Fukushima “Black rain”

It has been almost two years since the day.

It has been almost two years since the day.

One month later, April 2011, I visited Namie town, Fukushima prefecture. Cherry blossoms at their best on the river banks captured no one to share its beauty.

A clock on the wall of Ukedo elementary school stopped at the very moment when the tsunami destroyed Tohoku district.

Despite living with fear of high level of radiation in Fukushima city and Koriyama city, some residents are doing farm work now, and elementary students are in a playful mood on the way to and from school as they were before the nuclear disaster.

But decontamination has not begun yet in most areas.

Though the government lifted the designation of no-entry zone this summer [2001], residents are not allowed to live in their home.

Those living in temporary houses keep saying that they need Fukushima they had.

Some of them are working in Fukushima prefecture while their family evacuated to live in other prefectures.

Some of dairy farmers who managed to move their cows to new places are fortunately continuing dairying. But They not as they were.

Mr.Isao Monma, one of such famers, often said, “I do not care about radiation. I just want to go home. I miss my home, hills, life at Tsushima[Namie town].”

He finally passed away [solitary death?] in a temporary house.

Not many Japanese know how displaced people in Fukushima prefecture live and feel.

They cannot help seeing and feeling their home, ones they love with their whole hearts.

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