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Podéis leer el siguiente texto escrito por la profesora americana Linda Ehrlich, especialista en cine japonés y español y testigo directo de los terribles acontecimientos de Japón:

Linda Ehrlich

I would like to tell you the very strange story of my relationship with one of the most devastating earthquakes in history. I was on the same island where the destruction occurred and yet, at first, I felt nothing. I was travelling back from a visit to a Buddhist temple called Taima-dera, located south of the ancient capitol of Nara. Suddenly there was an announcement on my train that, because of an earthquake, the train would run a little slower than usual. This was followed by the usual formal expressions apologizing for the delay.

What was so remarkable to me was the way the people on the sparsely filled afternoon train, upon hearing that anouncement, went inward. I could see a noticeable difference on their faces. Now, Japanese people on trains are not usually gregarious, but there are often people chatting together. You could hear a pin drop on the train I was on. Each person´s face was a study in inwardness. No one spoke or even made eye contact.

I truly didn´t understand the magnitude of the catastrophe until hours later when I saw the images of the unimaginable destruction. And then came the confusing news of those nuclear reactors, and images of towers shaking in the air.

For the next two days, I did feel some aftershocks and yet I still did not fully understand. It was as if a conscious part of my brain had shut down the reality I could not bear. But my imaginative power took over, no doubt annoyed by my muddle-headedness. I walked outside along Lake Biwa on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon, and suddenly felt like the 12-story business hotel next to the school where I was teaching was breaking up before my eyes and crumbling to my feet.

What finally broke through the fog I was in was not the non-stop news broadcasts on Japanese tv, but the email messages and calls I was receiving from around the world—from friends in the U.S., Spain, France, Brazil, Taiwan, and from an Israeli colleague who was staying in Tokyo. I grew increasingly alarmed about the nuclear situation and I sent queries for clarification to scientists I knew. As someone who had introduced Imamura Shohei´s film Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) at the Japan Society in NYC, I knew what the effects of nuclear radiation on the human body looks like. And as someone who has seen W. Eugene Smith´s photographic images of children born in Minamata after the initial hush-hush of chemical dumping in the water there, I have a distrust of the reporting of environmental damage by the Japanese government and corporate world. As soon as I began to comprehend those images from Fukushima, I feared for the water system. A week later, indeed, my worst fears came true.

I decided to leave, and I even risked anger, and possibly stronger action, from the school where I was teaching as a Visiting Scholar for one semester. But two days after I left, the Japan Center for Michigan Universities broke its absurd policy of ¨everything is fine in Shiga prefecture¨ and allowed the American students to leave. I felt great relief at hearing that news.

One week after the earthquake, I left Japan with a heavy heart. Kansai International Airport near Osaka was full of long lines of grim people of many nationalities, all unsure about the future. This was not a scene of vacation travellers. My DELTA flight left 30 minutes early so it could fly around the tip of Shikoku, the island further south, rather than fly straight through the radioactive cloud over the Tokyo area. (I confirmed this with the steward.). And then, scores of hours and 3 stops later, I arrived in Cleveland, to grey skies and brown bare trees that looked remarkably beautiful.

But that isn´t the end of the story. Even as I returned to familiar settings, and kept mumbling to myself ¨How peaceful, how peaceful,¨ I felt the plates of the earth shift beneath my feet. In my mind I put buildings together again like puzzles, but the pieces never quite matched anymore. When people would ask me ¨What was it like?,¨ I found I had lost the power of words to describe. And so the earthquake that I didn´t feel at all has become a huge rupture in my life, a complete change that will never disappear.

The out-of-control condition of those nuclear reactors continues to fill me with an immense anger at our human greed, deceptiveness, and short-sightedness. The earthquake victims are many, but with the relief efforts in Japan, and the heart-warming help that is pouring into Japan from around the world, the northern communities will surely be rebuilt. I have great faith in the resiliency and dignity of the Japanese people. I know how they will relish even more poignantly the long-awaited blossoms of Spring. I am touched by he way all of you who were much more distant from the catastrophes have opened your hearts to try to comprehend the enormity of those three interrelated events—the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear explosions. The larger context of the radioactivity will reveal many changes in the future—for example, what will become of the Japanese fishing industry, or the dairy industry, on Honshu, the main island? What inexplicable illnesses will invade the bodies of children on that fractured island?

Often I wish I could wake up and find it was all a bad dream. But alas, a cloud of radioactive particles rises upwards and is dissolved invisibly into the water system of a great metropolis like some B-grade catastrophe movie. But this movie has endless reels and the projectionist is not sure how to control the machine.

I hope our donations will go, not just towards the immediate needs of blankets and food, but also towards helping ordinary people rebuild their lives to accept this shadow that has fallen across it through no fault of their own.