When Kaori LaClair traveled home to Japan this past summer, she showed her children the country, visited familiar sites and took many photos. But now the places in those photos are gone.

‘The places on the TV, I know those places. I took my children there this summer. It’s all gone,’ said LaClair, a Japanese instructor at Syracuse University.

LaClair is one of the many SU community members from Japan rocked by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11, as well as the threat of nuclear radiation that has developed over the past week. There are 58 international students from Japan on campus and countless professors, visiting researchers, alumni and other members of the SU community with family and friends in Japan.

LaClair’s family lives in Koriyama, about 38 miles from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Although the Japanese government has warned those near the plant to evacuate, the lack of transportation and the shortage of gas have made it difficult. LaClair’s family members remain in their home, but the windows are now taped up, and they must fully cover themselves anytime they leave the house.

‘It’s not safe to go outside, but there is no transportation, no gas, no water. How can they evacuate safely?’ she said.

Threats of radiation now have the country worried about contamination of food, mainly fruits and vegetables. LaClair’s father owns a company that makes miso in Koriyama. Because of the proximity to the nuclear plant, stores in Tokyo will no longer buy his product.

The threat of radiation and instability at the nuclear plant have caused rationing of electricity, as well as gas shortages. Many areas of the country are experiencing planned power outages, and people cannot turn on their heat despite the cold temperatures. Gyms and other large buildings have been designated as evacuation centers.

When the earthquake and tsunami first hit, it took LaClair three days to reach her family. She has many friends in Sendai, the area hit hardest by the tsunami, and has not been able to contact them all. In some cases, she fears not everyone she knows may be alive — her best friend’s grandparents from Sendai have been missing since the tsunami hit.

The National Police Agency said Monday the death toll in Japan stands at 8,928, and 12,664 people are listed as missing as of Monday evening, according to The Associated Press. Police officials predict the death toll to top 18,000, according to the AP. The earthquake and tsunami have caused approximately $235 billion in damage, and the World Bank estimates it will take the country five years to rebuild, according to the AP.

As Monday was the first day back in class since the disaster, LaClair said she discussed what is happening in Japan with her students in JPS 102: ‘Japanese II.’ Many of her students have friends in Japan, she said, and it has been hard for them to deal with what is happening. It has encouraged many of her students to focus harder on their studies and learn more about Japan, she said.

‘They want to help Japan, study Japan more, and someday when they go to Japan, they say they want to help,’ LaClair said.

From friends and family, LaClair has heard horrifying stories. Her friend was shopping on the seventh floor of a mall in Tokyo when the earthquake hit. She told LaClair she screamed and grabbed onto someone next to her, thinking she was going to die. LaClair’s brother was in a meeting in Tokyo when the building next to him caught fire and blew up. He attempted to head home to Koriyama, but traffic was so bad he spent the night in his car, and it took him 28 hours to get home, she said.

‘It’s hard for me to understand what happened. I still wish it was a dream. I’m dreaming a bad dream,’ LaClair said.

Shoko Kato, a doctorate student in entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises, also has family near the area most under threat of radiation — her brother is a newspaper reporter in Fukushima and lives outside of the recommended area for evacuation.

Kato said she has encouraged him to send his wife and 3-year-old daughter out of the city, even though he must remain for his job. The area has water but no power. He can only communicate through email when he is at work, Kato said. Aside from shortages of water and electricity, transportation has been a major problem. The roads are destroyed through much of Japan.

Despite the disaster in Japan and the worsening nuclear situation, Kato said many of the Japanese people are focusing on the fact that they are alive and looking to help the country move forward. For Kato, she said all she can do right now is focus on her education at SU, in hopes that she can use it to help her country rebuild in the future.

The reality of going home to Japan hits much harder for some members of the SU community, such as Noriko Tomita, a visiting researcher from Tohoku University in Sendai. Tomita was scheduled to return to Japan on Tuesday, but the university buildings and much of the equipment she works with were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami.

Tomita will remain in Syracuse to continue her research in biochemistry until at least the end of April.

‘I talked with my boss in Japan, and he said to me, ‘Now you cannot do work here in Japan, so you should stay in America to continue your work,” Tomita said.

Many students feel they cannot do much besides continue to watch the news reports and keep in contact with their families.

‘I’m in America, and I know something is happening in my country, but actually I have no idea what to do with it,’ said Maria Matsuura, a sophomore fashion design major.

Most of Matsuura’s family lives in western Japan, so they were not hit hard by the earthquake and are not facing as dire a nuclear threat. Her brother lives in eastern Japan, which is still experiencing aftershocks, but he does not want to leave for the west because many of his friends and colleagues are in Japan, Matsuura said. Her mother offered that he bring his friends to stay at her home, which he may take advantage of in the coming days, she said.

It’s important to understand how the crisis is affecting areas of the country in different ways, said LaClair, the Japanese instructor. Although the news reports are generally accurate, they cannot explain the entire situation because it is hard for reporters to know everything, she said. Her family has water right now, she said, but her neighbors do not.

On the other side of things, SU alumnus Chico Harlan is reporting for The Washington Post from Japan. His job is to coordinate coverage among the different reporters around Japan, he said in an email.

Harlan was in Hiroshima on vacation with five visiting friends when the earthquake hit. The group was about to board a bullet train to Kyoto when Harlan heard about the earthquake. His vacation ended there. He wrote until 1 a.m. that morning, slept for four hours and continued writing and reporting. He has continued to write articles daily since.

‘It was sort of heartbreaking, ending this vacation right there on the train tracks,’ Harlan said in the email. ‘But I had a sense even in those first few minutes that this was going to be a gigantic story that I had to live, so to speak.’

kronayne@syr.edu

Published on March 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm