Into the Forbidden Zone by Vollmann William T

Author:Vollmann, William T. [Vollmann, William T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614520030
Publisher: Byliner
Published: 2011-04-30T20:00:00+00:00

Soldiers in Ishinomaki. Photo by William T. Vollmann

III: INTO THE FORBIDDEN ZONE

I WON’T DENY MY SELFISH RELIEF at leaving the stinking ugliness of Kesennuma and Oshima, not to mention my anticipation of getting safely home where such things never happen (Sacramento, my home city, is second only to New Orleans for flood risk in America). As well as I could determine from my dosimeter, the radiation in Kesennuma and Oshima seemed to be double that of Tokyo: a millirem every twelve hours. Now it had come time to return to Koriyama, and from there to make a foray or two into the evacuation zone.

At five-thirty in the morning in Oshima, the meter read 2.2 millirems, having turned over once since dusk. At nine-thirty on the Tohoku Expressway, after two hours of moderate rain and just north of the Ohira exit, it reached 2.3. Shortly before one in the afternoon, just as we came into Koriyama, it showed 2.4. By eight that night, thanks no doubt to a certain pleasure drive which I will shortly recount, it was at 2.5, and before six the following morning it had achieved a glorious 2.6 millirems: four times the Tokyo baseline, in short. According to the newspaper, the actual level was closer to forty-four times Tokyo’s,30 but, optimist that I am, I’ll keep faith with the toy Bob sold me. Here is an appropriate place to say that my dosimeter’s figure for Koriyama, the highest reading of any twenty-four-hour interval excepting the days of my two international flights, is not bad at all: it works out to 146 millirems per year. One American dosimetrist opined that as much as half of this might be predisaster “natural” background radiation.31 To reach my danger threshold of 5 rems, I would have had to hang around Koriyama for more than thirty-four years. All the same, if I were young, I might not want to marry and raise children in Koriyama.32

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