When a son was born to his surviving brother, the boy was named Sasha in his memory. Just before Ito’s visit, Sasha’s parents had learned after four painful bone marrow tests, that their little five-year-old had contracted leukemia from the residual radiation from Chernobyl. Dr. Valery Rizheutski, who was head of the Dispensary Research Institute for Radiation Medicine in Belarus, confided to Ito through an interpreter, “Eighty percent of the children of Belarus now have medical problems related to Chernobyl.” Tears came to her eyes, and her voice faltered as she said sadly, “With eighty percent of the children affected, we have no future.”

On the flight back to Tokyo, Ito was haunted by the image of Sasha. He had hated the Americans for what they had done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Could it be that he—the imagined hero of Japan—might one day be responsible for an even greater nuclear tragedy?

On his return to Tokai, he ordered a complete safety review of his installations. What he found alarmed him. The protective sleeves on the cooling pipes had slipped. The pipes, which had been exposed to intense radiation for years, had become brittle. If those pipes ever burst, he thought, the water could drain from around the core, some of the fuel rods would be uncovered, and the heat from the radioactive decay could bring on an uncontrolled meltdown. What is it the Americans call it? The “China Syndrome”—a meltdown that runs all the way through the earth, to China.

He looked at the massive four-foot-thick concrete walls of the containment building. Hundreds of earth shocks over the years had left hairline cracks in the massive walls. If there was a meltdown, Ito knew that the buildup of steam could explode through those walls. Then, clouds of radioactive vapor could escape into the air.

Ito was a company man. He trusted his superiors. They told him everything at Tokai was safe. But he remembered the earthquake experts who had published a widely circulated paper in Japan outlining twenty-three areas where there would be no danger of earthquake activity. One of those safe areas was the seaport of Kobe. Yet, in 1995, there had occurred in Kobe the most costly earthquake in Japan’s his tory. Structures crumbled that expert structural engineers had certified as 100 percent earthquake resistant. Could it be that the expert engineers have been deceived about nuclear safety as well? Ito wondered.

He had sent a complete report to his superiors warning them of the structural dangers facing Tokai Number One and Tokai Number Two. But, as is so often the case, financial concerns and the fear of reactivating the latent antinuclear protest movement guaranteed that Ito’s report would be quickly submerged.

He was torn. Where did his loyalty truly lie? Was it to the company that had nurtured him, trained him, and promoted him? Or was it to the country of his birth—the country of his beloved ancestors?