TOKYO — Japan’s respected emperor visited the country’s earthquake- and tsunami-ravaged disaster zone for the first time Thursday as frustration rose over the nation’s inability to gain control over a crisis at a nuclear plant crippled by the twin disasters.
Even as the month-old emergency dragged on, radiation levels dropped enough for police sealed in white protective suits, goggles and blue gloves to begin searching for bodies amid the muddy debris inside a six-mile radius around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant that had been off-limits.
Authorities believe up to 1,000 bodies are lodged in the debris. Overall, the bodies of only about 13,500 of the more than 26,000 people believed killed in the March 11 disaster have been recovered.
In Asahi, where 13 people were killed and some 3,000 homes damaged, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko got their first look at the devastation, somberly gazing at a plot of land where a home once stood and commiserating with evacuees at two shelters.
The royal couple kneeled on mats to speak quietly with the survivors, who bowed in gratitude and wiped away tears. One evacuee with Down syndrome, who has trouble speaking, wrote “I will keep striving” in a small notebook that he showed to the emperor and empress. Asahi is about 55 miles east of Tokyo.
Nearly 140,000 people are still living in shelters after losing their homes or being advised to evacuate because of concerns about radiation.
Akihito, 77, has been active in trying to console the nation since the disasters struck last month. He made an unprecedented made-for-TV address expressing his condolences and has visited evacuees relocated to Tokyo. He is expected to visit other tsunami-affected areas of Japan’s northeast coast in coming weeks.
Although Japanese officials have insisted the situation at the crippled plant is improving, the crisis has dragged on, punctuated by a nearly nonstop series of mishaps and aftershocks of the 9.0-magnitude quake that have impeded work in clearing debris and restoring the plant’s disabled cooling systems.
Officials acknowledged Thursday yet another glitch in efforts to cool the used fuel at the plant.
Water inadvertently sprayed into an overflow tank at one of the compound’s pools for spent fuel rods and led to a false reading that the main pool was full when it wasn’t. That prompted workers to suspend the injection of water into the main pool for several days until Wednesday, when spraying resumed.
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