WASHINGTON--In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, newspaper company chief Koichi Ohmi learned that paper's printing presses were waterlogged, electricity was cut off and reporters couldn't be contacted.
WASHINGTON--In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, newspaper company chief Koichi Ohmi learned that paper's printing presses were waterlogged, electricity was cut off and reporters couldn't be contacted.
Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, Ohmi's decision to his staff was straightforward: "All we need are pens and paper. We can do it."
Using markers and sheets cut from rolls of newsprint, the staff at the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, created "hanging newspapers" to provide information to survivors of the disaster.
Those newspapers were put on display at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to providing the public with information on the history and latest technology in the news business, in Washington on May 2.
The magnitude-9 earthquake struck after editing had finished for the day at the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun.
Editor in chief Hiroyuki Takeuchi, 53, witnessed the horrors of the unprecedented disaster from the newspaper's head office.
"There were people banging on the windows of their cars as they were being swept away by the tsunami," Takeuchi said. "It just didn't seem real."
That night, Takeuchi, Ohmi and other senior staff members held a meeting to decide what to do.
The newspaper had been forced to stop printing in the past, due to government restrictions before and during World War II.
"I heard that our reporters back then wrote their own thoughts down on paper and distributed them," Takeuchi said.
Takeuchi said that he and his colleagues did not want to cease publication ahead of the centenary of the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun next year.
But the newspaper's cars had been swept away by the tsunami, and mobile phones weren't working.
The reporters had no choice but to put their notes scribbled down at the disaster response headquarters in plastic bags and carry them on their heads as they waded through chest-high water. They returned to the newspaper's offices to write their stories.
They were disappointed with the first edition of the hanging newspaper.
"This doesn't contain much information. We're frustrated because we haven't been able to go and see for ourselves what has happened."
However, when the newspaper was put up at evacuation centers and other locations, people surrounded the newspaper staff and expressed great interest.
"Everyone was starving for more information," Takeuchi said. "It might have been the third most needed item, after food and water."
The hanging newspapers were produced for six consecutive days until publication of an A4 "copy newspaper" was made possible by using computers at the newspaper chairman's home, which had electricity.
The large headline on the first issue dated March 12 was: "Among the largest quake and tsunami disasters in Japanese history: Act on accurate information!"
On the final day of the hanging newspaper's publication, on March 17, the headline read: "Light returns to town: Power restored to over 10,000 homes."
The Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun's endeavors were reported in the March 22 edition of The Washington Post.
Sharon Shahid, Newseum's online managing editor, read the article and turned to Brian Nishimura Lee, the only member of Newseum's staff of around 300 who could read and write Japanese.
Lee, 49, who was born in the Hakata district of Fukuoka city and whose father is of Korean descent, said he thought, "These people, who continued to disseminate information under extreme circumstances with no electricity, water or gas, are true journalists."
He sent an e-mail to the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun, asking for copies of the hanging newspapers "so that their work as journalists can be seen by people from all around the world."
Ohmi readily accepted, saying, "We can't send it right away because the transport systems are disrupted, but we'll look for copies of the issues we don't have and will send them, too."
On April 11, seven copies of the hanging newspapers from the six-day run arrived in Washington.
"They were big and heavy," Lee said.
When he showed them to Newseum directors and others at a meeting, they decided on the spot to display them, knowing they would become highly important exhibits.
Newseum collects and displays exhibits on news reporting in print and on video. It has a 35,000-item collection of historic front pages published over the last 500 years.
A display room dedicated to journalists who lost their lives while on assignment mentions photographer Kyoichi Sawada, who died in 1970 while covering the Vietnam War, and reporter Tomohiro Kojiri, who was shot to death on May 3, 1987, at The Asahi Shimbun's Hanshin Bureau in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture.
Newseum is currently running a special exhibition on the reporting of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The newspaper was initially only able to publish its digital edition, but it resumed printing three days later.
The following words featured in the exhibit have parallels with the journalistic approach of the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun after the Great East Japan Earthquake: "Hurricane Katrina reminded readers why newspapers are vital and demonstrated how local newspapers can bond to their communities in powerful ways."