To Fukushima and Back with Hiro

A Japanese man sits on the floor of a 4-mat-sized room, staring at a TV set neatly fitted into a corner. There’s enough room for the man, the TV, and a low plastic coffee table. Clean clothes and hung on hooks along the wall, and laundry hangs from the curtain rail. What’s the story here?

Watanabe-san’s living space.

I asked that question to photo journalist Hiro Ugaya as we pored over his photos from a recent trip to Fukushima. “He’s an old friend,” said Hiro, “whose wife and son have evacuated to Yamagata. He’s been looking for work for six months, but the only available jobs are related to decontamination or decommissioning of the crippled nuclear power plant, and he doesn’t want to resort to either of those options. Still, as bad as the situation is in Fukushima, the economy’s worse in Yamagata, so he stays where he is.”

Photo Journalist Hiro Ugaya in Tokyo.

Hiro, a native of Kyoto living and working in Tokyo, has made nearly 50 trips back and forth to Fukushima since the triple disaster of 3/11, capturing scenes of life near the evacuation zone with his trusty Canon 5D Mark 3.  Read more about him here. He travels alone, going as far north as possible by train and then renting a car in Fukushima to drive along the coast. This month, he visited his friend Watanabe-san (pictured above), and stayed at a local hotel filled with temporary workers hired from all parts of Japan to do decontamination work in the outer regions of the evacuation zone. “Business is booming,” said Hiro, “but only if you want to work in irradiated areas.”

Although Hiro took hundreds of photos from the various coastal towns near the disabled Daiichi power plant, I want to focus mainly on his photos from Iitate Village. They reflect the slow but steady progress of the Herculean task of decontamination and serve as a sobering reminder of the sheer ugliness and shame of what happened in Fukushima. All photos in this post are Hiro’s, and all but one are from his recent November trip.

The beautiful groves in Iitate have been contaminated.

Iitate Village (pronounced EE-ta-tay), a highland farming area northwest of the crippled nuclear power plant, lies outside of the designated 30 Kilometer radius of the government-determined evacuation zone. But those of you who have followed the story, know that on March 15th, a gusty winter wind blew particles of radiation straight toward the mountains of Iitate. The wind was accompanied by snow, which blanketed the entire area.  Stores, schools, houses, trees, rice paddies, vegetable gardens, and grazing pastures were all heavily contaminated, though no-one guessed at first because of the village’s physical distance from the center of the nuclear disaster.  Of course, the evacuation map was drawn as a perfect circle, with multiple rings indicating distance from the radius, and Iitate was far from that radius. If only radiation travelled so neatly, without regard to weather or topography, right?

Iitate Village in relation to the original designated evacuation zone.

The evacuation of Iitate did not begin until April 22nd (over a month after the meltdown and the explosions occurred) and was not finished until late August of 2011; residents were inadvertantly exposed to high levels of radiation as well as emotional stress and confusion. For many of the elderly people who evacuated from Iitate and are still  in temporary housing, living with depression, disappointment, and lingering sadness has become the new normal. Worse yet, residents from towns near the epicenter of the accident were also exposed to excess radiation when they were initially relocated to Iitate, which was considered a safe refuge shortly after the meltdowns. This was a tragedy that could have been prevented if the central government (not wanting to “incite panic”) had released a map known as SPEEDI, containing specific data regarding the path of the plume of radioactivity. You can read about it here, in an early blog entry from 2012.

So what’s the story on Iitate now, more than three years down the road? Well, some readers may be surprised to learn that although the level of radiation in many areas of Iitate remains high, the village is no longer “off-limits”. Former residents can now come and go freely and decontamination work is progressing–slowly, painstakingly–in hopes that the village will be revitalized. The mayor is determined that it will be. The problem is that Iitate is bordered by forestland. Since the nuclear disaster, trees are now cesium repositories, and many traditional houses in the village are situated in close proximity to sheltering groves, which serve as windbreaks. The trees that once sheltered homes have now contaminated them, and they are uninhabitable.

Good luck cleaning the whole forest .

