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Ghost towns around Japan's crippled nuclear plant
Straits Times - May 20, 2011
Vending machines are illuminated, but there is no one to use them. Abandoned pets look hopefully at the car, as this reporter drives past them during a visit late last month.
With every living soul evacuated from this once thriving town, eerie silence and stillness hang over Tomioka.
Just a few kilometers along a road on the northern edge of the town is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
It is now the focus of desperate efforts by Tokyo Electric Power Co to bring four damaged reactors under control.
This town, and dozens more like it, are within the 20-kilometer exclusion zone imposed around the crippled plant after it was damaged by the natural disasters and began leaking radioactivity into the ocean, ground and air.
Disaster struck more than two months ago, yet it looks as if the people of Tomioka were here a few hours ago.
A truck is parked on the forecourt of a petrol station, and a pallet of yellow sacks of compost sits neatly in front of the garden centre across the road. The light is still on at the ATM booth alongside the post office. No officers are to be found in the small police station in the main street.
Beyond the town, a tractor stands abandoned in a rice field and roads are cracked and buckled. Repair crews were quick to fix roads in other parts of northeast Japan, but they are not venturing into the no-go zone.
As the sun goes down, lights would normally be expected to flicker on in the living rooms and kitchens of homes and in the ramen restaurants and family diners in the main road. But not now.
As we drive along the main street, however, I catch a glimpse of a light through a house window. It stands out because it is the only one.
A loyal dog still standing guard at the neighboring property barks loudly, but there is no one else to hear it. I ring the door bell, but, like all the others in the area, the house is clearly abandoned.
And from all appearances, it was a hasty departure. The light is still on. The table in the living room is covered with the remains of a meal, sake glasses and an overflowing ashtray, while a pile of washing lies in front of the television.
Through the window, it is clear that the aftershocks have wreaked havoc on this house – and those nearby. A hat stand has toppled in the hall, newspapers have fallen on the floor and the contents of a dresser in another downstairs room are strewn across the floor.
It would be wrong, though, to say the town is entirely bereft of signs of life. A steady stream of vehicles passes through the town to shuttle members of the emergency services in and out of the exclusion zone.
Apart from police vehicles, ambulances and military trucks, buses are taking teams of men clad in identical white coveralls, hats and face masks to the damaged plant, where they are tasked with getting the reactors under control.
Last Tuesday, the government permitted the first group of residents to go back to their homes for two hours to gather as many personal belongings and important documents as they could each cram into a single bag before being evacuated again.
The government has said it will not even consider setting a date for when these people may be able to return to their homes until next year, at the earliest. In reality, it is likely to be generations before Tomioka and its neighboring towns and villages are habitable again. Meanwhile, they have become Japan's modern-day ghost towns.
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