2:46-Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake

This is a Kindle book available on Amazon.com. All profits from the purchase of this book will be used to help the earthquake victims through the American Red Cross.

The book consists of short writings of a wide variety of people both in and out of Japan and how the earthquake affected them. For some there was a question of whether or not to evacuate vs. the sense of duty to stay and to help others.

One entry deals with the elderly Japanese people not being Internet savvy and depending on radios for the bulk of their information about what was going on. For many, though, the Internet, especially Twitter, played a major role in their keeping up with events.

There was some mistrust of what they were being told by the government and by the electrical company. The main emphasis, though, for most people seemed to try to get through the disaster the best way that they could and to help out other people if at all possible.

There was some criticism of foreigners who fled Japan after the disaster, but there was a lot more criticism of the Western press and its approach to sensationalizing the events and then dropping Japan once the major disaster was over.

There are also virtually no accounts from the writers of the book, at least, of any looting or anyone taking advantage of the chaos to riot and hurt others.

Altogether this is a very well-done book.