16/01/2014 13:22
Saitama Kisai High School becomes shelter for Fukushima victims
Since the fallout of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant crisis in 2011 people there continue to struggle with their lives every single day. The situation is not becoming easier. The number of people evacuated according to the statistics is 1,415 people. Among all those people there are children, old and disabled people. All of them are in need of a new house, health support and new living conditions, the Voice of Russia reports.
For now, they all live in Saitama Kisai high school near Tokyo, which was previously abandoned. The journalists and mass media are not permitted inside. The school was transformed into modern facilities for those people who escaped from the radiation. The media calls these people the “Nuclear Nation”, which is also the part of the new documentary movie about the recent tragedy. After the accident people moved 250 km closer to the outskirts of Tokyo. Meanwhile, the conditions there remain poor, the victims are provided with free box lunches per day filled with rice, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
People occupy the classes; each one of them is filled with around 20 people, who sleep on the floor wrapping themselves with blankets. The situation hasn’t changed much since April 2011; they still have nowhere to go. One of the survivors comments: “All that was left from the house was the concrete foundation. It was all swept away. About 200 people from our community died. Even babies and kids. And 100 of those bodies were not identified. We lost a lot of relatives.”
After the accident, the whole Futaba town was relocated to school where thousand of people found shelter for the next couple of years. It was an order from the Japan government to evacuate everybody within the 3km radius from the explosion. Then the order covered 5km, then 10km and 20 km from ground zero. Soon after that the US government advised the US citizens to stay away at least 80 km away from the area. It raised a wave of concern among the locals. The Japanese people got anxious why the US government is advising to stay away for such a big radius while their own government is just ordering the evacuation for 20 km. Eventually, the whole city was moved closer to Tokyo. The residents were allowed to return only for two hours with just two family members to gather their belongings if they had any of it left and leave for good. The majority of people obeyed the order except from a couple of farmers.
The biggest problem is that it seems that these people have no prospective. The government is paying compensation orders for the next six years. It is still a mystery what will happen with them after that.
Now the documentary movie that is called the “Nuclear Nation” was made and is out to general public. It talks about the hardships of the people that they had to go through soon after the Fukushima tragedy. The aim of the movie to raise the awareness of people around the world and to try to find a way out for all those people who are now locked up in an abandoned school in the outskirts of Tokyo.