Fukushima: Five Years On. Contaminated Land.

후쿠시마 재앙 5년 후: 현장 취재 1편 Five years ago... on March 11th... the world watched in devastation as Japan got struck by a tragic trifecta. To mark the anniversary of its worst disaster since the war, we went to Fukushima's ground zero... to find out how the people, the land, the community is dealing with the crisis... five years later. Part one of my two-part series. The hell that broke loose on March 11th, 2011 was the strongest earthquake in Japan's history. When the shaking stopped, a tsunami. Almost 20,000 people died in the flood. Those who survived would soon face a manmade disaster: The world's worst nuclear disaster in a quarter century. Lifeless. Decaying. Desolate. Big towns, small towns all ghost towns. We drive towards the cause of all this... towards the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. We are in the exclusion zone. These barriers mark the start of the no go zone around the crippled nuclear reactor. The visible remnants of the disaster tell only part of the story of misery wrought by nature's fury... another face of the crisis: unseeable - though measurable - radiation haunts the land. "This is Tomioka. Roughly 7 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. More than 11-thousand residents left this town on March 12th, 2011 - the day after the earthquake and tsunami hit. This part of Japan is known for its agriculture but today the only crop growing is multitudes of black bags holding radioactive materials that would have to be stored for generations." Nine million cubic meters all throughout Fukushima prefecture... in rice fields, roadsides, people's backyards. Some of the dead zone will never return to life... even as teams of workers across Fukushima scrub down houses, cut branches and scrape contaminated soil off farmland... every single day. "Once a town of 16,000 people, the population today zero. The clock at this school stopped. The disaster seems to have stopped time in this town." But... a few kilometers to the south... the authorities are preparing to declare that Minamisoma, another city within the evacuation area, is now safe for evacuees to return. On the day we visited, the Municipal Assembly was holding a briefing session... presenting documents... that yearly radiation doses in the area have dropped to levels low enough for the evacuation orders to be lifted. According to Minamisoma's Countermeasure Health Committe, all data taken from examinees show that level of radiation is not high enough to impact health conditions. Whenever the government refers to decontaminated area, it is never clear. Which area exactly? How many percent of the total has been cleaned up? You have no data of what will happen 20, 30 years from now. The data you are using is completely groundless If the radiation decontamination work is not 100% complete, I am against lifting the evacuation order. Distrust of government announcements runs deep among residents here. "The government says it's safe for us to move back because radiation levels are below its standard. But, everybody is against moving back. The clean up isn't complete, children can't go back, and there is no infrastructure to carry out daily lives." "I've managed to stay alive for 75 years. I'm not going back there. I don't want to die because of radiation. I don't want to die just yet." Tomiyo Kokubun is an anti-nuclear power activist and an evacuee of Minamisoma himself. He says parts of the town are still highly contaminated. Forests were excluded from decontamination work... although these trees have absorbed enormous amounts of radioactive fall-out. "The most dangerous isotope is Cesium 137. Cesium 137 is capable of penetrating the human skin. Even concrete." Mountainous forests make up 70 percent of Fukushima Prefecture. "Trees take up radioactive cesium and iodine and store them for a long time. So, trees emit radiation... they will continue to emit radiation for a long, long time." Masakatsu Suzuki has been making frequent visits recently to his house standing on the edge of the evacuation zone. After five years of hopping among his children's homes and temporary housings, he's ready to move back. "My late wife and I built this house together. It may seem old and plain to others, but this is my home... this town is where I was born." The 78-year-old has been working on his garden, trimming overgrown trees... pruning shrubs... cleaning up the mess he left behind five years ago when the triple meltdown rendered this municipality unsafe to live. Visit ‘Arirang News’ Official Pages Facebook(NEWS): http://www.facebook.com/newsarirang Homepage: http://www.arirang.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/arirangtv Twitter: http://twitter.com/arirangworld Instagram: http://instagram.com/arirangworld