article of the print edition was on the March 12th issue. These time spans now and then show that because of the feature of newspaper media, even today newspaper still takes a whole day to convey international news to the readers living on another side of the ocean.

New York Times Mar. 11, 2011 online issue

The other point that is very different between old and new reports is their news sources. Due to the characteristic of natural disasters, the news reporters, especially the small unit of foreign media which doesn't have its own helicopter, couldn't go to the quake-hit area immediately and report what they actually see and hear there. Instead, they interviewed the witness or quoted the news from other news sources. In the case of Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, the New York Times reporter took the latter way. All the information about the affected area was quoted from Japanese news media such as Mainichi Shinbun (newspaper), TV Asahi, Kyodo News, and NHK television. Some part of the article was based even on YouTube videos and Twitter messages. Another thing that the New York Times correspondent did for writing the article was to interview an American professor who happened to visit Tokyo and ask him his personal experience during the quake. However, many photos of the disaster were provided by the associate press so that the readers could know what was going on at the suffered area then.

New York Times Sep. 2, 1923 issue

On the contrary, the reporters and editors of the New York Times in 1923 had very hard time to gather the information from Japan. Because the cable connections between Guam and Tokyo had been interrupted, the only report was sent by the station of Radio Corporation of America located in Japan. The correspondent seemed to live in "Tomioka," which was "located in an isolated position 144 miles from Tokio" (This is probably Tomioka town in Fukushima prefecture in the north part of Japan). This correspondent said that he obtained all the information of the quake from a local newspaper. The New York Times itself admits in the article that the information was very limited saying that "Meagre reports received here indicate ..." Instead, they focuses more on how difficult it was to get the information from Japan at that point saying that "Communication with Japan, interrupted by the earthquake at noon, Tokio time, today, was still virtually at a standstill twenty-six hours later."

"Typical Yokohama" photo on Sep. 2, 1923 issue

What they do next is to fill the article with the general information about Tokyo and Yokohama (a big town next to Tokyo) to fill the page. For example, they explain Tokyo's geographical features in detail. They begin with the history of Yokohama (e.g. the U.S. Commodore Perry came in 1853, etc.), describe where Asakusa and other areas are sited in Tokyo, and even introduce the sightseeing spots (e.g. "The view of the river mouth from the bridge is especially fine, and attracts many tourist," "One of the best recreation grounds in Tokyo is Fukagawa Park.") The description is so detailed that the reader may raise a question why the article has to be so in detail. They got most of the information from a former resident in Yokohama who then lived in the U.S. As a result, the article goes like "Mr. Austin was inclined to think ...," "... presumably suffered..." There are four photos of Tokyo and Yokohama on the top page, but all of them are not scenes of the quake, but typical street shots that show how the towns usually were. There were some comments based on wrong information. For example, one of the articles' headline says, "Earthquake Centres in the Extinct Volcano of Fuji," which was not true at all. All the details mentioned above show that the reporters and editors of the New York Times at that time did what they could do then, but also show that the sources were very limited compared to those of today. To get to the disaster-hit area is probably still very difficult for foreign press even today, but the comparison above shows how various kinds of media are actually used as sources in the digital age.

New York Times Sep. 3, 1923 issue

The last difference that can be found in the comparison between old and new articles is about the vocabulary used in the old articles. Since they were written 88 years ago, some contain words that are no longer used in today's newspaper. There are some old words such as "wrought" instead of "worked." Different words are used to describe the same thing ("tidal wave" became "tsunami" and "breakwater" became "seawall.") In the old articles, Tokyo was spelled like "Tokio." The other interesting point regarding the expressions used in the article is the terms and comments which slightly contain racial and colonial perspectives. For example, when referring to the number of Americans living in Yokohama, the article goes like "... and of the 3,000 white foreigners some 700 are Americans ..." The term "natives" are often used to describe local Japanese residents (e.g. "the richer natives are constructed on ..."). Probably both expressions were quite normal in 1923, but we rarely see them on today's newspaper any more.

There are many differences in different aspects between the reports in the old time and today. Still there are same conditions that cannot be changed even today -- the feature that newspaper conveys the news of the day before and the difficulty for foreign press to go to an affected site immediately. One of the most interesting things that I found through this research is the coincidence that the Tomioka, where the U.S. radio correspondent sent the first report of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, is the very site where the Tohoku Earthquake hit in 2011 and the correspondent of the New York Times in Tokyo must have wanted to go immediately to report the situation.

Examining Initial Evacuation-zone Setting by Japanese Government

The following article was written as an assignment for the Public Speaking class.

