This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Grant Newsham, Colonel Grant Newsham,

United States Marine Corps retired, author of Wenchana attacks, remembering his time in Tokyo during

the Tohoku earthquake, rocking Tokyo, leading to the tsunami that led to 22,000 deaths on the coast of Japan

and the knocking out of the Fukushima nuclear reactor

and the rescue and recovery that went on afterwards.

Grant participated in Tokyo and then he was flown into the region.

We're looking at a devastation that Grant describes in his conversation with me

14 years later. Grant also tells the story about when he in Tokyo being briefed because

Marines called him up and he said, yes, I'll go as a reservist, when he learned that the reactor number two had blown up and that

radiation cloud was in the air. More of this tonight. Grant Newsham, Fukushima, 2011, March 11th.

It was. It took a little while for the nuclear threat to fully materialize.

I was actually a reservist, so they called and asked if I would like to be useful, so I said yes,

and had a very good assistant who took over at my civilian job.

But the nuclear issue came up

within a few days. I think it took a little while. And I remember being at Yucota Air Base

when getting briefed about this at the main U.S. headquarters. And one of the staff came in and

said, Fukushima just blew up.

I'm thinking, oh, boy, I'd rather be in Philly.

But you act like nothing new.

And at that point, there was a lot of problems that were happening.

And the news of the nuclear disaster, the nuclear threat, actually didn't come out

immediately. The government actually tried to hush it up. And there was a lot of, but there was a lot

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