The central government does not consider forestland “residential”, and does not place a high priority on decontamination of the trees that define residents’ backyards. The reality is that many local residents must either abandon their homes, or attempt to “clean” the forestland lying closest to their houses, essentially stripping the forest of its ecosystem.  Think of Iitate as a mountainous forest which humans have made habitable by clearing and cultivating the land for generations. Now it is

No-one’s picking persimmons in Iitate this year.

impossible to guarantee the safety of the land for humans without destroying the ecosystem itself, which is steeped in cesium, from the shiitake mushrooms that flourish in the contaminated forest to the wild boars that feed on the mushrooms. Cesium from the forest is carried down to the village with each rain or snowfall, and previously cleared terrain is re-contaminated. On the flat areas below the forest, work progresses at a painfully slow rate, and deadlines that prove impossible to adhere to are continually being re-assessed and re-determined. Booming business for the decontamination workers means a longer exile for residents still hoping to return in the near future.

The above assessment sounds and is harsh, but there is another vision. Many residents of Iitate and of similar small villages and towns in Fukushima believe that the land can be rescued and revitalized without destroying the ecosystem. You can read more about them in this transcript of an NHK broadcast from December 2013.  Although the English translation reads imperfectly, the photos, personal stories and quotes from local residents gathered by Swiss journalist Susan Boos are food for thought.

Decontamination means plant life is cut down or pulled up, and topsoil is dug up and bagged neatly .

Unlike the land around  the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, which was left to revert to its natural state, Fukushima’s contaminated areas are being stripped, scrubbed, plowed, drained, and stirred up; Boos wanted to know why. The transcript describing her visit to Iitate Village is interesting because it makes no mention of the decontamination work being funded by the central government, focusing instead on the efforts of individual farmers who have lived and worked in Iitate for generations. Frustrated with the slow pace of the clean-up, Iitate residents have been doing things their own way, taking detailed measurements of radiation levels, creating radiation maps, and developing alternative methods for reducing the effects of cesium in the soil.

“From now on,” says Iitate farmer Muneo Kanno in the transcript, “we will need to coexist with nature in this contaminated area over many generations. In other words, I think it’s our job to collect all the data we can about contamination and pass it on to the future generations….I strongly believe that this is the first and foremost role both for me and all the other local people.”

Iitate residents have co-existed with nature for generations

Kanno and other volunteer farmers and researchers are committed to accurately evaluating the state of their land, recording their findings, and experimenting with solutions. For them, decontamination  is “Not just to remove everything, to wash, to brush and to think now the problem is done.”  Boos, who has travelled the world reporting on the conditions of nuclear disaster sites, was deeply impressed by the devotion of the Iitate farmers to their land and by their determination to preserve it for future generations. The transcript reads, “Susan has travelled to many parts of the word, but this is the first time for her to be exposed to such deep affection for someone’s home.”

Decontamination workers in Iitate, November 2014 .

So who actually lives in Iitate Village right now?  As of September 2014, a few hundred people have received permission to return home permanently, based on the location of their land. They are living in the zone that’s deemed “safe”, or at least”safe enough”. The area of Iitate still under decontamination and deemed “uninhabitable” is populated by day-trippers (former residents who commute into the village weekly–or even daily– to check on their houses, pets, or gardens), professional contamination workers, and the occasional journalist like Hiro, collecting stories, measuring radiation, and snapping pictures. It’s a ghost town at night.

Decontamination work: is it worth the money?

On his most recent trip to Fukushima, Hiro, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, stayed in a local hotel south of the Daiichi nuclear power plant. “I was lucky to get a room,” he said. “It’s always full these days. All guys, and all working in decontamination. ” Since there were no restaurants in town (read: nuclear zone, no tourists), Hiro and the other workers made a mad rush to the 7-11 , which closed at 8 p.m., to buy box lunches for their dinner every evening.  According to Hiro, the going rate for a decontamination worker in Fukushima right now is around ¥16,000  to 17,000a day–approximately $145 U.S. dollars– before money is taken out by contractors and sub-contractors.  Is it worth the money? That’s something that every man ( I saw no women in any of the photos) must come to terms with on his own.

