Non fiction

My Fukushima
福島

'Radiation' …I guess that was the first word that jumped to your mind when you read the title. The word haunts me.

“I am from Fukushima,” Why is it so difficult to say that? When I first came to England six years ago it was such an easy task. They smiled shyly, saying: “I’ve never heard of it. The only place I know in Japan is Tokyo.”

What the word signifies to me is different to you. Fukushima for me is made up of happy childhood memories, full of laughter and nature, though nature can be cruel as well.

11th of March 2011

I was in a place called Sendai, which is about 100km away from Fukushima. The shaking started at 2:46. I was on the bus with many others, a few of them first-year students like me with their hearts full of hope. It was bumping and jumping and the road started to wave like a monstrous ocean. People on the pavement couldn’t stay up and bicycles were turning over, one after the other like dominos. I thought it would be our turn next: the bus couldn't stay upright. I saw through the front window the most unbelievable sight. The road, the road made of asphalt, was moving like a dark black snake, trying to swallow us up.

I heard people screaming, realised I was one of them and felt my mother’s hand grasping my sleeve so tightly that, for the first in my life, I was ready for death. Then the weather followed suit and snow started to fall; a strong and violent snow. That day, nature was very cruel to us. There was no transport, no food, no water, no electricity, no loo, and no place to stay. In utter hopelessness my mother and I, hand in hand, wandered through the town without aim. Queues upon queues were everywhere; there was one for the telephone-box, coach station, super market. I was scared, in my eyes people were slowly but surely becoming animalistic. The hunger was insufferable, everyone felt it.

Now when I tell people this story I wonder what they imagine I was thinking? It was food and death. I slept on the floor of a building with hundreds of others like me, lost pilgrims, wrapping ourselves in newspapers and bin bags. This was not the problem though, I needed food. Every time I awoke all I could do was stare vacantly at the ceiling, feeling incessant aftershocks down my back, an aching emptiness in my stomach.

People began to leave, while my mother and I were still waiting for Godot, praying that the battery of our mobile phone would live a little longer. Then, at last, father arrived in his car, down an almost completely broken road. With the little bit of petrol left in the tank, we left homeward, hoping again that we had enough to get home. On the way, I could hardly stop screaming. A screaming girl is not a good travel companion, but the shaking of the car was giving me vivid flashbacks to that moment on the bus, where it all started, again and again, and I fell into a complete panic. It continued for hours.

Home sweet home. We arrived back to scattered books, broken plates, and the hands of an invisible, ghostly radiation. We fought against the terror of those pressing fingers. What was that? Nobody knew. We were in a dilemma, as we desired to escape; but there was a life, a job, and no petrol. Even if you were lucky, you needed to queue for almost half a day to get petrol or more likely arrive and find it sold out. In my room I secretly decided I had to learn to ride a horse in the future. They don't need petrol after all.

During the summer of the same year, I was invited to Leicester with twelve other students to tell our stories to people in England, who had only heard about the earthquake in the media. Later I found that the professor who had invited us was once a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. So here I am now, studying English Literature at Sheffield. We, Japanese, call this a 'strange coincidence': “En”, and cherish it. I have been studying English for myself, to enjoy and revel in reading literature. But now, this time, I would like to use my English for those who are still suffering in my land without a home, a job and family. I believe I am lucky for being here, telling you my story, as I believe everyone’s story is worth telling. There must be meaning in my destiny, in what led me to come here, led by this beautiful “EN” – 縁.

小林美緒

Mio Kobayashi

© 2014