Fukushima, a ghost town seven years on

Seven years after a catastrophic nuclear disaster, vast swathes of the Japanese city Fukushima remain eerie no-go zones

IN A deserted classroom small jackets hang against the wall and backpacks sit on rows of desks, as if a gaggle of children just dashed out into the schoolyard for break. But the date on the wall calendar is 11 March 2011 and there are no children here – there have been no people here in seven years. Nearby, scenes are eerily similar. A supermarket’s fully stocked shelves are covered in cobwebs while in the parking lot long grass engulfs abandoned cars.

These are the haunting scenes that greet the rare visitor to Fukushima, the Japanese city where time has stood still since thousands of panicked inhabitants fled in fear of nuclear radiation.

At the time of the nuclear disaster the town had 290 064 inhabitants. Today fewer than half remain.

Seven years ago this coastal city was rocked by an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale – a catastrophe that triggered a 15m-high tsunami that claimed the lives of 19 000 people.

But for the people of Fukushima the nightmare was far from over. The flood fatally damaged the building that housed the reactor of the Daiichi nuclear power station on the coast – and some 160 000 people had to drop everything to escape lethal doses of radiation.

Despite the mass exodus, an estimated 1 600 people died from radiation

diseases after they’d been rehoused elsewhere.

Today Fukushima still has “red zones” where no one is allowed to enter because radiation still lurks more than seven years later. In these ghost neighbourhoods buildings and streets stand untouched.

“You can’t smell, see or feel radiation. It’s a silent killer,” says Bob Thissen, a Dutch cameraman who recently visited the area to document the lingering aftermath of the disaster.

This is a town that’s been left to fend for itself – all the more remarkable given that Japan is known for its extraordinary ability to rebuild after adversity.

This, after all, is the country that rose from the ashes after America decimated two of its largest cities by dropping nuclear bombs during World War 2.

The Japanese government believes it will take another 40 years to decontaminate the power station and Fukushima’s red zones – at a cost of up to R574 billion.

Each building, pavement and tar road must be sprayed with special de- tergents and scrubbed to render it safe.

Meanwhile 100 000 residents haven’t been allowed to return to their homes or workplaces.

“The world is totally unaware there are still so many homeless people,” says James Galbraith, another photographer who has travelled to the town.

“The atmosphere here reminds you how fragile life is.”

LEFT: Dusty magazines lie strewn across the floor of a shop, just one of many places that have been left in a state of ghostly disrepair since the disaster. No fun to be had here – chilling rows of empty chairs in a deserted games arcade.

An elderly woman contemplates the landscape from the roof of an abandoned school.

Foliage slowly colonises abandoned homes. Farmers in the area suffered huge financial losses when their stock ingested contaminated grass. Weeds choke abandoned vehicles at a car sales outlet. Scientists are still struggling to clear seawater used to...