From here on in, I will let Hiro-san’s photos speak for themselves. You can read more about Iitate’s mountains of trash bags full of contaminated soil in this Japan Times article, which describes the current plan to build a 22 million cubic meter temporary waste storage facility in the Okuma/ Futaba area, home of the crippled power plant. That’s a space big enough to fill the Tokyo Dome Stadium 15 times. And you can read more about the plight of the old folks who have evacuated from Iitate and other neighboring towns in this article by The Guardian’s Justin McCurry. And you can support the excellent work of free lance journalists like Hiro Ugaya by passing on their words and images. Take a look at more of his stunning photos and read about his life here.  I’ll post some of my favorites as well. Thank you for reading, and take care.

In Iitate, bags of radioactive waste are encircled by bags of sand, used to “seal in” radiation.

The same site, seen from a distance.

…and finally, the site seen from above, complete with fall foliage.

Bags of topsoil are transported by truck and neatly stacked.

“Fukushima smells beautiful,” said Hiro. “The flowers have gone wild.”

Cicadas, Anxiety, and Getting the Truth Out

Japanese cicadas come in many sizes and colors, each with its own distinctive “nakigoe” or cry. They are loved, not shunned, in this country, and children spend afternoons stalking, capturing, and observing these bug-eyed alien creatures. My particular favorite

Min-Min Zemi: up close and personal.

is called “Min-Min Zemi” because of his shrill nasal cry: “Miiiiin-min-min-min!”  The Min-Min never lets up during the month of August, and folks find the continual barrage of noise either annoying or reassuring (Semi are supposed to rule the streets in the month of August, and their absence would leave an uneasy silence, atypical of the season).  When I left Japan on vacation in early August, the Min-Min had not yet made their appearance and the weather was unseasonably rainy. Somehow, this made me anxious.  I returned from my trip to New England yesterday, and was relieved to hear the Min-Min out in full force in my neighborhood. It’s early evening now, and they’ve been at it since the morning, in desperate competition with birds and early autumn insects. The weather is still unseasonably rainy, with two typhoons headed this way, but at least the cicadas are doing what they should, when they should, and that keeps me grounded. My daughter agrees.

On the surface, Japan seems “back to normal” since March 11th, especially in Kanagawa Prefecture, which sustained very little damage at all from the quake and tsunami. Stores and restaurants are still dimly lit and uncomfortably warm (that’s the continuing energy conservation efforts), but folks are used to that by now, and almost able to disconnect from the disaster which necessitated the efforts in the first place. Little luxuries are creeping back into our lives, and we no longer feel so guilty about spending money on pleasure. But look a bit closer, and there’s an underlying level of anxiety that’s directly in proportion to one’s distance in kilometers from Fukushima. Let me give you a brief summary of some of the anxiety-inducing events of July and August, beginning with a video of a meeting that took place in Fukushima City on July 19th.

The meeting was arranged to give Fukushima citizens a chance to voice their concerns and communicate with representatives of the Central Government in Tokyo. What was conceived as a sensible idea went terribly wrong, as the representatives were unable to answer even the most basic questions, resorting to repetition of a prepared statement. Their emotionless demeanor and continual refusal to even consider the residents’ demands (immediate support for evacuation and testing of their children’s urine) provoked the residents to consternation, then anger, as they openly mocked the Tokyo beaurocrats. Take a look for yourself, and see what you think.

I find this video uncomfortably addicting, and I confess to having watched it several times. The incredulity of the residents as the officials fail to acknowledge their questions, the public humiliation of the officials as they flee the meeting in shame , and the desperation of the ordinary guy who follows them all the way to the elevator, pleading with them to accept the children’s urine samples are moving and disturbing scenes; it’s no wonder this video has been viewed and re-posted on blogs and websites all over the country. And for anyone who suspects that the Japanese government may be censoring unfavorable news or unflattering videos?  Well, if that’s the case, this should’ve been one of the first to go.