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We Japanese had a huge big disaster in the Tohoku prefectures of Japan on March 11, 2011. Many people were lost and are still missing. The Japanese government and many foreign embassies issued evacuation advisories to save their countrymen immediately after finding out the explosion of the nuclear-power plants in Fukushima and the possible risk of radioactive contamination. However, there were clear differences in the evacuation advisories issued by the Japan authorities and their foreign counterparts. In this article, I would like to write about these differences and give my opinions on the appropriate instructions of those authorities.

The U.S. Government issued its evacuation advisory on March 17th recommending that U.S. citizens should stay 80 km away from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants. It also arranged charter planes to evacuate its citizens to other Asian countries. France also took very quick action to evacuate its people. It recommended that its nationals get out of the Kanto area or Japan immediately. Not only did it charter planes to evacuate them to their home country, but it also prepared iodine tablets for them at the Embassy just in case of radioactive contamination. As a result, a total of 4,000 out of 7,000 (that's about 60% of) French nationals left Tokyo after the quake. The British Government also issued the same advisory as the U.S. It chartered flights to Hong Kong and also a bus from Sendai to Tokyo. China evacuated 6,000 of its nationals to the nearby Nigata Prefecture and brought them back home from there. Other foreign countries including Australia, South Korea, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and Austria basically issued only the same 80-km evacuation advisory that the U.S. issued.

On the other hand, there is a big gap between the U.S. and Japan. The Japanese Government asked the residents who live within a 20-km radius of the power plant to evacuate and also asked the ones who live within another 10-km radius to stay indoors. Since it issued this announcement on the 12th, right after the explosion at the power plant, the Japanese Government has been criticized regarding its evacuation range. Some people said the Government underestimated the risk of radioactive contamination and the evacuation zone should have been widened to 80 km, the same as the U.S. Later, a month after the earthquake, the Japanese Government partially increased the evacuation zone, adding five local areas outside the initial 20-km zone where the radioactive contamination is estimated to be more than 20 millisieverts per year. 20 millisieverts per year is the maximum limit for an adult to expose to radiation in emergency situation. This was recommended by the ICRP (the International Commission on Radiological Protection) after the earthquake. Usually in the Western countries, this amount of exposed dose is allowed only for nuclear industry employees.

From a risk management point of view, I think both the Japanese and foreign governments made appropriate decisions on the question of evacuation-zone range at that time. We have to understand that they were in totally different situations. Although they both tried to evacuate their own nationals, Japan had to evacuate a huge amount of people from the stricken zone from immediate health reasons, whereas foreign governments had to evacuate only very few nationals from the evacuation zone. As the U.S. Ambassador announced, they advised the evacuation "as a precaution"(U.S. Embassy), rather than as an immediate health threat. It was not even forced evacuation. For the foreign governments, it would be extremely difficult to find their nationals and evacuate them once the accident happened and the situation became chaotic. To avoid the possible worst-case scenario, they did what they could do beforehand. It was also manageable for them to evacuate a few hundred or thousand of their nationals to other countries by chartering planes just to ease any concerns of those nationals and their families back home.

First of all, why did the U.S. say 80 km? 80 km is 50 in miles and "50 miles" is an easy number to say or remember. That's what I thought at first, but it turned out that the number is not based on any facts.According to ABC News, on April 7th after almost a month since the earthquake, the members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards told an independent advisory panel that they determined the distance based not on the actual data but on the assumptions about the reactor's condition. This is because they couldn't get any data off the site then. Since their scenario assumed 100% damage to the reactor, their evacuation range was greater.

However, it was proven that the Japanese Government set an appropriate evacuation zone. It issued its evacuation advisory based on its risk management procedure. The 20-km range is considered to be safe enough even by several other foreign authorities. In fact, when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in the U.S. in 1979, the first evacuation zone was only 5 miles (8 km) from the nuclear power plant (they widened it to 20 miles (32 km) two days later). In the case of the Chernobyl accident in 1986, it was 18.75 miles (30 km). According to BBC News, the U.S. Government announced later that its 80-km evacuation advisory "did not imply a lack of confidence in the Japanese warnings"(BBC). In reality, it is impossible to evacuate the whole population from a 50-mile (80-km) evacuation zone that covers all Fukushima Prefecture with its population of two million plus.

Since the situation was uncertain at that time and was viewed differently by the Japanese Government and foreign authorities, their decisions were different despite the fact that they had the same information and were responding to the same accident. I personally think the Japanese Government made many questionable decisions after the disaster, but regarding the range of the evacuation zone, it is wrong to criticize them for the initial setting.