Shown at the Documentary Arts Asia Gallery in May 2013.
James Whitlow Delano: “Black Tsunami: Japan’s Year Zero”
I found myself in Rome, Italy on 11 March 2011, when the black tsunami struck. The return flight I took the next day turned out to be one of the last commercial flights from Italy into Japan.
I had already begun to lay down plans on how to get to Tohoku before leaving Rome. The flight landed at 2pm in Narita. By 3am, I was heading north in a mini-van with trusted friends along the far, Sea of Japan coast of Honshu because of rumors about an imminent nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.
There would be an explosion at Fukushima Daiichi that rainy day which pushed a massive amount of nuclear fallout to the ground, preventing it from being carried away by the wind, resulting in the need for the nuclear no-entry zone. We were unaware of the severity of the situation on the other side of the island as we focused on getting over to Iwate Prefecture safely. The car was loaded with jerry cans of extra fuel, drinking water, and food, all of which we had been told would be in short supply.
By morning the rain had turned to snow. In the center of the island, gasoline was being rationed and lines of cars stretched for kilometers. Residents were so desperate for fuel that, after waiting all day long, they would park their cars in lines for the night and return to them in the morning. It was decided to hire a taxi that used liquid propane gas because that fuel was plentiful.
Supply lines in Japan were breaking down. Runs on food and water left store shelves empty and that meant little or no bottled water for sale at a time when radioactive iodine from the unfolding nuclear crisis was being detected in water supplies.
The snow intensified in the tsunami zone. I wanted to climb right out of the taxi window, so intense was the desire to record the unthinkable. Cars were folded like soft drink cans over bridge railings 15 meters above the water, trees were impaled through 3rd floor windows, and boats were even deposited on rooftops.
Survivors shuffled through the mud and snow in a state of shock. Soon we joined these shuffling masses, feet soaked with freezing cold black mud carried in by the tsunami. Moving inside provided little relief because inside evacuation centers temperatures hovered below 10 degrees C, which leaned heaviest on the very young and the very old. The survivors gathered in family groups on blankets, striving to regain a modicum of privacy in a twilight pall of anemic lighting underpowered by gas generators (again, fuel was in dangerously short supply). No words were necessary for communication. It was there I first encountered a peculiar infinity-stare, born of worry, cold, hunger and lack of sleep. It would become a familiar expression in the time ahead.
Soon, though, the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi began to eclipse the tsunami disaster further north. A nuclear expert expressed concern that the tsunami and explosion-weakened structures could collapse in one of the seemingly ceaseless aftershocks here, tipping out radiation on a scale that would dwarf Chernoble, over two years after the multiple meltdowns. It took the Soviets just eight months to construct a concrete sarcophagus completely sealing that reactor. Two out of three of the reactors at Fukushima remain exposed to the open air. Millions and millions of liters of radiation-contaminated water is contained in ever-growing numbers of water tanks on the grounds nearby with nowhere to go. So this crisis has not ended by any means
On 11 March 2012, the one-year anniversary, a family stood dressed in black on an empty plot in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, where their home had been swept away. One of them was holding a little Buddhist monument dedicated to a lost family member. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to do this” as I approached to ask to make a portrait, but I knew I had to do it.
Our eyes met and smiles broke out. They offered me a couple of digital cameras so that I could take their photographs. They asked me to stand among them and be photographed. We parted laughing. We all laughed together that day, exactly one year after the tsunami had changed our lives forever.
James Whitlow Delano
James Whitlow Delano has lived in Asia for 20 years. His work has been awarded internationally: the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, PDN and others for work from China, Japan, Afghanistan and Burma (Myanmar), etc.. His first monograph book, Empire: Impressions from China and work from Japan Mangaland have shown at several Leica Galleries in Europe. Empire was the first ever one-person show of photography at La Triennale di Milano Museum of Art. The Mercy Project / Inochi, his charity photo book for hospice, received the PX3 Gold Award and the Award of Excellence from Communication Arts. His work has appeared in magazines and photo festivals on five continents from Visa Pour L’Image, Rencontres D’Arles; to Noorderlicht. His new iPad book, Black Tsunami (FotoEvidence) documenting the Japan tsunami and nuclear crisis took a 2012 PX3 Award. Delano is a grantee for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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