Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Christer Forslund]

And the industrial leader (i.e. the boss) does WHAT?

In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in The Tower, a luxury high-rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn't been there for more than two weeks, according to a doorman.
The Japanese public hasn't seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible and most reviled chief executive in Japan.
Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into a hospital or committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss had suffered an unspecified "small illness" because of overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
After a short break to recuperate, they said, Shimizu, 66, is back at work directing an emergency command center on the second floor of Tepco's central Tokyo headquarters.
Still, company officials are vague about whether they have actually seen their boss: "I'll have to check on that," said spokesman Ryo Shimitsu. Another staffer, Hiro Hasegawa, said he'd seen the president regularly but couldn't provide details.
Vanishing in times of crisis is something of a tradition among Japan's industrial and political elite. During Toyota's recall debacle last year, the carmaker's chief also went AWOL. "It is very, very sad, but this is normal in Japan," said Yasushi Hirai, the chief editor of Shyukan Kinyobi, a weekly news magazine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/vani...2011/03/28