Ten years on, Japan's Fukushima victims worry they've been forgotten

People wearing masks are seen next to a board with messages mourning the victims of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami disaster that killed thousands and set off a nuclear crisis, at Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, March 11, 2020. Reuters

Sumio Konno used to invite neighborhood children and their parents to a barbeque in his garden, overlooking a forest and a pond where water birds would come and go.

"We would often get together and grill fish, mushrooms and freshly dug bamboo shoots. It was the epitome of a wonderful life," recalled Konno, a former nuclear plant worker, of his old home in rural, north-eastern Japan.

Konno said he liked the laid-back lifestyle in the coastal town of Namie, known for pan-fried noodles and pottery called Obori Soma Ware, distinguished by its crazed glaze and double-layered construction.

However, their lives were upended by Japan's worst nuclear accident in history ― at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, located 10 kilometers from Konno's house. It was struck by a magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami in March 2011.

Three of its six reactors went into meltdown, spewing radioactive substances into the atmosphere after the tsunami swept through the plant.

The nuclear emergency forced tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes in areas such as Namie, which lay near the facilities.

Konno, who was engaged in maintenance work at another nuclear plant in the neighboring Miyagi Prefecture, survived the quake and the tsunami, which claimed the lives of about 18,500 people. He was finally reunited with his family outside Fukushima Prefecture four days later.

Nearly 10 years on, Fukushima evacuees remain scattered across Japan. Only 5 per cent of Namie's residents have ventured to return to their homes near the plant amid persistent fears of radiation contamination since the government lifted its evacuation order for central parts of the town in March 2017, following decontamination work. That decision was seen as a step taken too early by experts.

"Concern about radiation varies among different individuals," Hideki Yoshida, a Fukushima Prefecture official, told DPA.

"We believe residents can now live free from anxiety as decontamination work has been completed," he added.

However, local officials have acknowledged that high levels of radiation are readily detected in forests and mountain areas, where clean-up operations were never conducted.

Konno, his wife and their 15-year-old son have now squeezed themselves into an apartment in the city of Fukushima, 70 kilometres north-west of the crippled nuclear plant. He has not seen any of the neighborhood children again since the nuclear disaster.

"I miss them so much," he said.

Lying in a virtually empty residential area of Namie, Konno's two-story house was demolished in September due to radiation contamination.

He criticized the government for "abandoning" victims of the nuclear disaster while it instead channeled resources into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which have since been moved to July 2021 due to worries about the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The government should not use the Olympics to provide a cover for the nuclear disaster," Konno said.

It is not surprising that many people in Tokyo think the nuclear disaster is over, he added. While the government and major media outlets have downplay the nuclear disaster, its victims have had a hard time even talking about their suffering, according to critics of the administration.

Adding to the problem, in male-dominated Japan there is an atmosphere in which women are not supposed to have a say in politics, Nanako Shimizu, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Utsunomiya University, said. That quietens the voices of many of the affected.

In fact, none of Fukushima's 59 municipalities has a female mayor, she pointed out.

Junko Isogai is one of the few female evacuees who has spoken up about her suffering. The former Fukushima resident campaigned against the restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in Niigata, run by Tokyo Electric Power, the same operator of the Fukushima plant.

She does not want other parents and children to experience what her family had to go through, she said.

Isogai moved from Fukushima to the city of Niigata, on the Sea of Japan coast in 2012, after her two teenage daughters suffered nosebleeds and developed rashes on their bodies following the nuclear disaster.

The disaster came?two years after the family's long-awaited house was built.

Isogai, who unsuccessfully ran for a Niigata Prefectural Assembly seat last year, recalled some men asked her why she became a candidate, saying, "you are a mere woman."

More than 90 per cent of the Assembly's seats are occupied by men.

Isogai is among tens of thousands of so-called "voluntary" evacuees who fled areas not designated as mandatory evacuation zones. They have received little compensation from the Fukushima plant's operator.

In 2017, the prefectural government stopped giving housing subsidies to such evacuees, which critics say has worsened their plight.

A limited number of vocal evacuees such as Konno and Isogai have also been subject to online attacks.

"I'm aware that I have been the subject of online vitriol," Konno said. "But, I tell you the facts about the nuclear disaster. I will continue to talk about what really took place here in Fukushima. If I don't, the government will sweep the whole thing under the rug." (DPA)