Australian teacher flees Japan radiation

News.com.au, AAP March 16, 2011

AS deadly radiation spread toward the home of Australian teacher Ren Gregoric near Fukushima last weekend, his local boss was demanding that he turn up for work on Monday.

Ren Gregoric fled from near Fukushima shortly
after learning of radiation fears / AAP

Instead, Mr Gregoric, 22, fled to Tokyo and arrived in Melbourne today.

Mr Gregoric, 22, an English teacher at a local high school, said local authorities had failed to reveal the extent of the danger from radiation leaking from the crippled Dai-ichi power plant in northern Japan.

As a result locals were largely oblivious to the deadly potential of the radiation and he had to plead with fellow expatriates to join him.

"A lot of people wouldn't leave because they were never told how bad things were," Mr Gregoric said.

"We actually got calls from our bosses on Sunday to tell us we were expected to come to work on Monday.

"There was even one Australian guy who convinced some of the others that there was nothing wrong."

Another Australian teacher living in the area was so convinced he was safe that he refused to register his presence in the area with the Australian government.

With the help of a steady flow of information from his brother-in-law in Australia, Mr Gregoric managed to convince five other teachers also living in Iwaki, 35km from the power station, to join him.

Together they fled on Sunday in a car with half a tank of petrol and a couple of litres of water.

Even then, it was only a timely contact with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that ensured the journey was made.

Until then he thought he might have to resort to violence to persuade a Singaporean colleague who owned the car to leave Iwaki.

"I really thought we might have to knock him out and steal the car," he said.

"The trouble was that accurate information had become just as scarce as petrol and water."

While Mr Gregoric had certain difficulties with his expatriate friends, he said the local Japanese community were embarrassingly kind at a time when their lives were being torn apart.

"On the day after the earthquake we were out trying to get water and whatever we could and Japanese people were giving us food, making us take it even though they hardly had any themselves," he said.

He also told of another Australian teacher whose Japanese friends drove her to Tokyo's Narita airport even though they didn't have enough petrol to return to their home in Fukushima.

Mr Gregoric set off on Sunday with the Singaporean, two New Zealanders and two Americans for a drive to Tokyo that normally takes three hours.

Nine hours later they arrived in the Japanese capital after meeting up with two New Zealand reporters who had arranged to rendezvous with them on the highway with some extra petrol.

"We also had a great piece of luck when we spotted a small petrol station that had no queue and got a bit more gas," he said.

Mr Gregoric also praised DFAT for its efforts to contact him and keep in touch with his family in Melbourne.

"It was awesome that these people who didn't even know me were trying to help," he said.

Tonight, DFAT reported that 94 Australians remained unaccounted for in the disaster area around Sendai and Fukushima.

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