In this article, a worker at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station gives his eyewitness account of what happened there on March 11, 2011, in the immediate wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami that caused three of the station’s reactor cores to melt.

In September 2011, six months after disaster shook the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan, the newly formed Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident launched a national campaign to collect personal testimonials from those who experienced the accident at the plant and those who were forced to evacuate the area close to the plant. The commission launched a website to serve as an online meeting point; it published questions, and the public provided in-depth answers. For half a year, the commission received hundreds of responses to its queries. Though the commissioners found all the reactions to be insightful and useful to the investigation, they needed to hear several responses firsthand.

One such story was from a subcontractor of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, which owns the nuclear power plant. He was among several hundred workers who were at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station when the great earthquake and subsequent tsunami occurred in eastern Japan. He worked in the plant’s Crisis Center, located on the second floor of the earthquake-resistant building, and recounted his story of what happened as the accident unfolded on March 11, 2011. He was promised anonymity as a condition of providing his account.

The commission turned to the TEPCO subcontractor to find an answer to this particular question. What were the decisions facing TEPCO’s General Manager Masao Yoshida as he was flooded with information?

Ultimately, Yoshida would make headlines when he famously disobeyed instructions from TEPCO headquarters to stop using seawater to cool the reactors. Though he was later reprimanded, his disregard for corporate instructions was possibly the only reason that the reactor cores did not explode.

I first felt the earthquake as I walked from the vicinity of Units 5 and 6—which are located near the ocean—to the site’s entrance gate. Suddenly, the asphalt began to ripple, and I couldn’t stay on my feet. In a panic, I looked around and saw a 120-meter exhaust duct shaking violently and looking like it would rupture at any second. Cracks began to appear on the outside of Unit 5’s turbine building and on the inside of the entryway to the unit’s service building. The air was filled with clouds of dirt.

When the shaking subsided, more than 200 workers, who had been on the ocean side of the plant, came rushing to the gate. To protect the facility, anyone entering or leaving by the gate had to pass through a metal detector.

“Let us out of here,” we yelled. “A tsunami may be coming!” Screams and shouts filled the air.

“Wait for instructions from the radiation safety group,” demanded a security guard.

This response angered the workers. When an earthquake had struck the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant [in 2007], some workers had jumped over the gate to flee—and they were later charged for having “broken the law.”

After keeping us waiting for a few minutes, the guard collected our APDs [alarm-equipped pocket radiation meters] and our ID cards and instructed that we “all seek refuge.” I headed for the earthquake-resistant building; however, when I arrived, a ruptured ground pipe was spraying water like a geyser and had caused a mudslide that covered the stairs—which, from top to bottom, spanned some 20 to 30 meters. When I reached the operational headquarters, numerous windows on the second floor had shattered, and the blinds were flapping about in the wind. Three or four cooling towers on the roof had either fallen or were tilted over. Considering that the walls of the newly constructed Units 5 and 6 had been damaged, I figured that Units 1 through 4, which were older, must have been in even worse shape.

The Crisis Center on the second floor was jam-packed. As we watched the news on TV, we were first worried about the Onagawa Nuclear Plant. NHK News showed aerial helicopter footage of a tsunami hitting fields in Natori City in Miyagi Prefecture [in northeastern Japan, where the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant is located, more than 200 miles from Tokyo]. But then a section chief came rushing up to Fukushima’s plant manager, Masao Yoshida, and reported: “A tank [has] been washed away and had sunk into the ocean.”

We all went pale with shock: The tank that had been lost was a surge tank of suppression pool water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

People continued coming in and out of the Crisis Center, delivering one report after another to Yoshida. Each time, the plant manager’s shouts reverberated through a microphone: “That’s not the question I asked!” and “Give me the answer to … this and that!” The workers surrounding Yoshida kept trying to get in touch with people at the reactor buildings at Units 1 through 4, but they were unsuccessful, because the dedicated on-site PHS [Personal Handy-phone System] base station had lost electrical power due to the tsunami. Shortly after 4 p.m., we received instructions to “gather whatever you can,” including hoses, small pumps used for construction work, and emergency light-oil power generators, to help drain water from the electric power room that had flooded. Because we had lost all electric power, it was too dark to get to the electric power room.

By this point, around 700 people had taken refuge in the earthquake-resistant building; and, because we had just conducted an emergency-preparedness drill the previous week, things were surprisingly orderly. TEPCO employees handed out water and crackers, and we took turns using a PHS that was able to connect to the outside world to confirm the safety of our families. Meanwhile, some foreigners sat on the floor and chatted, and the female employees screamed during each aftershock.

I suppose it was around the early evening when the following reports arrived: “The water level has begun to fall, and we can no longer see the meters,” and “We can’t assess the water level.” I think the report for Unit 1 or Unit 2 was: “If the water level continues to fall at this rate, the fuel will be exposed by 10 p.m.” Yoshida’s only reply to these reports was: “Understood.” But he then announced, “All personnel not engaged in work activities, please evacuate.” The allocation of vehicles began, but nobody got up to go home. There was a sense that something had to be done, and it was not an atmosphere in which people felt like rushing off on their own.

