Iwaki’s radiation levels dropped quickly and it avoided significant contamination. As a result, it became a refuge for around 24,000 evacuees – including my high school friend, Ayaka Kai*.
I returned to my hometown in a month, but she lived in Okuma, the site of the power plant. Everyone there thought they’d soon return home, but they were wrong.
The whole population, more than 10,000 Okuma residents, left their town with no clue as to when they could return. Over the years, as decontamination efforts progressed, neighbouring municipalities slowly reopened, welcoming back former residents. However, 60 per cent of Okuma is not habitable, including Ayaka’s home, just four kilometres from the nuclear power plant. This area has been classified as a highly polluted zone with radiation levels more than 50 times higher than the accepted radiation levels.
The central area of Okuma town, Fukushima after evacuation orders were partially lifted.Credit: AP
In 2020, I joined Ayaka on a visit to her home, donning a white protective suit, gloves, and shoe covers. Inside, my dosimeter showed a relatively low reading – 1μSv per hour, about 8.76 mSv a year. But as I stepped into the backyard, the number on the screen jumped to 7μSv. Ayaka looked towards the dense trees behind her house and said softly, “The forest couldn’t be decontaminated.”
“Honestly, after going back two or three times to collect my things, I felt like that’s more than enough. The house will just continue to decay. I don’t really want to see it like that,” Ayaka explained. The beautiful garden Ayaka’s grandparents took care of had turned into a wild tangle of overgrown plants towering above our heads. Even wild boars had slipped through the home’s broken windows, making a mess inside.
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Later, after Ayaka graduated from university in Fukushima, she began working at the newly established Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum in Futaba, next to her home town. The museum aims to ensure the nuclear power plant accident is not forgotten and to educate future generations.
At the museum, she organised memorial events and gave media interviews. Her presence became symbolic, and her co-worker encouraged her to become a storyteller. But beneath the surface, she was struggling. Within two years, in 2022, she resigned.
“My nuclear disaster experience hasn’t sunk in yet,” she later reflected. “Even though Fukushima’s reconstruction is moving forward, my home is still uninhabitable. People ask me what I want to pass on to the next generation, but I don’t know. I don’t even think I’m qualified to talk about it. I didn’t approve the plant’s construction. I didn’t cause the accident. I was just a junior high school student when it happened”.
Last year, she left for Christchurch, New Zealand, on a working holiday visa, seeking distance from the constant reminder of what she had lost. But at the same time, she did not want people to forget about Fukushima, and shared her story with a few local friends. She was struck by how hard it was for them to understand what it meant to lose their home town. New Zealand has no nuclear power plants; the concept felt distant.
Boars roam near a barricade restricting entry to “difficult-to-return zones” in Futaba, near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.Credit: AP
Australians seem to think the same, judging from my experience in Sydney. I’ll bet most people have no clue that the electricity generated by the Fukushima nuclear plant was sent straight to places like Tokyo – hundreds of kilometres away from the communities that have been forced to flee.
Peter Dutton has proposed sites like Lithgow and the Hunter Valley for future nuclear power stations. Like Fukushima, these places are far from metropolitan centres – yet the electricity would be sent to cities like Sydney. If a catastrophic accident were to occur, the city residents would not suffer as deeply as those living near the power plant.
Dutton also promotes Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) which are praised as compact and safer. But again, the proposed sites are in smaller towns like Port Augusta and Muja. It is rather funny how “safer” technology is not safe enough for capital cities.
In Japan, the nuclear industry rolls on. It has a history stretching back to the 1950s, employs approximately 50,000 people and involves more than 400 companies. It seems my country is locked into a path it cannot leave.
As we head into the May 3 election, the question arises: Are we ready to step onto the unequal, irreversible path?
*I used a pseudonym for Ayaka due to privacy concerns.
Ayumi Honda is a Japanese news reporter, currently working in Sydney.
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