Japan: International: News: Hankyoreh

Six years after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, Hasegawa in Itate-mura in September 2017 is looking at a flower blooming from the buckwheat planted by Hasegawa, saying, “We cannot leave our homeland in desolation.” In Fukushima after the accident, abandoned cows were found as white bones. Hasegawa also had to give up the dairy industry. Hasegawa also harvested buckwheat last fall. Photo courtesy of Naomi Toyoda

March 12, 2011, the day after the radioactive material leakage accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant) caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Freelance photographer Naomi Toyoda, 65, headed from Tokyo to Fukushima Prefecture with a radiation dosimeter, a stable iodine drug (a medicine taken to prevent thyroid exposure), a satellite phone and a camera. Since he had experience covering the site of the Iraq war and prepared to cover the radioactive material leakage accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union until just before the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, he was able to start with the relevant equipments, but the scale of the accident exceeded expectations. Two days after the accident, on March 13, 2011, when he approached the Futaba government office 4 km away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the dosimeter he used in Iraq exceeded the measurement limit of 1000 microsieverts per hour (1 millisievert). One milli-sievert alone exceeds the annual dose limit of the general public. Until now, ten years later, he visited Fukushima almost every month and continued to report. Hundreds of thousands of photos were taken during 10 years of coverage of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident.

Kenichi Hasegawa, a dairy farmer, dumps milk in a pit in Itate-mura, Fukushima Prefecture, in May 2011, two months after the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. On March 19, 2011, radioactive iodine was detected in milk produced in Itate-mura, which exceeded 300 becquerels per kilogram, which was the government’s provisional standard at the time, and it was impossible to ship. Cows suffer from mastitis if milk is not milked, so it was a day to squeeze and discard milk every day. Photo courtesy of Naomi Toyoda

His camera lens captured the pain and conflict of Fukushima residents after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. A representative example is Kenichi Hasegawa, 67, a dairy farmer who had to evacuate with the entire village. In 2012, Hasegawa visited Yeongdeok, North Gyeongsang Province, where the construction of a nuclear power plant was being promoted, and told stories of family members scattered in the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. Hasegawa has been farming buckwheat in Itate-mura, Fukushima Prefecture, where he originally lived in 2016, five years after the nuclear accident. It was a decision not to devastate the land of his hometown, although it was impossible to do dairy farming again due to the loss of customers and radioactive contamination. Toyoda’s photo captures Hasegawa’s ten-year life of throwing away milk from cows raised by Hasegawa, attending the funeral of a co-worker who committed suicide, and harvesting buckwheat. Returning to Itate-mura, Hasegawa continues to play a role as a testimony to the reality of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, including as a speaker at a lecture hosted by a Japanese civic group. Toyoda also appeared in a movie that was released as co-director. ‘Samosely’ refers to people who have fled and returned to Chernobyl, now Ukraine. The main content is the story of Hasegawa thinking about returning home in 2017 when the Itate-mura evacuation order was lifted, and traveling to Chernobyl 30 years after the nuclear accident.

Hasegawa mourns in front of the coffin of a colleague who committed suicide after leaving a will in Itate-mura in June 2011, saying, “If there wasn’t a nuclear power plant alone”. Photographer Naomi Toyoda said that Hasegawa was sorry for saying, “A bad prediction has been met.” Two months later, in August, Hasegawa, who was the mayor of the Maeda district, reported that the entire village had evacuated, and he himself moved to a temporary residence in nearby Date City. Photo courtesy of Naomi Toyoda

Residents are marching with a “mikoshi” (a kiln used at the festival) at the “festival” held in Itate-mura on May 3, 2018. Next to it, you can see that the contaminated soil created by the’decontamination work’ scraping off soil contaminated with radioactive materials was temporarily piled up and covered. The Japanese government promised to move the contaminated soil out of Fukushima Prefecture by 2044 for final disposal, but the search for a candidate site for a final repository has not yet begun. Photo courtesy of Naomi Toyoda

In a recent e-mail and telephone interview with Toyoda, “I thought from the beginning that the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was not a problem that could be resolved in 10 or 20 years.” “It takes 30 years (after the accident) even if we consider the half-life of cesium 137, a representative radioactive material,” he said. Toyoda said that while covering Fukushima for 10 years, he felt desperately that “it is impossible to completely remove the radioactive material contamination caused by a nuclear power plant accident.” “Life plans, families, and local communities once damaged by a nuclear accident will never come back again.” He is also skeptical of the Japanese government’s Fukushima revival policy. “The government, Fukushima Prefecture, and the administrative authorities repeat the word “Pungpyeong damage (damage caused by rumors),” he pointed out, “but the damage actually continues.” It is said that the Japanese government is trying to hide the actual pollution or damage while over-emphasizing the revival. The Japanese government’s policy for returning residents of Fukushima also said, “I don’t think it’s going well. “I feel that there is a goal to appeal to the public about the impression that the nuclear power plant problem has been solved.” He said, “I think it is important to listen to the voices of the victims and not forget about the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident.” By Jo Ki-won, staff reporter