This is the 12th in a series on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe based on the accounts of people who struggled to contain the crisis in its early stages. Job titles and ages are as of March 2011.
Four days had passed since the Fukushima No. 1 disaster began, but Ikuo Izawa, a Tokyo Electric Power Co. employee assigned to reactors 1 and 2, whose nuclear fuel had melted, had not called his wife until a colleague urged him to do so.