Landscapes of Fukushima - Radiation, Tsunami, Gospel

I had a short five day long visit to Fukushima last week. Even after having visited Ukraine just recently and learned about the Chernobyl disaster from people directly affected by it for the past 20 some years, Fukushima does not seem any less complex or devastating.

Perseverance. That is probably one most necessary thing right now.

My focus of this visit was two-fold (besides some organizational matters):

• Listen to the voice of the voiceless - this time, I intentionally focused on capturing the voices of ordinary people who were affected by the disaster. I will post these stories soon after I get Japanese translated. 
• See with my own eyes and feel the landscape of some of the areas that were most affected by the disaster. I am posting a few photos below as a summary of my reflections. 

Before I left Vancouver the history of Fukushima stayed on my mind for a long time (see the blog entry on the meaning of the name). So I prayed that I might be able to get a glimpse of the faith of those martyrs, on whose blood today's churches in Fukushima firmly stand. I started reading about the history of Christianity in Japan and discovered that the sixteenth century is called "Christian century" because of the dramatic growth of Christianity after Xavier and other Jesuits arrived in the land. I found the map below in A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China 1542-1742 (by Andrew C. Ross). The shaded areas indicate strongest growth of Christianity, and I marked the areas which were hit by the Tohoku disasters on March 11, 2011. 

The shaded area is actually is a mountain range near Aizu area where there had been thriving Christian communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the tragic martyrdom took place. While we were driving on the road stretched along the mountains from Koriyama to Fukushima city, I couldn't help but thinking of those martyrs, and their journeys from the southern tip of Japan, Kagoshima where the gospel had been brought in the mid-sixteenth century.

How beautiful on the mountains

   are the feet of those who bring good news ! 

(Is 52:7)

On September 30, the Japanese government lifted the "stay-home" order within the 20-30KM areas from Fukushima Dai-ichi. This means several things at the local level - residents no longer need to be prepared for 'evaucation at any moment'; schools and other public services would start functioning again once cleanup was complete; businesses started coming back to town. People were told that they could carry on with normal activities of life again. But can life really go back to normal?

We went to "the 20KM boarder" in Minami-Soma, north of the plant. As I was walking close to the boarder, I took a picture of the landscape outside the 20 KM zone. The fields were left abandoned because no farming was done as everything had to stop after March 11.  What will this land look like after the winter?

There were policemen keeping security control strictly as vehicles with special passes only are allowed to enter the 20KM zone. Even evacuees are not allowed to go in.

Every road to the crippled nuclear plant is under strict security control and this boarder continues to the fields invisibly - these fields are not divided at all in any other sense. I stood where the 20 KM Stop sign was on the road and took pictures of the landscapes on both sides of the stop sign. The photo below shows the landscape inside the 20 KM zone. For the next 20 or more years, this part of the land will continue to be out of human touch. 

All the news that fills media about Fukushima has to do with the nuclear power plant or radiation. We have nearly forgotten that the devastating tsunami hit not only the nuclear plant, but many villages along the coast.

Usuiso is a coastal village in Iwaki and it is completely destroyed by the tsunami. Before the disaster there were about 800 people (240 households) lived in this small fishing village. 125 people were killed and most homes were destroyed. The below picture of Usuiso was on a newspaper on April 27, 2011, a month and a half after the disaster. 

I had seen tsunami before, just as powerful as this one, but killed 10 times more people than this one (over 250,000 people were found dead in the tusnami in South Asia seven years ago). But what shocked me this time was the level of inaction here in Japan, the most advanced economy of the world and with an aging population. In Thailand, it didn't take six months until people started moving on to rebuild their lives. The choice was rather simple; whether back to the old place and back to old jobs they knew best which was fishing and farming, or to unknown but new places (most of them went to hill sides) looking for new livelihoods to go as far and away as they could from pain and suffering they had to bear by living near the coast. Because people did not have much expectation on the government and those Thai fishermen and farmers had to rise up again on their feet as fast as they could.

Here in Japan, the government is waiting to collect people's opinions, and victims are waiting to hear the government's plan. No one is moving a step towards recovery even after eight months. Everyone is waiting to hear what the other would do first.

Mr. Suzuki was a fisherman before the disaster, but now he lost not only his fishing boat but also his family and his house. Shimi, one of the volunteers from Global Mission Center (GMC), has been instrumental in helping Mr. Suzuki regain his hope to get back on his feet and carry on with his life. Mr. Suzuki, who was not able to come back to see his home village for a long time after the disaster, joined us in the trip to Usuiso last Friday. As he was standing on the empty ground where his house once used to be, he said to us:

"Because these Global people (local residents in Iwaki calls the members of GMC Global-san) are praying for me and for the village, I thought I should come along with you guys today and see with my own eyes."

Seeing with my own eyes.  What Mr. Suzuki saw was not simply the landscape where the power of nature devastated many people's lives and livelihoods of those who survived. It was more than what was left after the destruction. It was about what can be done and what must be done when a committed church comes alongside to rebuild the life together. 


Mr. Suzuki seemed to have gained strength just enough to face today. That's all that matters. Facing the aftermath of the tragedy once again is hard but perhaps the right step forward on this long road to not simply rebuilding what was lost before, but Gospel-led transformation of Usuiso village.


Hope of living. There is a mysterious power in it that rejuvenates a person from within. But we can never generate such hope with our human strength, it comes from the high above.