March 18, 2011
By MARK McDONALD and SHARON LAFRANIERE
TOKYO — The exodus from Japan grew Friday as foreigners sought to flee the threat of radiation from the stricken Fukashima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Some 20,000 resident foreigners have indicated their intent to leave the country by requesting re-entry permits from the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, according to Kyodo news agency. Tokyo is about 140 miles south of the plant.
Ticket agents said flights out of Tokyo to South Korea and China were booking up quickly. A representative of China Southern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to the Chinese coastal city of Dalian, said its flights were sold out until April. A representative of China Eastern Airlines, which flies from Tokyo to Beijing and Shanghai, also said seats “are in short supply.” An Air China agent said that airline added two flights from Tokyo to China on Thursday and that some seats remained on its flights from Tokyo to Beijing.
Xiao Er, a Chinese businessman temporarily working in Inner Mongolia, said he had tried for three days to secure airline tickets to China for his Japanese wife and daughter, who live less than 170 miles from the crippled nuclear plant.
“Right now my family is extremely panicked,” he said in a telephone interview Friday. “Nobody is going outside. Everyone is hiding in their rooms, afraid of coming into contact with the radiation.”
He said neither he nor his wife had been able to buy tickets to China for her and their daughter. Finally, a relative of his wife secured two tickets for about $1,500 each. An air ticket out of Japan at the moment is almost “something that money can’t buy,” he said.
The South Korean government said that Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines had added 4 to 11 flights a day from Tokyo to South Korea and had switched to bigger aircraft. Should an emergency evacuation become necessary, a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said, South Korea is prepared to send military planes and warships to rescue its citizens.
“The government will mobilize all means, such as charter planes, vessels, military transport planes, Coast Guard patrol ships and warships to help evacuate our people,” second vice Foreign Minister Min Dong-seok told reporters.
Foreign governments have taken varying approaches toward the evacuation of their citizens. Some countries recommended evacuation for those anywhere near the danger zone around the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Other countries made arrangements to get their citizens out of Japan altogether.
France, Germany and Hong Kong, among many others, arranged charter flights for people wishing to pull back from Tokyo to Osaka — or to leave the country entirely. Britain said that it was chartering jets to fly between Tokyo and Hong Kong, and that Britons directly affected by the tsunami would not be charged for the flight.
The United States approved plans for voluntary evacuations of families and dependents of its military personnel and embassy employees in Japan, including those at air and naval bases 200 miles or more from the plant.
The American military presence in Japan includes about 38,000 troops plus nearly 50,000 dependents, civilian employees and American contractors.
But not all foreigners were fleeing. One Briton said he was not about to leave.
Michael Tonge, a schoolteacher in Sendai, the closest major city to the quake’s epicenter, said many of the expatriates in his area were “forming groups using things like Facebook to try to get aid and help to the people who need it.”
“Sendai has been my home for over five years,” Mr. Tonge said, “and the people of this area have taken me in and made me feel very welcome. I can’t leave them now, after this. I think that’s how a lot of the foreigners here feel, too.”
Mr. Min, the South Korean foreign ministry official, also said that South Korea had moved its team of rescue workers in Japan farther from the reactors out of concern for their safety. The team moved from the city of Sendai, in the tsunami-hit region, to the western coastal town of Niigata, he said. South Korea and Taiwan both continued to expand radiation checks of passengers arriving on airplanes from Japan.
Since Tuesday more than 11,000 people have voluntarily submitted to checks at airports in Taiwan, a spokeswoman for the Taiwanese Department of Radiation Prevention of the Atomic Energy Council said. Radiation residue has been detected on just 37 of them, said the spokeswoman, who identified herself only as Ms. Xu. She said the highest level was about three times above normal, not enough to cause any health concern. Those with higher levels were given plastic coveralls and shoe covers. All were advised to wash their clothing and shoes when they reached their destination.
Seoul’s Incheon international airport has established two voluntary checkpoints for radiation. Anyone who does not pass the first check is rechecked to see if the levels of radioactive residue are high enough to be considered contamination. So far only four people had to checked twice, and all but one were told to discard their clothes and shoes. They were given alternate clothing and sent on their way. The fourth man was told he needed to be examined at a hospital.
Mark McDonald reported from Tokyo and Sharon LaFraniere from Beijing. Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Yamagata, Japan. Research was contributed by Su-Hyun Lee in Seoul, South Korea, and Li Bibo and Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing.
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