NAMIE, Fukushima Prefecture--Children's satchels scattered on the floor on March 11, 2011, were just as Shoko Tsushima remembered.
NAMIE, Fukushima Prefecture--Children's satchels scattered on the floor on March 11, 2011, were just as Shoko Tsushima remembered.
She gently wiped the dust of each satchel and placed them on the desks of her former pupils.
For Tsushima, her March 23 visit back to Namie Elementary School was her way of reconnecting to the evacuated town of Namie after it was designated a no-entry zone following the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Tsushima and 20 other teachers returned to the school to clean up, just days before a ban on entry to the neighborhood is eased on April 1.
“My students have been scattered, but I want to see them someday,” said Tsushima, 52, who was in charge of fourth-graders.
Her former pupils graduated this spring, mostly from elementary schools in municipalities to which they were evacuated.
Tsushima, who now teaches in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, wrote a message on the blackboard, addressed to “all of you I like so much at Namie Elementary School.”
“Hang in there, with hopes and dreams,” the message went on. “I am looking forward to seeing you, all grown up. I will hang in there, too.”
The school is scheduled to be opened, mainly to parents, in May.
“When my students visit here someday, I want them to relive their happy days at the school before the disaster,” Tsushima said.
Takakatsu Watanabe, 40, who was in charge of second-graders, also put satchels and other belongings in order, voicing the names of his former pupils as he went.
“I am cleaning the classroom, hoping that one or more students will want to keep their satchel with them one day,” he said.
Tsushima, Watanabe and other teachers who visited Namie Elementary School were working at the school two years ago when disaster struck.
They were joined by teachers from an elementary school in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, for students who were formerly at elementary schools in Namie.