SCOTT SIMON, Host:
He joins us on the phone from Kyoto. Mr. Kuehnert, thanks for being with us.
MARTY KUEHNERT: Yes, Scott. It's my pleasure.
SIMON: I gather you chose to leave Sendai, right?
KUEHNERT: Yeah, we spent two days with no power, no - you know, no electricity, no water. I've had experience with earthquakes, the Kobe earthquake, and so I was well-prepared compared to a lot of people. But, you know, we were the lucky ones. You know, we're on the west side of town, inland.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
KUEHNERT: But nevertheless, we decided to get out. I made the decision because of the problem with the nuclear reactor in Fukushima.
SIMON: What was the drive like to Kyoto?
KUEHNERT: But I have a hybrid Toyota van and it gets great gas mileage. So I had enough gas to get all the way through Miyagi Prefecture, you know, Yamagata Prefecture into Niigata. And when we finally - after about six hours we got to the point where we could buy gas without a long wait.
SIMON: Help us understand the fear of radiation that drove you to leave town and...
KUEHNERT: But I have to say that I've seen so much of the Japanese character, the positive side, you know. When I mentioned those lines, people are waiting so patiently in those lines and in order to get the food, to get the gasoline. There's, you know, we've seen natural disasters in other countries where people riot afterwards because they can't get stuff.
SIMON: Yeah.
KUEHNERT: There's been none of that. Zero.
SIMON: Yeah. Forgive me, Marty, it's going to sound like a frivolous question, but it's not really. When does the season open?
KUEHNERT: So, anyhow, the Pacific League has postponed the opening until April 12th at the earliest. It could be pushed back again. But we're not going to use our home stadium. We'll probably be using the stadium in Kobe and playing out of there.
SIMON: You're in touch with folks who are still in Sendai in the north?
KUEHNERT: Oh, yeah. I've been in touch with a lot of people, but I'm still concerned there's some friends that I have there - some students, some teachers that I work with - have not be able to reach. And, you know, the unfortunate thing is that the death tolls that you're seeing is going to go up, because there's a lot of people still in the missing category.
SIMON: It sounds like in the midst of all this devastation you were reminded over the past week what you admire about so many people there.
KUEHNERT: And I almost feel guilty, Scott, you know, having left the scene, you know, and got down here to Kyoto. But I felt I had, you know, with radiation, you don't want children in radiation. You don't want...
SIMON: You've got a little girl. Yeah.
KUEHNERT: Yeah, she's only seven and a half. So it was important to get them out. And I'm just so thankful that we were in the situation that we were. I mean, we're the lucky ones. We were the lucky ones.
SIMON: Thanks so much, Marty.
KUEHNERT: My pleasure.
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SIMON: You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.