Crippled Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant at One Year: Back in the Disaster Zone

David McNeill

David McNeill revisits Japan's northeast and the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant a year after it was battered by the triple disaster of March 11 and finds a region still struggling to emerge from its huge shadow.

"The world is heavy on us," says Sakurai Katsunobu, recalling the day that its weight almost crushed the life out of his city. On the morning of March 11 last year, Minamisoma and its mayor were struggling with the same mundane problems as many other small rural cities across Japan: a declining, greying population, creaking public services and a faltering local economy. By nightfall, an existential disaster had engulfed Mayor Sakurai's office, one from which it has yet to reemerge.

It began with the huge quake that struck off the coast of the city of 71,000 at 2:46pm. Less than an hour later, Sakurai was on the roof of the city office, squinting toward the sea about six miles away.  "We could see this huge cloud of dust rising into the air from the Pacific. I asked someone, 'is that a fire?' Then we realized it was the tsunami." Even as he spoke, the deluge was inundating hundreds of homes, drowning old people and children; sometimes whole families.  By evening, corpses were being brought to a makeshift morgue in a local college.