One report came in that “we are able to see the water level in Unit 1.” Another report soon followed that said, “Once again, we have lost the ability to assess the water level.” Even when the numbers were reported, Yoshida asked: “Are those numbers really correct?” and “Are those the right numbers?” The people delivering the reports could only reply, “Um, we aren’t sure.” It had become impossible to trust the numbers.1

I don’t remember precisely what time it was when we received the report that “the building is in a dire state!” I remember that it was after the water level began to fall, which was after 7 p.m. This report came from an operator at Unit 1 or 2; I can’t remember which unit it was, exactly, but apparently he took a flashlight and approached the reactor building in the dark. The nuclear reactor building had a double door. Using his flashlight, he first opened the outer door and went through it, then approached the inner door and shined the flashlight through the glass window in the door. The operator said he could see billowing white steam filling the space on the other side of the glass window.

“That’s raw steam!”

Upon receiving this report, the Crisis Center exploded in chatter: “What are we going to do? … It’s not going to explode, right?”

There could be only two possible explanations for the steam: The first is that it was steam for the heater. However, on top of the fact that the boiler had stopped because of the earthquake, the heater steam pipes were quite narrow. Thus, the consensus emerged that this was probably not the case. This left only the possibility that the nuclear reactor’s main steam pipe was sending steam to the turbine building; a rupture in the main steam pipe system would be very dangerous and would mean that no work could be done on that floor. Sure enough, we soon received reports that radiation had been detected as far away as the outer walls of the central control room and the uncontrolled region: This meant that the volume of radiation was extremely high.

“Well, that’s the end of this nuclear plant,” I thought at the time. “And this is the end of TEPCO.” Considering the location of the main steam system, it seemed unlikely that the tsunami had ruptured the pipes.2

Yoshida and others had begun conducting meetings, starting in the evening, to determine whether fire trucks could be used to supply water to the reactor. Because the reactor pressure vessel had reached an extremely high pressure, this meant that water could only be supplied at a higher pressure.

A TEPCO-affiliated company, named Nanmei Kousan, performs water-spraying drills and patrols inside the facility on a daily basis; apparently on March 11, one of the two fire trucks being used for training purposes on the ocean side of the plant’s campus was damaged by the tsunami. In addition, even if fire trucks could have been used to pump water from the truck’s water tanks, it remained unclear how to connect to the supply pipes. Employees argued: “We have no hoses! … We have no plugs! … We have no fuel!” For disaster-prevention purposes, various tools were readied, but there were no connectors.

Instructions came from TEPCO headquarters: We were to “vent” and “inject water.” Yoshida had a direct phone line to TEPCO headquarters, which he told: “It doesn’t matter what: Bring me whatever liquid you can find!”

As we were wondering whether the time had come to vent manually, a dejected TEPCO employee in the room muttered, “Well, this is the end of our company.”

I went down to the first floor, where a bunch of people, primarily TEPCO employees and people from affiliated companies, formed into response brigades. They organized themselves into five teams of about 20 people each, and members of the radiation-control group were outfitting them with protective suits. Among them was a woman in her 20s who helped place tape over the seams of the suits.

This impressed me. “She is really dedicated,” I thought: She had asked to stay behind and help. Because the outside air could enter the first floor of the building, it was extremely cold. Two female employees, who were not involved in radiation-related work, were exposed to radiation in excess of the annual limiting dose of 1 millisievert. The news was that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had given TEPCO a severe warning.

I’ll never forget the expressions on the faces of the employees assembled into those response teams. Their faces, in the face of lethal danger, were white as sheets. They couldn’t find words to express how terrified they were. Every single one of them was trembling; they were truly scared. Nobody knew what could happen. Needless to say, there was a chance they could die.

By the time TEPCO had prepared a bus and we had received our evacuation instructions—“Cover your mouth and get on the bus as quickly as possible”—the sun had already risen.

Outside radiation levels continued rising and members of Japan’s Self-Defense Force began to arrive on-site. We could see them through the windows of the bus. But they were not wearing masks. As the bus drove away, I could not help but think, “I wonder if those guys are going to be all right.”

Masao Yoshida directed the evacuation of the TEPCO-affiliated employees. Ultimately, only some 50 people, primarily TEPCO employees, remained on-site at the Fukushima plant. However, after the explosion in the nuclear power building, it became increasingly difficult to proceed with just 50 people; at that point, TEPCO workers and TEPCO-affiliated personnel who had been previously evacuated were brought back to the facility, thereby beginning the long battle that continues more than three years later.

Editor’s note The preceding prologue is excerpted from the forthcoming book The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Disaster: Investigating the Myth and the Reality, written by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident and published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.