Australian English Teacher Doesn’t Like It When People Put Words In His Mouth

Back on April 12th, I wrote a post about an Australian English teacher (the man to the right in the picture above), who ran out of an auditorium during the March 11th earthquake. It just so happened that he was inside one of the few buildings in Tokyo where a ceiling collapsed, so his decision to run for the exit probably saved his life.

In my post, I was somewhat harsh in criticizing him. I wasn’t in the auditorium that day, and I wasn’t there when the media interviewed him. Perhaps the news article that described him “pushing through his fellow audience members” to escape was inaccurate. One English language article included a quote by him in which he implied that the Japanese people died because “it’s very disrespectful in Japan to disobey authority.” Maybe those remarks were taken out of context. The story I read and reacted to may not have been the actual story of what happened that day.

The other day, he e-mailed me, letting me know that he didn’t like the post:

Hey fags at ArseProbe,

If you put out one more slandering article like this putting words in my mouth and telling straight out lies you’re fucking going to be in some serious shit.

Consider this your one and only warning !

He also left a comment on the post. Since I think that he should be given a chance to tell his tale in his own words, here a comment he left:

The link above is commenting about my experiences on the day of the Kudan Kaikan ceiling collapse. Apart from the fact my comments and actions were twisted, exaggerated and sensationalized in every article my interviews appeared in, the writer of this Japan-probe article is talking through his arse.

Who could have predicted the ceiling would collapse? Well, my co-worker and I who left as the ceiling began to disintegrate above us and rain down on everyone’s heads did a pretty good job of predicting
it was about to collapse, didn’t we?

Out of the over 60 seats that were flattened to the ground by the 1 tonne plus section of ceiling, most people left following our example. The number of deaths and injuries amongst the rebellious anarchists
who fled? 0 for each count. The number of injuries and deaths we caused? O on both counts. Now, the number of injuries and deaths of people who stayed under the crumbling ceiling. 30 or so injuries and 2
deaths. It’s like standing on the track as the shinkansen comes hurtling at you. Who could guess it would run you down? And yes, you might injure yourself or others by stepping off the track. Hmmm, yes, you might but…..how likely is that? Sure, if thousands of people are screaming and stabbing each other with butterfly knives while ripping the limbs off people around them as they evacuate a crumbling building, then maybe more injuries would happen than staying in your seat. But in reality, those conditions don’t usually occur. It’s these
same kind of ‘arm chair experts’ that make brain-dead ‘one size fits all situations’ rules-of-thumb, like staying in your seats rather than use your own eyes and common sense and leaving from under the disintegrating ceiling of a building built in 1936, who get people killed, as was clearly the case here. I urge people to trust their instincts and use the basic faculties God and/or nature gave you to protect yourself and others from danger. But be prepared from flack from hack writers.

1. I didn’t push, shove or trample anyone
2. I didn’t call anyone a robot, dronnie or whatever
3. I went back into a dangerous collapsing structure and helped get people out for 20 –30 minutes
4. I took my wife to Nagoya in case there was a serious nuclear meltdown
5. My only crime was not staying under the 1 tonne ceiling to die….oh and give the news agencies the interviews they wanted to kick start the investigations
6. Somehow overcoming my cowardice and selfishness I have volunteered twice in Tohoku

He also responded to some comments from people who reacted negatively to his story. Because the comments contained foul language and anti-gay slurs, I deleted them from the original post. However, in the spirit of allowing him to have his say, here are a few examples of what he wrote:

The ceiling collapsing on peoples heads as they sat quietly in their seats hurt them. Can you understand this simple fact. No one was hurt leaving. People were killed staying. Do you know what this means? You suck cock !

—

“Wow, kodafag, you must have been in the room to see me ‘trample’ people to save myself. It’s interesting that no one was trampled at all by anyone and the people who followed my co-worker and me out, were not injured and the only injuries caused were by the falling ceiling.

So, do you think you’re somehow cool saying “It’s just as well that the ceiling fell in” killing two mothers and seriously injuring tens of my co-workers and students? Do you hate your miserable life so much that seeing me on TV get’s you so burnt up so bad you’ll speak so disrespectfully about an incident that took two lives. How about we bring you along to our next interview and you can state your views on Japanese national television how its just as well my co-workers were crushed to death by the ceiling so it wouldn’t seem so bad I avoided the collapsing ceiling before going back in to help those that stayed in their seats. It’ll be no problem, we’ll get you on air with us and you can unleash your awesome insider revelations upon the Japanese public while thoroughly scorching me for avoiding death in a cave in. Just get back to me though this forum with your contact details and we’ll start talking to the news stations. That is….unless…..you haven’t got the guts to repeat such moronic shit when you’re not safely hiding out in cyber space.”

—

“Where does anyone, me or the writers of the articles I was interviewed in, call me a hero, Greenfag? Were you there when everyone just sat there, including my two co-workers who died, while the ceiling started to disintegrate? I didn’t notice any new faces there, strangely enough. When everyone just stayed there in their seats, I saw they didn’t want to go, so I excused myself squeezing past all the calm seated people to get to the aisle to leave the building with my coworker. But you, Greenfag, would have psychically predicted which women out to the 60 or so people sitting in the soon-to-be-flattened seats would be killed from not calmly evacuating with everyone else, and then against her will you would have heroically lifted her out of her seat and abducted her outside to safety. Or possibly are you suggesting you would have covered her with your own body when the 1 tonne plus segment of ceiling flattened the seats to the ground. Or maybe you would have raised her from the dead with your Jesus-like abilities? So, please, tell us, which action a true hero like you would have taken, O’ Greengay one……”

So there you have it: His side of the story, in his own words.

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