NASU, Tochigi Prefecture--Yasuyuki Fujimura was the go-to guy for advice on radiation in the town of Nasu in Tochigi Prefecture.
NASU, Tochigi Prefecture--Yasuyuki Fujimura was the go-to guy for advice on radiation in the town of Nasu in Tochigi Prefecture.
The 67-year-old inventor who is also a visiting professor at the College of Engineering at Nihon University has long been studying the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster.
So after the crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March, Nasu residents, torn between safety reassurances and dire warnings of radiation exposure, hounded Fujimura with questions about whether they should evacuate.
Fujimura advised them to take matters into their own hands.
"Why not investigate the reality of radiation exposure, make scientific analyses and proceed with decontamination on our own?" he told the advice seekers.
What followed was an autonomous project that checks for radiation hot spots in Nasu, home to 27,000 people and located about 100 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
Hundreds have joined the Nasu wo Kibo no Toride ni Shiyo! (Let's make Nasu a foothold of hope!) project, and the movement has spread to surrounding areas.
More than 1,000 people have taken part in the persistent and steady efforts to measure the extent of radiation at about 1,400 locations and plan for decontamination measures.
"Our idea of acting together to regain a peace of mind caught on with others," Fujimura said. "It didn't matter whether you were a common resident or a town government official, whether you were for or against nuclear power."
More than eight months since the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the nuclear crisis, the Toride Project is still going strong.
On one day in early November, mothers carrying dosimeters called out such numbers as "0.82" or "0.48" while other project members jotted down the figures on a map. The numbers represented air dose rates in microsieverts per hour.
About 30 people, including parents of children attending Takaku Elementary School, were checking the routes used by children to go to the school.
About 500 people in the Nasu district are engaged in the project, which is cooperating with the town administration, to measure radiation levels along 155 commuting routes to all 13 elementary schools in the town.
Via school authorities, the town government called on parents who were not affiliated with the project to participate in the radiation checks.
After the project started in March, about 1,000 people attended sessions on radiation measurement techniques while donations rose to about 3 million yen ($39,000), enough to buy 26 dosimeters.
Membership swelled to about 500 as the project began to attract residents in the neighboring cities of Nasushiobara and Otawara.
Surveys by the Tochigi prefectural government detected a maximum air dose rate in Nasu of 1.75 microsieverts per hour, equivalent to 15 millisieverts per year, immediately following the start of the nuclear accident.
The figure fell short of the 100-millisievert-per-year level, above which it is believed that "any additional dose will cause a proportional increase in the chance of a health effect." But it far exceeded the 1-millisievert-per-year level, the individual dose limit for the general public.
Before the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, Fujimura held events at his home to promote environmental protection, insisting that children could continue to live in the community if adults made their utmost efforts in this regard.
After the disasters struck, he saw couples quarreling over whether to flee the area and pregnant women fearing for the lives of their unborn babies.
At the time, the central government reiterated there was no immediate impact on health from the Fukushima accident, but nuclear experts in the media were split on how dangerous the situation really was.
Neither the central government nor the experts were presenting workable choices for a majority of the public, Fujimura said.
Naoko Okutsu, a 37-year-old mother of a fifth-grader and a third-grader in Nasu, was one of many who sought Fujimura's advice.
She stayed with an acquaintance in Kagoshima Prefecture for a week immediately following the earthquake, and returned to Nasu just in time for the school closing ceremony in late March because her children wanted to see their friends.
Despite her concerns about radiation exposure, she decided to stay in the community after Fujimura told her: "You should not feel afraid just because you don't know. There is still time for action."
Okutsu invited Mayumi Kikuchi, a 46-year-old mother of a child who attended the same kindergarten as her children, to join the project.
The two women, however, were hesitant to canvass elementary schools because some of the schoolchildren's parents were dairy farmers and innkeepers who feared negative publicity.
The women also wanted to avoid being labeled overly sensitive, so they limited their activities to leaving brochures at clinics and other places.
Shigetomo Mashiko, a 40-year-old father of three children who runs a local lumbermill, was also reluctant at the outset.
"Some farmers may lose their means of living if measurement results are made public," he said he thought at the time.
After a three-hour discussion with Fujimura and others, Mashiko agreed to a plan to restrict most of the measurement activities along school commuting routes. He also discussed the measures with other young business operators.
Word of the Toride Project spread by word of mouth, eventually involving the town administration.
The Nasu town government bought 27 of the same dosimeters used in the Toride Project to prevent discrepancies in the measurements. All senior officials of the town government also listened to Fujimura's advice.
"From early on, the project pointed to a pathway in a level-headed manner," said Masaru Takaku, the 56-year-old town mayor, explaining why the movement expanded so quickly.
Fujimura said the name of the project stems from his hope of providing courage to people in other communities as well.
In fact, a Nishigo Hope Project has started in the neighboring Nishigo village in Fukushima Prefecture.
(This article was written by Yoshitaka Sumida and Kiyoko Miichi.)