Professor Toshihiko Kodama

Shortly after the brief and futile meeting in Fukushima, another video appeared on you tube, almost immediately going viral with over 200,000 hits in just a few days. The video was of a speech made by Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama to the lower house Committee of Health, Labor, and Welfare on July 27th.  Kodama, the Director of Tokyo University’s Radioisotope Center, gave an impassioned speech, backed by facts and complete with scientific explanations.  His unguarded emotion and use of expression and gesture were unusual in Japanese public forum, but his words were what made him an overnight sensation. According to Kodama, the total amount of radiation released since the beginning of the Fukushima disaster is far greater than that released by  the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, and he is furious with the government for downplaying the danger faced by those close to the Daiichi Nuclear Plant, with babies and small children meriting the most concern. Describing himself as “shaking with anger”, he called on the central government to begin decontamination of the stricken area immediately. “It has been 160 days!” he states with disbelief.  I will post a brief clip of Kodama’s speech near the end of this post, so you can see for yourself both the passion and the thoroughness of his presentation. As a postscript, today’s paper reported that the amount of radioactive cesium 137 released by the Fukushima disaster is 168.5 times greater than that of the Hiroshima A-bomb ( Nuclear  and Industrial Safety Agency estimate).

The urgency of Kodama’s speech produced results–but not in the central government. While Prime Minister Kan’s cabinet continued doing business as usual, individuals were frantically buying up geiger counters, doing their own assessments of the level of radioactivity around their homes, and attempting to decontaminate their own yards. The ever-helpful, ever-positive national TV network NHK produced a “Do-It-Yourself Home Decontamination” program; I watched it myself, shortly before my trip to the states. In an hour-long program, the hosts demonstrated how to wash one’s entire house (top to bottom,  beginning with the roof) with a power hose, and then dig up any water-absorbing plant life (especially moss) , since most radiation is concentrated in rainwater. The top level of plants and grass are to be bagged and measured with a geiger counter, and then buried (in the deepest hole possible) in one’s own backyard, with the most-radioactive bags thrown in first, and the least- radioactive forming the top layer. Of course, the hosts explained, the backyard burial is only temporary, until the government decides exactly what to do with the steadily-increasing bags of radioactive waste products.

Hmmm. One week later, the Asahi Shinbun reported “Secret Dumping” of truckloads of radioactive soil and sludge in Fukushima. Citizens were eager to clean up their own neighborhoods, but not keen on using their yards as temporary landfill. The city had apparently dug an enormous trench in a remote area and was stealthily hauling truckloads of bags to a secret burial site. Not a pretty thing to contemplate, but since the central government has come up with no master plan, or even basic blueprint, to deal with the decontamination issue, local officials and individuals are no longer willing to sit back and wait. There’s a new sense of urgency, and motivation to act.

This was the state of affairs in Fukushima in late July. Residents within a 20 kilometer radius of the Daiichi plant were still unable to return home and living in shelters, nearby prefectures with relatives, or in hotels or Japanese-style inns. Those just outside that radius were frantically measuring their level of radiation and decontaminating the best the knew how (Professor Kodama was making weekend visits to Fukushima to assist them), and those in the outer regions of the prefecture continued to suffer from economic depression. Few visitors venture to the inns and attractions in Fukushima these days, and rice, vegetables, and beef still go unsold. Many women living in Fukushima have decided not to have children, and the workers at the Daiichi plant are already resigned to staying single the rest of their lives. See the movie “Black Rain”  if you’ve never done so ( Shohei Imamura, 1989),  and you’ll understand the stigma of living with (or being perceived as having) radiation sickness. Outside of Fukushima Prefecture, food products continued to test positive for high levels of radiation, and even green tea leaves in my own Kanagawa Prefecture were found to contain cesium. Doctors in Chiba Prefecture ( a full 200 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi) were reporting increased nosebleeds, diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children…..symptoms of radiation poisoning?  Maybe yes, maybe no, but the possibility was there. As Dr. Yuko Yanagisawa from the Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba stated, “We are encountering new situations we cannot explain with the body of knowledge we have relied upon up until now.”

