Fukushima: Life After the Disaster
On March 12, fifteen years ago, I was driving north along the Fukushima coast after the earthquake and tsunami. On the road I began hearing about problems at a nearby nuclear power plant. Using a satellite uplink I checked the news and realized a nuclear disaster had happened nearby. The photos are from 2026. The videos from 2011.
THE BACKSTORY
Time moves slowly here
ISSUE 14
View of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant fifteen years after the disaster. I usually do not travel with a drone because rules make it difficult in many countries. But my friend, photographer and for this trip, producer Ko Sasaki brought one with him.
Ko launched the drone and suddenly we had the view we had tried to reach for years by boat or climbing the coast. I even flew it myself for the first time. It convinced me that drones, are needed, have become an important tool for photojournalists.
About three weeks after the disaster I finally made it in. I drove as far as I could with my friend Ken Daimaru, whom I had worked with while covering the tsunami for Time magazine. Later he agreed to help me return and try to enter the red zone.
In those days there were no roadblocks yet. You could simply drive until the roads became impassable. We moved slowly through empty towns and damaged streets, trying to get closer to the area around the nuclear plant.
Ironically the situation is not that different today. Much of the red zone has reopened to local traffic, but there are still areas you cannot enter. Roads suddenly close once authorities realize you do not have the right pass to continue further.
I dealt with this often in the years covering Fukushima after the disaster. As photographers you keep pushing until you cannot go further. My friend Ko Sasaki and I became quite good at testing those limits over the years.
Yoichi Yatsuda showed NZZ writer Marco Kaufmann and me around his property in Futaba. The former professional cyclist and trainer had returned to his home after years of displacement following the disaster.
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