AOMORI--Kazuko Ebina became so afraid when she heard her smartphone speaker blare out the “J-Alert” alarm that she could not stop her legs from shaking.

The 80-year-old housewife was preparing breakfast for her family in Aomori city on Oct. 4 when the alert, officially called the national early warning system, went off for the first time in five years, warning that North Korea had launched a missile toward Japan.

North Korea had fired the ballistic missile eastward from the country’s inland area at around 7:22 a.m., according to Japanese government officials.

Officials believe the missile rocketed over an area near Aomori Prefecture before falling outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, marking the first time North Korea has shot a missile over Japan since Sept. 15, 2017.

Immediately after the launch, the Japanese government issued the J-Alert to residents in Hokkaido, Aomori and Tokyo’s islands for the first time since September 2017, and the alarm sound soon rang out over the streets.

The alert is issued anytime a missile is launched that could reach Japan’s territory or pass over the country to warn the public of danger and urge them to evacuate to safety.

It was a terrifying start to the day for northerners and many like Ebina did not know what to do to protect themselves.

The warning told her to wait inside or take cover underground, but she did not know which to do since it would take her five minutes on foot to get to an underground path.

She thought to herself, “What if something bad happens before I get there?”

She said she often talks with her family and neighbors about procedures for evacuating from her home if there is an earthquake or tsunami, but not if there is a missile warning.

Then she thought about the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori’s Rokkasho village.

“If the missile falls there,” she worried, “it would be a disaster not just in Aomori but across Japan.”

Officials quickly scrambled into action to discuss the possibilities and how to respond.

Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki told reporters just after 9:20 a.m. that he had “instructed officials to be thorough in collecting information on the missile’s trajectory and in ensuring the safety of airplanes and ships.”

At a 10:30 a.m. emergency meeting, Suzuki and Hokkaido government officials decided that until the central government provided them with the final report about the missile, they would maintain their “second emergency deployment arrangement,” the second most serious level of crisis readiness.

According to the Aomori prefectural government’s disaster risk management section, officers of the Self-Defense Forces were dispatched to the prefectural government office and helped officials collect information on the missile.

The Tokyo metropolitan government held its own crisis management meeting at 10 a.m. with Governor Yuriko Koike and senior officials in attendance, the first time it has ever held one in response to a missile launch by North Korea.

That is because the alert did not just ring out across northern Japan. It was also issued to nine municipalities in Tokyo’s Izu and Ogasawara island chains south of the capital.

Island residents there were just as scared and confused.

A 60-year-old resident of Ogasawara village in Chichijima island said he saw the words “North Korea launched a missile” appear on his smartphone screen after he heard the loud J-Alert warning.

Immediately after, he heard two emergency sirens through the island’s emergency broadcast system.

When he switched on a TV, he saw that the Izu and Ogasawara island chains were under the missile-alert warning.

He said he quickly became nervous.

“Will the missile land here?” he thought. “It’s an emergency.”

But he said he could only stare at the TV screen as he thought, “There is no underground place I can evacuate to. What should I do?”

Official accounts of how the alert was carried out also complicated matters in some areas. 

Later that day, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency announced the J-Alert was not issued correctly in Shin Hidaka and Eniwa in Hokkaido, nor did it work in Aomori city and Hirakawa in Aomori Prefecture. The agency said it should have played over the prefectural emergency broadcast systems, but for some reason it had failed.

But according to Aomori's prefectural government, the Aomori municipal government erroneously told the central government the missile warning was not properly communicated to its residents. Officials maintain that the launch warning was, in fact, disseminated through the emergency broadcast system or by email.