A Nonessential Family Reunion

On a full flight, Michael Judge heads to Japan with his wife to visit her family. Life goes on amid a horrible natural catastrophe.

Given the fear of aftershocks and the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant some 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, my wife Masae and I had joked that we'd be the only ones on the Saturday flight. Shortly before take-off, the Associated Press ran a banner on their mobile site saying that traces of "radioactive iodine" had been detected in Tokyo's drinking water. Spinach and milk were also "tainted." Foreigners were already leaving in droves—a mass exodus from the world's densest metropolis was feared.

Indeed, when we told friends and acquaintances we were planning to return to Tokyo, my wife's hometown and the city where we met 17 years ago this spring, some treated us like characters from Albert Camus's "The Plague." Didn't we understand the risks involved? Why subject ourselves to possible contamination if it could be avoided? Many governments were sending planes to evacuate overseas nationals. Washington warned against all "nonessential" travel to Tokyo.

Nonessential—a strange word. Was it nonessential to attend a family wedding we'd been looking forward to for months? When the wedding was eventually cancelled, was it nonessential to be near loved ones at a time when so many had lost theirs? My wife and I had chosen to live in America—we hadn't chosen to abandon our family in Japan.

Nice piece. Read it all.