In my two week visit to New England, I encountered kind and concerned people who understood immediately the fear and anxiety engendered by nuclear disaster. I also encountered people  eager to lecture me on the safety of nuclear power, and how the danger was exaggerated. “What happened in Fukushima was really no big deal,” said one man. “The media just blew it all out of proportion.” Knowing what I knew (there was no way he’d ever convince ME of that statement) and seeing the stubborn set to his jaw, I decided to nod coolly and let sleeping dogs lie. In retrospect, it is true that the media gave dramatic and extensive coverage of the quake/tsunami/nuclear disaster during the first two weeks, yet there has been little follow-up on the aftermath: the death of cattle within the evacuation zone, the suicide of farmers, the break-up up families and communities, the emptying-out of schools, the  build-up of toxic waste, and the desperate pleas for information and support of those who have chosen to stay or are unable to evacuate. Not to mention the race-against-time to bring the reactors to a cold shutdown. And not to mention the fact that my cell phone still shows daily aftershocks in Fukushima–not a day goes by without at least one. And not to mention the percentage of Fukushima residents still struggling to deal with the death of family and friends as well as recurring nightmares left over from the quake and tsunami. What a pity that the media deserted Japan, and what a tragedy that a certain percentage of the population will go on believing that what happened was “no big deal”.

But maybe there are readers who are not yet convinced.  I have written of the anxiety of Fukushima residents and the hardships they’ve endured as a result of forced evacuations and lack of government support. But just how serious is the threat of radiation poisoning, and exactly how dangerous is the current situation at the crippled Daiichi power plant? It is difficult to get a perspective, as there is simply very little news coverage at all. Data is recorded and published, but the statistics often mean nothing to the average Japanese citizen. Experts rarely appear on NHK television to analyze and educate.  Many Japanese and foreigners in the know are turning to blogs and you tube videos to get information. Naturally, the language barrier is a source of frustration and confusion, since foreigners are unable to read the tweets and blogs of Japanese living and working in Fukushima, and Japanese are unable to comprehend the comments of physicists and nuclear experts speaking from abroad in English. There are a few razor-sharp bilingual minds working to translate you tube videos and speeches as they are made public, but far too few in my opinion. What’s happened and is happening in Fukushima is “senmon-teki no hanashi” (specialists’ language), and not easily translated in a way that’s both accurate and understandable. One blogger who’s been doing a fine job is known as EX-SKF; his blog (EX-SKF.blogspot.com) sports a flashy photo of Ultra Man soaring through the sky, and his translation work (he did the English for Professor Kodama’s speech) is out of this world. Unfortunately, many of the most interesting videos are from news programs in the US or the UK; there are often no Japanese subtitles for most of them, and most folks here don’t know of their existence, or wouldn’t be able to make sense of the technical English. Experts who have worked within the nuclear power industry (Arne Gunderson of Fairewinds, in Vermont ) or who have been active for decades in  bringing nuclear power plant safety issues to light (Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear) are following the Fukushima developments from abroad, analyzing the data as it’s released, and coming to some grim and startling conclusions. Their assessments differ dramatically from what the Japanese public is being told  via government updates, yet are not in conflict with the bits and snippets that are revealed in private Japanese blogs, such as those of workers at the Fukushima plant.

I’d like to share with you just one of these videos, featuring a short clip of Professor Kodama, along with an interview with Paul Gunter, co- founder of the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group; now working as a nuclear reactor specialist with Beyond Nuclear, he has been a critic of nuclear power for thirty-plus years. Gunter believes that accurate information about the Fukushima Daiichi is being deliberately withheld by the nuclear industry, and speculates about the current situation based on reports from the inside. Here’ s the video.

So…..that’s the situation as Paul sees it. Most Japanese have not seen this video and are not aware of its existence, though the Japanese blogger whose words influenced Gunter’s analysis was posting about it today on his site.  Prime Minister Kan’s resignation will be official tomorrow, and candidates for his position are already jostling for air space. Japanese citizens do not go to the polls to vote directly, so there’s no sense of excitement; it’s a passive rather than active event and folks feel resigned, rather than hopeful. Perhaps the new guy will be a true leader and visionary, but more likely not. In any event, many Japanese are attempting to search out information on their own, take action, and control their own fate. Without accurate information, they cannot hope to implement change. Good for the Fukushima citizens of the first video, refusing to sit back and accept their fate.  Please pass on their story to those who underestimate the seriousness of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, to those who (not hearing news to the contrary) might imagine that things are alright again over here, and of course to those who have ears to hear. For the sake of the Fukushima mothers whose children are already testing positive for cesium in their urine samples, please do keep the information and stories circulating. Thank you so very much. The cicadas salute you, and so do I!